posted October 08, 2002 08:32 PM           

I had installed a new set of 4 tires in 2000 or about 22K miles ago. Two of the original tires have already had defects and had to be replaced. The first one was one year ago which I thought was a fluke. This
week now another one has failed in the same fashion. Both tires had internal belts that slipped or twisted leaving a surface distortion and a horrible shaking or vibration. I mean you will think something major is happening to your car and you probably cannot drive over 50mph. In fact I left my car at my in-laws home which is 100 miles away for over a week as the car was not drivable on the open road. On the trip up there the car ran fine except for the last 5-10 miles which I thought the road surface when to heck due to some road construction going on. When I tried to return home I could tell something major was wrong so I parked the car thinking I had major front end problems like Tie-rod ends or ball joints, etc..

This last tire still had 7/32 nds of tread left so you can see they still had plenty of rubber left. In both cases Sam's replaced the bad tires with no more out of pocket money but I wasted a couple of days since my car was in another location and I was running around trying to find front end parts when in fact it was the rear tire.

Overall cannot recommend the Advantage Plus even though it appears on the surface to be a good tire it isn't made for extended highway type of use in my State where the Interstate speed limits are 75mph.

Around town it might be OK if you never go faster than 65 mph - but this is only a guess. With 2 of 4 already going bad I doubt I will be using them in the future.

posted October 24, 2002 05:19 PM           

I think it was out of round but I forgot exactly what I was told. I was just happy to get my car back and it was driving straight again after the adjustments. However on the 100 mile drive home I did notice some more vibration - nothing like it was but enough you could feel it in the car body. Since the alignment shop had said something wasn't right about one of the tires I took it to my local (a different) Sam's store and asked them to check the two rear tires as I was having some vibration. Sure enough one of the tires didn't test right on their machine and they replaced it. This time I had to pay the 50% tread adjustment for the new tire plus another $9 for mounting, balancing, etc.

So now the bottom line is 3 out of the 4 Advantage plus tires didn't perform.