Uniroyal RainSport 3 Reviews - Page 2

I just bought the Golf and the deal was I had to supply my own wheels so I picked up a cheap set of 16's with a full set of Rainsport 3's with about 5mm tread across the board. Not bad for £130 but I had heard these tyres are no good in the dry. Anyhow after servicing the car (oil and filters), I set about putting it through it's paces on my favorite country roads and I purposefully did a couple of fast drives in pouring rain to try it properly. In the wet these tyres seem pretty capable in terms of laying the power down, general handling and resistance to aquaplane as I drover through the deepest puddles I could find at speed without too much drama. Of course there is some understeer but considering the cars power and it's front wheel drive that is to be expected under acceleration. In the dry especially when it's really warm they don't appear to have much more grip than in the wet, I'm not sure if the understeer is really bad (it's not that bad, I was driving like a peanut) because of the tyres or the car, as I have not had any experience of any Golfs newer than my old Mk2 GTi I don't know. It is pretty heavy for it's size and the suspension after 187000 miles is pretty tired I'd imagine. Also the rear slides fairly, with a flick of the steering you can easily kick the rear out which is not normally that easy on a front drive car. Anyway once you adjust your corner entries and throttle applications to account for the slides it is all pretty progressive and consistent so you can pretty much corner as hard as anything else as long as nothing is coming the other way just in case you get it wrong. I can't give any details on wear as they aren't showing any signs yet, they are ok on the brakes as far as I can tell. The brakes on the Golf are in need of replacement I think as I had to stop and let them cool after losing them doing a couple of laps on my favorite road, they aren't sharp enough to lock the wheels or make the ABS work so I'll sort them with discs, pads and new fluid at some point. Only other thing is the there are cracks in the tread. I also have a set of 17's to try which came with a pair of these so will see if the bigger wheel size makes any difference. Eventually I'm looking to trackday this car so will have the 16's as my wet / winter set and the 17's as my summer / dry set. A lot of work to do and a long way to go yet though.

These actual tyres have been on two completely different cars. Initially on a back of rear wheel drive light sports car and now on the front of a mk 10 civic. To be fair the sports car had a full set,all be it a staggered arrangement,the civic has the original Michelin's on the rear. My opinion of this tyre is basically the same result as when it was ran as part of the full set on the sports car. Side wall construction is very soft,the resultant ride quality is excellent,the down side is a loss if any precision to the steering. You end up having to increase the steering lock on all but the slowest inputs. The levels of grip in the dry(once you learn to trust the lack of steering feel) are okay, although,really push on and you're rewarded with an unnerving floating feeling. The result is you tend to just hold back. Wet grip is good, but again,not that difficult to spin up the wheels in 2nd and 3rd gears when coming out of corners which results in a slow drift offline due to understeer. Where this tyre really shines is cutting through standing water. No other tyre I've used manages to mitigate the dragging effect of hitting large puddles as well as this the does, impressive. If I had a full set on the car I'm sure this vague feeling would result in a feeling of impending oversteer ,at least until the tread depth had reduced. Which leads me on to wear rate. Never had enough time on the sports car to assess this,but a combination of a about 300 miles on that car and 1500 on the civic,has resulted in the loss of about 1.5mm. To be expected with such a soft compound I guess. This isn't a terrible tyre by a long shot, certainly if you don't drive particularly fast,but that's its problem,this isn't tyre to go from A to B quickly(bar maybe in the wet) I can't see me ever buying these again.

Well not the greatest tyre but on temperature ranges between 5C to 22-25C they are great being unable to either get the ABS kick in or slide them (actually last time I broke a spring in the corner but didn't lost traction). On outside temperature above 25C-30C they definetly start loose grip both in braking ,accelerating and side loading. On rain well this is the greatest tyre I've driven in my 14 years of driving expirience , keeping 90-100km/h during heavy rains and storms(you litterally barely see where the road is) this rubber didn't gave me the slightest loss of confidence about the car handling. Definetly good in going through deeper pockets of water without aquaplaning. In general I would say probably the best road summer all around tyre for normal users but for high horsepower and really sport driving this is not the tyre since the soft compound it has quickly heats up and starts loosing traction rapidly , you would need more harder tyre compound for this.

These tire are only average and nothing special. On dry roads braking is good, but handling is nothing less than intimidating, the slightest amount of heat on the road will make the car slide all about the place, on a FWD car you can have understeer and oversteer very easily so you have to be very careful. Due to stiff sidewall the car tire will stay flat and is quite responsive so you can expect a sharp and responsive feedback, but as above must be very careful since the grip will not back you up the way you might expect. On wet braking is scary and not to be mentioned very dangerous ABS will kick hopelessly trying to stop a car plowing forwards like you're driving in double cream. Surprisingly on wet roads handling becomes very good much better than on other tires, and on heavy rain it gets even better, at least the tires give you confidence much more than most of other makes and models. (Hence they call them the "Rain Tyre"). Furthermore I also had the opportunity to test these tires even on SNOW, and all I can say is I advise you to better leave the car and take the bus If the roads decide to ear the "white coat" . Comfort wise i have the XL model they are OKay-ish because of the stiff sidewall and tire groove pattern, and noise level is definitelyon the HIGH side , tire and road noise is very noticeable and of course much more evident than with other "comfort" tire models. That said it is nothing worrying but something to consider for when deciding what tire you want. Fuel consumption wise I changed to this model on 225/45/18 size, coming from 225/45/17 Pirelli Cinturato P7 "eco" tire an I cannot notice any difference on cars consumption. Final thought, If you don't live in a wet and rainy climate do no expect anything special from these tiers especially if you live on places with hot summer days and want to use your car for sprited driving sessions.

I’m having the 4th set now , I did buy the first one after having previously continental conti sport contact 5 ( 4 years ago ) I’m driving often to Germany ( no speed limit motorway ) about the tyres the wet grip it’s just great , cornering it’s also very good . What I’ve notice in very hot days under heavy breaking ( have massive breakes upgrade on my car ) the grip start loosing pretty easy , before the breakes upgrade that didn’t use to happen . On snow they are rubbish ( and it’s just normal keeping in mind that I have a rwd car and they are summer tyres ) On the front they last for about 18k miles and on the rear for about 13k-15k miles . I will definitely recommend them . I’ve seen some feedbacks here 😂 they aren’t competition tyres ore track tyres . They are normal tyres for normal use . If you have a car over 200bhp and think that this or any other tyres will keep you glued on tarmac that’s not gonna happen( only tyres that could help will be Michelin sport cup 2 , but if you afford them you won’t let negative feedback 😂) . Bear in mind that neither the F1 cars can’t break physics laws, and specially a normal car won’t go further .