I noticed last week end one of my tires had a small bulge in the sidewall. We took it on a little trip yesterday down to Sarasota to St Armands Circle and I noticed the bulge was getting bigger. I took it to the dealer this morning and they replaced it under warranty. The service tech hardly even looked at it and called it a warranty issue. I have never owned Contis and asked him if he had a lot of issues with them failing and he said he gets a few that get warrantied. Has anyone else had any issues with them? I will definitely replace them with another brand when these wear out. I've always had good luck with BFG, Bridgestone and Toyo.

 

Jerry, I wouldn't normally buy any Continental tires, but you may want to reconsider the stock tire which was specially made for the FEH. It is a low rolling resistant tire that improves mileage. Make sure the tire is a Eco Plus Continental they replaced it with. The standard Escape does not come with the Eco Plus, and they may try to give you a tire that is not a match with the others. You use to have to order the Eco Plus only through the Ford dealerships because Continental was not allowed to sell them to anyone else. I have heard you can get them now without going to a ford dealership, but I have no proof myself.

These tires have been very good to me so far with both wear and mileage.

GaryG

 

Pretty much what he said.

My previous vehicle, a '95 Ford Explorer actually went through 4 tire replacements, all Bridgestones. These eco Continentals seems pretty good so far. *Knock on wood.*

 

The replacement tire was also an Eco Plus. I have no complaints thus far. I have driven them in the wet & dry and grip has been very good plus they are very quiet.

 

You can buy the Eco-Plus tires from Tire Rack, they are around $70 a piece.

I hate those tires myself, they are noisy & are hands down the worst M&S tires I have ever driven on in the snow.

~John

 

Good to know John. I'm moving to Utah in a month or so. Snow will be an issue next fall.

 

I haven't had that bad a time with them on snow actually.... I think it depends on what you are used to. I used to have Eagle RS-A's on my ZX2 and these seem no worse to me.

 

I will have 80K on the original tires by the end of next week. I really don't have any complaints. I am getting close to have to replace them now though. I believe I could have gotten another 10-20k on them if I would have taken the time to rotate them.

Without the tires being rotated the front tires still have a little life left, but not much. The back tires have at least 1/2 their tread left, but because I did not rotate the tires I have some cupping on the insides of the tread that is causing some problems.

My experience has been that they are a little sensitive to hydroplaning, but OK on snow.

Sears told me they could order the Eco-Plus tires for $90 but I was not convinced that they were really going to be the same tire. I also saw an add for Michelin MXV4 Plus 'Low Rolling Resistance' tires. I am looking to see if they would fit, but so far I have not found anything that will.

 

I got Michelin Latitude X-Ice this winter and thought they worked out well. This is my first AWD SUV and it handles a lot better than my old Golf (with winter tires of course), which itself handled quite well except when it came time to climb a snowy hill. The FEH with winters did a lot better in that respect. It was a lighter than usual winter snow-wise here in Montreal, but I did have to drive through a couple of good blizzards and it came through great.

Cheers,

Roch

 

Back in the day.....gosh, the 70's....Continentals were a class act motorcycle tire....very high quality. No problems with them, but I've only got about 5000 miles on them. I had them on for some of the early snow and ice here, and I thought they did fine on the 4WD FEH. Good grip on turns, very little spin on starts. Still, for the wet ice, I've switched to studs (hit some very slick stuff at an intersection that really gave the ABS a workout today). I'm perhaps only a month away from getting them back on, and looking forward to it.

What you had was separation of the sidewall rubber from the sidewall structure, and it can happen.....but it shouldn't happen often. If they did the warranty like they should, it must not happen too often. If it happens twice, I'd be concerned. Check inflation......heat is an issue for radials and sidewalls, and low inflation runs it up a bunch.