We are getting there… slowly…

Whilst blogging away about things we are passionate about hasn’t caused too much concern, understanding how to get the best out of 140 characters on Twitter hasn’t been such a smooth ride. Do we direct message, re-tweet, tweet, follow, reply # tag or @ tag?!

It’s a fascinating and sometimes quite perplexing platform. It’s all too easy to get lost down avenues of links and profiles and hash tags but it’s also quite exciting to find such a rich vein of interesting businesses and individuals just trying to make some new contacts.

Anyway, if you too are a Twitter novice or Tweet Pro, please come and follow us at @tyrequote: http://twitter.com/tyrequote – we’d love to hear from you!

In my recent article about the proposed changes to MOT schedules, you may have noticed that we had a number of concerns. So it was to our happiness that we found out about the ProMOTe campaign to retain the frequency of Britain’s MOT testing. Naturally we have signed their petition, followed their Tweets and look forward to seeing more positive news in the press as the campaign gathers pace and support.

We’d all rather keep the £50 a year extra it’s likely to cost us if annual MOTs are scrapped, let alone the peace of mind that untested jalopies aren’t careering about our roads.

So visit the Pro-MOTe campaign website yourselves if you would like to join the petition: http://www.pro-mote.org.uk/

Thanks for reading.

Our coalition government are tinkering around with a number of motoring initiatives just now, from tougher driving tests to switching off motorway lights at night. However it seems one new measure will see a relaxation of existing legislation.

The Department of Transport are proposing that we have our cars MOT’d even less. So now we are required to start getting an MOT for our new cars and vans after 3 years and then every 12 months after that. In the future it is suggested that we’ll MOT our new motors at first 4 years old and then every 2 years after that.

At TyreQuote.com we believe the cost of everyday motoring has almost become a luxury, so on the face of it the money saving on less frequent trips to the MOT station is a welcome one. Take it a step further though and we are little concerned. Firstly, with the obscene costs in fuel, insurance and tax, there are too many people on the roads driving illegally without insurance, tax or even having actually paid for legal fuel. These drivers are unfortunately escalating these costs and also making the roads a more dangerous place to be - if they aren’t required to MOT their vehicles every year, there’s also an increased chance of them tearing around in poorly maintained motors too.

We are major advocates for the exceptional service we get from local independent garages. The small businesses often family run with extremely talented mechanics and apprentices and much lower overheads than some of the ‘high street’ garages and therefore smaller charges.  If these garages start to see lower levels of business from less frequent MOTs and the maintenance that follows, they could come under threat and be swallowed up by the bigger market players and that would be a very sad situation for the motor industry.

So, we would much rather the system was left alone and cost savings are made elsewhere. Perhaps they could tax us every other year instead?!

Merry Christmas from us all at Tyrequote.com!

Free MOT for one lucky customer that ‘likes’ our Facebook page

After posting my last blog post, I thought wouldn’t it be great if we could give something back to the lovely people that come on to our Facebook page and leave some feedback on our service, our advert and just what we are trying to do in general. So I spoke to John Fox and he said let’s give them a free MOT when they need one. Thanks John!

So get liking and posting and fingers crossed it’s you that gets picked out. Always nice to save a few quid.

We also have some more juicy offers to put to you soon, so keep an eye out on Facebook and on our blog.

James

Well it’s all happening here at TyreQuote.com

For those of you that have visited before, you will notice that we have freshened up our look a little bit. New logo, new style and new beginnings. We are delighted to welcome Will Bellamy on board as our new Sales Manager reporting in to John Fox (previously of Audi and VW). John and Will are making a brilliant job of expanding and managing our network fitters, so when you request replacement car/bike or van tyres, we have the very best people in your area on hand to quote.

Although we are excited to have Will making progress on our network and he is a thoroughly nice chap, it’s our radio advertising campaign that we are most excited about this month. John’s sharp business sense and marketing experience led us to developing a great radio jingle of which we’re extremely proud and it has finally hit the airwaves of Capital FM today. Listen out for our 10 and 30 second adverts and let us know what you think – we love to hear from our customers – Email james@tyrequote.com or find us on Facebook, just search for ‘TyreQuote.com’.

After Will and the radio ad, we have also made some awesome updates on the website itself. Our new tyre search facility uses the latest javascript technology to provide live filtering which means you can get to the bottom of our massive database of tyres in no time and find the very best tyres for your needs in seconds.

Finally from me bigging-up all the brilliant things we do here, is our new innovation on MOTs. We have listened hard to your needs and it seems that many of you are changing your tyres in readiness for an MOT. As we are already successfully matching you with the best tyre fitters in your area, we are also going to be providing offers from your local MOT station – if you want them of course. All you will need to do is tell us when your MOT is due and we’ll email you discount vouchers when the time is right to book in. Another free money saving opportunity from TyreQuote.com.

Thanks for reading as always,

James

Today I just wanted to bring up the topic of Wheel Balancing. Not a fascinating coffee time topic for most people but if you have ever been driving along the motorway with your family in the car and it has developed a terrible ‘wobble’, then it’s something you should be aware of at least.

Tyres are generally speaking made in 2 sections, carefully moulded together to make a complete and even hoop or circle. Unfortunately not all manufacturing processes are entirely perfect and this can create a very slightly imbalance of weight on one side or the other. This is very rare because the tyre manufacturers spend millions on quality control to make sure that the tyres that arrive on your vehicle are as close to perfectly round and balanced as they can. What is much less rare is imperfections in our driving or our driving environment. Yes, even you Jenson Button can stray a little close to the kerb or over that pothole you didn’t see in the dark or under the puddle. Us drivers in the UK are also permenantly hurdling ever increasing speed mountains to keep us at 20mph or less in our suburbs and cities. So with all this careering around our tyres and wheels inevitably take a few knocks and bruises. The strong construction of tyres absorbs most little accidents but after a while they can create minor imbalances of weight across the tyre.

So what you ask? Well at 20-30mph so what indeed but at 60-70mph even a very minor imbalance can lead to quite a vicious ‘wobble’, ‘crabbing’ or ‘juddering’. Your car may vibrate, the steering wheel will shake and it can become quite a noisy and uncomfortable ride for you and your passengers. If you have a heavy car, a 4×4 perhaps, then the effects of a tyre imbalance can be masked by the weight of the car pushing the tyres on to the road, but the effects are still there and your fuel consumption will seriously suffer and other defects could become apparent. You could develop some movement in the suspension system, trouble with your brakes any number of issues.

The crazy thing is that all this can be put right by a very simple and relatively inexpensive procedure – Wheel Balancing. For £20 – £40 you could have all 4 wheels professionally balanced. The garage will remove your tyres, put them on a digital machine that spins the tyre and measures the imbalance and the technician will then apply a small weight to counter the imbalance. Your tyres will then be rolling straight and true again.

When a tyre fitter fits new tyres to your vehicle, they should always check the wheel balancing there and then. We ensure that all tyre quotes from tyrequote.com include wheel balancing as standard, so there are no added extras when you get to the fitting centre.

Just remember, that it’s worth calling in to your fitting centre to check your wheel balancing from time to time – not just when you get new tyres. Some drivers may go a long time between new sets of tyres and some may clip a few kerbs more than others, so save yourself some money and trouble – get your wheel balancing checked and get rid of that wobble!

If only other ‘wobbles’ could be removed for £20-£40!

James

Well, what a race? The cool summer’s day in Germany gave us a fantastic Grand Prix at the infamous Nurburgring yesterday. British driver Lewis Hamilton went a long way to showing his recent critics precisely why he has every right to continue driving with aggressive passion that was just too much for his competitors.

Hamilton squeezed every ounce of power and pace out of his McLaren and he fought admirably to take and re-take leadership of the race several times. A fantastic qualifying lap shoved Vettel off the front row for the first time in months and Lewis took his chance to beat Webber’s sluggish start into the first corner. The racing to follow from Hamilton, Webber and Alonso was edge of the seat stuff and Hamilton came out well ahead of the other podium finishers thanks to some superb overtaking at critical moments in the race.

Sebastian Vettel had a terrible weekend, but somehow he still claimed valuable points with a fourth place finish thanks to a pedestrian tyre stop on the final lap by Philipe Massa in the scarlet Ferrari. Lucky for the German driver who was slow and even spun midway through the race to lose valuable time on the impressive front three.

It seems that RedBull’s early season dominance is coming to an end. McLaren and Ferrari are fighting back, no doubt about it, but is it all a little too late with only 9 races left in the F1 season? I for one, can’t wait to see what transpires over the next handful of races..

Well done Lewis and what a shame that Jenson Button didn’t get a chance to complete what could have been another thrilling finish.

James

I was sat in the office today trying to find some great tyre quotes for a customer who was asking for some good tyres. When I asked what was important to them or if they had any preference in brand or model, the response was vague and they didn’t know what brand was on their car at the time.

So where do we start to help this customer – what does make a ‘good’ tyre?

GRIP

A fair place to start. We want our tyres to grip. We don’t want to be going round a corner or roundabout, turning the steering wheel only to watch in horror as the car slides off the road. When we accelerate or brake, the car should speed up and slow down, not just spin and skid about like a puppy on a frozen pond. Grip is important in all conditions too. We want our tyres to grip in the cold and the wet as much as we do in the warm and dry.

The rainy UK provides quite a challenge, especially with the frequency of ‘flash flooding’ these days. Great lakes of water suddenly appearing on hard dry ground with nowhere for it to drain – our tyres need to be designed to cut through this surface water to find grip on the surface below instead of ski or ‘aqua-plane’ across the top of the water.

WEAR

Although we want lots of grip from our tyres, we don’t want this at the cost of poor tyre wear. If a tyre is made of soft, sticky rubber it might provide lots of grip on tarmac but equally the soft rubber will wear down very quickly and we’ll be needing to replace them all too soon.

This is why we see the different tyres in Formula One. Soft tyres for super fast laps but not too many of them on tracks that cut into the soft tyres and wear them down. Hard tyres for lots of laps without pitstops but not quite as grippy for super fast cornering..

At TyreQuote.com we definitely notice that customers using cheaper tyres are coming back more quickly to replace them than those buying more expensive branded tyres that last a bit longer, with lower levels of tyre wear.

NOISE

Whilst some drivers and motorists seem to favour lots of noise judging by their mammoth fuel guzzling engines and monsterous exhaust pipes, there are others that like to enjoy a quieter ride. With electric and hybrid cars becoming more common and manufacturers working hard to keep the sound from their engines under the bonnet we are more and more finding general motoring a nice and quiet ride. If you have comfy air suspension to waft you over the bumps and lumps in the road then you can enjoy whispered conversation with your passengers even at 60mph.

However, believe it or not, this can be ruined by poorly designed or even just badly fitted tyres.

We’ve already decided we want tyres that grip and tyres that dont wear too quickly but if the pattern on the tyre is so harsh so as to give us grip, it could become incredibly noisy when it rolls and rattles along the rode. if the rubber is very hard and we have a very ‘low profile’ (not much rubber between our wheel and the road) tyre then equally we could be having a noisy journey again.

Compromise

So ideally we want a relatively smooth pattern on the tyre to keep it as round as possible and the lack of noise will also mean better aero dynamics, less drag and increased fuel efficiency. Perfect. Well almost – except as we reduce the pattern and hardness of the rubber, we lose our grip and tyre wear! D’oh!

So it’s not easy to find the perfect tyre. Like many things in life, it’s all about compromise. More grip, more tyre wear. Less grip, less tyre wear. More grip, more noise.. and it goes on.

It really comes down to what sort of driving do you so. If you have a 4×4 and actually go off road more than up on to the school curb then you will want more grip and probably wont mind the extra noise as you are merrily chewing up hills. If you potter around town at 30mph most of the time, then who needs lots of grip? Just find something hard wearing and with low noise and fuel efficient.

Do you live in the Scottish highlands or Yorkshire moors and have early starts up your steep cobbled drive? Okay, a little specific here but seriously think about winter tyres for the winter – you will get even more grip, especially on the snow and ice. You might be better off with a 4 wheel drive car than a rear wheel drive car too then you can benefit from the grip of all 4 tyres, not just the 2 spinning away at the back!

When you are looking for great quotes for tyres on TyreQuote.com make sure you look at our reviews of the tyres you think you want. Do they have the right levels of grip, tyre wear, noise and fuel efficiency for your driving?

Thanks for reading,

James

A rather unsavoury report today, one that really highlights the importance of buying the right tyres and checking your tyres are always fit to drive.

The High Court is currently holding a case involving passengers of a Mitsubishi Pajero jeep that are suing Toyo for damages after their friend was killed when the jeep suffered a blow out and flipped multiple times down the M4 in Wales. A terrible and tragic incident that occured back in 2006. What is under question is whether or not it was a defect in the manufacture of the tyre that caused the incident or if some other factors contributed to the tyre tread actually coming away from nearly half of the body of the tyre.

We always recommend regular checking of your tyres, in particular to ensure that there’s plenty of tread to give you grip, especially in the wet and cold weather, but how can anyone check that their tread isn’t going to detach itself? This is of course an extremely rare case and hope this would never happen again but if you ever see anything untoward with your tyres or feel your vehicle riding in an abnormal way – perhaps pulling to one side or the other or with unusual noises, bumps or delivering a wobble or feedback into the steering wheel, you really must contact your nearest tyre fitter immediately to assess you tyre. Tyre checks are usually very quick and free and can provide you with peace of mind that you are safe to continue driving. If you’re unsure of your nearest tyre fitting centre, then email us at help@tyrequote.com with your postcode and we can recommend someone for you.  Getting a tyre check doesn’t mean you have to buy new tyres, but if the fitter recommends that you do buy new tyres, please come back and see if we can get you some fantastic quotes to make you safe again.

The case continues at the High Court next week.

James

The chaps at Pirelli Motorsport have announced they will be taking the hard compound tyres with their silver stripe as the prime tyre for the British Grand Prix at Silverstone and the yellow stripe soft compound tyres as the option tyre.  The German Grand Prix at the Nurburgring will see medium and soft compound tyres and the Hungaroring will host the soft and supersoft PZero tyres that lit up the Canadian Grand Prix.

These decisions make for an exciting variety in terms of team strategy and number of pits stops taken at the next three Formula 1 races. Let’s just hope that Ferrari and McLaren can push the dominant RedBull team again. Vettel is desperate for his team to fix their problem with KERS and whilst that issue remains, there’s always a chance, especially with some vibrant home support for McLaren at Silverstone.

Hard or soft, fingers crossed for an exciting race next weekend..

If you fancy your own set of fresh new grippy Pirelli PZeros, then get great quotes from your nearest fitters from TyreQuote.com

James