The is CURRERNTLY only ONE Eagle GT (did I omit the GT in the last
post? I'm sure I specified it in my first post) - and it is better
than the perevious Eagle GT and Eagle GT1 tires.
There is a LOT you can tell looking at a tread - like can it clear
itself or will it pack full - that you learn from years in the
Ok, I'll have to inject more specifics.
I have Nokian Hakka i3 175 70 13 tire mounted on my rear wheel driver
(mono wheel driver, no LSD)
(i3 is a summer ultra high performance tire, not sold in the united
states)
I have Continental ContiProContact in 235 45 17 on my torsen center
diff equipped four ringed A4
It takes a while to get Hakka i3 lose traction. I had my rwd beater
nearly lying on the rear axle in
a rut full of water with clay at the bottom, It takes no effort to get
A4 stuck with contiprocontact
on level wet grass covered clay field.
ContiProContact tire has marginally more agressive treat pattern. It
does not good in
my softroading sesstion despite awdf (torsen) helping.
Now neither i3 nor contiprocontact are meant for any offroad stints.
But i3 somehow does it better
and i attribute that to the compound that grips MUCH better in wet.
Alphalt or not.
This is all subjective of course. ContiProContact is the highway all
season tire and all it's good for is to wear
slowly unless you subject it to scorching heat of a sunbelt summer, i
guess it's not fair to compare
it to UHP tire. But given offroading context and your claim of tread
importance I had to give
it a shot.
business. Traction on wet surfaces and ice are harder to tell bey
looking - unless you look REAL close at the micro-sipes etc.
I do not own a high speed camera and glass covered test facility to
record the tire
performance. I could not care less how the tread pattern looks like.
It ain't the 70s anymore.
It's important only to the engineers who design the tire and marketers
who prep the ground for the salesfolk,.
Except when bald, there is no tread compound left.
tell that to the lucky few who tried winter slicks