Alex,
I have been looking at a second set of tires for the Mini and started wondering about the Tread Wear rating you have in the reviews section of the Tire Rack website.

Is the Tread Wear rating an official rating the manufacturers have to account for in any way when they manufacture a tire, or is it a customer survey response?

When manufacturers make claims for durability...do they have to back them up? In other words, tires have official "load ratings". Do they have official wear ratings, also?

Thanks!

Brad

 

Lets use the S03 Pole Position as an example.
The green colored rating charts are customer supplied survey data
The treadwear rating in this case, is 6.7 - opinion of end users!

The spec tab is the 5th one under the name of the manufacture (Bridgestone in this case) See the spec page for S-03 here.

The 1st topic covered is UTQG wear ratings. The numeric value is the manufacture's claim of wear in comparison to other tires from that manufacture. The alfa charaters are 1st - wet braking traction 2nd - tempertaure resistance. The last to alfa values however are national standard.

Some manufactures give a treadwear guarantee, While I'd never tell you to try to claim a treadwear warranty - figure this mileage value plus or minus 20 % as the lenth of service. I err on the 80% of guarantee side, as legally bald is 2/32nds, at 80% you'd be around 5/32nds. - below 5/32 your really giving up hydroplaning resistance.

Alex

 

That's a huge help. Thanks, Alex.

 

To add a little to this, it means you can only compare wear ratings of one brand of tires against tires of the same brand. It doesn't mean you can reliably compare wear ratings of different brand tires (say BF Goodrich vs. Yokohama).