Federal SS-595 All-Season Radial Tire - 215/45R17 87V

Update 11-17-15: Finally got around to putting on my three new tires today. The rears still had lots of tread left but I picked up a huge nail in the left rear inner sidewall and couldn't fix the leak, so I replaced that one and the two worn down fronts. Same tires, of course, because I really like these Federals. Aaaaaaaand once again I am not disappointed, not at all. Tuffy charged me right at $100 to mount and balance the three new ones and to plug a nail hole in the right rear, total... not too bad, I guess. And just like Wal Mart, they put too much air in them - 5 pounds too high in the rear and just a couple over in the front. I backed them down to Scion's specs and took her out for a little light pounding. Omg I had forgotten how good new tires feel on this car. I hit the local curves nice and hard, then took her onto the freeway for some good high speed. She feels positively demonic again, like I can hear her whispery voice in my head urging me to go at it harder and faster because she's getting bored, lol. And quiet, just as before...and again I'm really confused about the negative reviews here bitching about noise and bad grip. I just don't get it, unless like I said before people just don't know how to inflate their tires or they got them on backward or something dumb like that. Whatever the case, I am again happy with my choice, and so long as I still have this car and can still get these tires, I'll keep doing just that. :-)Update 9-9-15: It's PTO sellback time at work so I'm replacing my rear that was punctured in the sidewall by a big nail. It's unfortunate because both the rears have lots of tread left, but what can ya do. It's not the tire's fault. Anyway, replacing that one rear with another of these, and then a few months from now I'll replace the fronts, again with two new ones of these same tires. I have NO regrets - they've been great from day one. Beating like a crazy person or driving like a granny, dry as a bone or buried in a downpour, they've been fantastic. Hell if I'll ever understand the negative reviews. If I could rate them higher to compensate, I would in a heartbeat.______________So, I wanted to try to get good tires for my 2006 Scion TC at a reasonable price, and try to do it all cheaper than if I went to some shop and had them do it. So far, that mission has worked out well. I bought my four SS-595's here on Amazon, and then had them mounted and balanced at Wal Mart for a scant $33, nice! They informed me that they don't do alignments, so that will have to wait. For now, it's tolerable.Anyway, my first impression of driving on these was surprise at how much quieter my car was at speed on the asphalt. This was a big relief because I'd seen so much bitching and complaining about them being loud. To be sure of what I was experiencing, I took her out onto I-75 and ran her up to 100mph just for about 30 seconds. Still very quiet, and very smooth compared to the horribly falling apart tires that had been on her (Triangles on the rear, Nexens on the front, and all four very worn out. The Nexens had begun to split in the sidewalls!) I did hit a couple of patches of concrete that made her a lot louder for a second or two, but on the asphalt she was just ghostly quiet, so actually a nice change from the tire noise I had before.I did notice that the car felt completely different. Part of it was the lack of vibration, which is very nice, but also there was a strange kind of "loose" feeling about her... like a sponginess. I took a few curves just a little hard, and verified it - she felt like the ass end wanted to slide out on me. Didn't like that feeling a bit, so I took her home and did a little research on the Net on tire pressure and handling. I noticed that one person wrote that they used the stock pressures, which are differential of 32 PSI front and 29 PSI rear. I only have an old cheap pocket tire gauge, but I did my best with it and found that the boys at Wally World had set my pressures way over spec - almost 38 PSI in some of them, and close to the same all the way around. I lowered each tire to what the info inside the driver's door stated, and took her out for a cautious pounding. At first I was too cautious and didn't drive with anywhere near the fury that I sometimes do, but as time went on I began to feel more confident and pushed her a bit harder at a time. Of special note is the 30mph curve near where I live, which I hammered at 50 plus for the tight spots and she held on like glue and didn't even shriek (close, though) so I know I could have hit it harder. NICE, and I pulled back into my driveway grinning at a mission well accomplished. :-)Now all that remains is to further experiment with pressures and to address the greatest complaints about these tires, which is performance on wet roadway. I'll be very careful on those days, until I get a feel for what they'll behave like.So, in summary... so far I'm not displeased at all. I'd give em five stars but they're still a very unknown quantity so I'll have to get to now them better before I can add or detract from that rating. The low noise and the smooth ride right now are enough to make me confident in a four star rating, and the punishment tests so far are giving me a good feeling for the days to come.I'll come back in a few months for an update, unless something more imminent pushes me to give one sooner.Update 12-2-2014: Still really loving these tires. Unfortunately I picked up a couple of nails in my rears and one went through the sidewall in the rear driver's side and exited at the rim edge. So, now that tire leaks, wonderful. I put some Slime in it and hoped for the best, but all it really does is slow the leak down every so often. Slime is NOT for sidewall leaks, and I knew that going into it, but what else could I do? ANYWAY, still driving on my original four Federals, and man... I don't know where the complainers got their crap about that these tires don't have good traction because frankly I've never been able to hold the road like this until now. I got in a pissing match with some kid that wanted to blow by me on a big curve on the way home, so I decided to see just how far he'd go and how fast exactly I could push it. Turned out to be over 90 mph, and he simply could not match me. By the time I was out of the curve, I could smell warm rubber, lol, but she never shrieked and never let go, and wannabe racer boy was still trying to catch up way behind me. PERFECT, it amazed me. Another thing - all the complaining about road noise... Mine have never been loud, period. I don't know where people are getting that from either. Thirdly, losing traction on wet? Again, no idea. I live in Florida which rains like hell each afternoon in the summer, and I put these tires through everything from damp pavement to torrential downpours with hail. I did make them hydroplane once or twice but I forced it by waiting for a flooded spot and punching it. If they hadn't broken loose in that, I'd have been astonished. They behaved normally, just as I expected. I never had to back off my speed on curves on wet, never had them break free by surprise, nada. Again, I don't know why people are complaining. All I can figure is what I thought before - people don't know how to properly inflate their tires. For a stock Scion TC, 32 in the front and 29 in the rear. I keep mine a hair less than that and she's like crazy glue on the road. I pass up people all the time on curves and lots have tried SO hard to keep up with me and they just can't. I've been owned by a couple, but we're talking cars that were built to do just that, like Vettes and misc hotrods and such. The usual run of brats in their ghetto racers and adults in typical cars they think are so bad just cannot keep up with me in a curve.Oh, and my tread is still great. I am too hard on my cars but I still have a lot of tread left - these tires wear really well. I'm going to be REALLY sick of that leaking tire by the time it ever wears down, unless the sidewall damage takes it out before then.Update 7-2-2015: That punctured tire is still a leaking bitch and the tread is still so good that I'm considering just plain replacing it without trying to wear it down more. The fronts are now thinning out at the edges to the point that I really think it's time to rotate them to the back, but I shudder to think of spending all the time I'd need to wear those rears down to the same point, continuing to put up with that leaker. They're still all great tires, I still love them, but the signs are beginning to show that it's time for some serious considerations if I continue to drive like a crazy person. Case in point... I live in Florida, which is home to MANY crazy, aggressive drivers. My problem is that I don't take well to challenges. Someone passes me (or tries) at a good clip and now I want to humiliate them, so the contest begins. This is exactly what happened last week. This guy in a compact sedan was coming up on my ass really quickly (I estimate he was doing 70+ in a 45) and I didn't like it so I kept ahead of him. It was hard work - we hit the usually "Valley of Death" curves and at times I was doing 85+ to stay ahead of him. The unnerving part was that as I hit the tighter parts, the car started to feel a little floaty, a bit loose. Not much, just a bit... but I'm sure that's just exactly the sensation one feels just before they let go and you're in a slide or a spin. At 85 MPH, I don't wanna see how that would play out. Maybe the car would do as I hope and expect and just weave a bit with some shrieking, but at that speed in a curve I don't wanna know how wrong I might be. I like that car and I don't wanna mess it up. Anyway, I won the little contest but only just. He kept climbing on me in those curves, just that litttle itty bit, and I didn't feel comfortable pushing it any harder. I stayed just ahead and made up in the straights, and then he very comically got himself cut off by bad descisions. I backed wayyyy off my speed, made it to the next red light way ahead of him, and let my nerves come down and was relieved to see him turn off onto the cross street. That was too much, too hard, too risky feeling. My dad would have glared at me and told me "It's not a race car!" and he'd have been right. Anyway, summary! These tires are very, very good again as long as you play the air pressures right and they're not too worn down for what you're trying to do. Drive them like a sissy and they'll last ages. Drive them like a smart maniac and they will respond nicely. They've already treated me FAR better than I ever deserved. When the time comes to replace those fronts, I'll be happy to do it with two more new ones. Oh, and some more or less quality info... my tread depth on the rears (never rotated) is only slightly less than when they were new, maybe a 16th of an inch less. The fronts have worn by maybe slightly more than half in the centers, and are coming down hard at the edges, maybe a 16th of an inch remaining there. I think I could have worn them a lot more evenly if I'd kept the pressures a touch higher, but I liked the way they gripped and I perhaps was a bit lazy in keeping up with the inflation. They do slowly come down - whether due to micro punctures or the valves I don't know - so they need to be checked every so often if you want to be serious about handling and wear. Just for wear alone its a very good idea to take pressure seriously because that's how you'll max their lifespan out. Too little pressure and the edges will wear out first but they'll stick to the road like Gorilla Glue, too much and the centers will wear out first and your handling will be HORRIBLE. I drive like an idiot and I've never had a blowout, even when my pressure turned out to be badly low and I didn't realize it. It's more a concern of traction and lifespan providing you're not down to like 20lbs or less, but I strongly recommend never letting them fall below 25lbs and never inflating above 32, depending on the vehicle of course.This will likely be my last edit unless I have some kind of tragedy like a blowout or whatever. I've put these tires through hell you wouldn't believe unless you saw me do it, and they've been very good to me. Raising the review to 5 stars and so it will stay unless like I say, I get a failure that can't be explained easily by wear, internal damage or outright stupidity on my part. I'm happy to rate them this high, they earned it already.Rick NR417

...is that you either write them upfront or forget to ever do it. :) I bought these (215/45/R17) to replace a set of Continentals on my 2014 Elantra GT. I was surprised that these budget tires are quieter and more comfortable than the "brand name" were.I've put over 1000 miles on the Federals thus far and still like them. Will I be as happy 2 or 3 years from now? Hard to say, but as I mentioned, I won't remember to get on Amazon and write a bad review if my tires annoy me in 2023.

Great tires for the price. The sidewalls are a bit on the soft side but that makes them very comfortable. The only downside being that the initial turn in is not as "sharp."They grip very well. I'm able to launch at 4500RPM in my FRS with no wheel spin, and other than leaning in a bit more due to the soft sidewall they hold the road well in turns.Overall they are a great touring tire. Comfortable for long trips with enough grip to have some fun in the twisties.

Good tires for the price if you just want tires for a street car that doesn’t make over ~250 horsepower. If you do make more power than that or track your car, these tires will not grip and become a limiting factor!

I love them! Ride feels a little different but I know it's because it's different rubber and thread. Grips very well and turns feel on contact, no screech on fast corners (street) and definitely gives a cloud on the O's if you know what I mean lol will comeback for an updated review on the wear

Sticky tires for sure. Excellent grip. Used for autocross. Had excellent traction for the size and weight of VW Beetle. 240 treadwear is sticky. Will definitely revisit for next set of tires.

I'm really happy that I bought these tires! They are way cheaper than at the car shop, there they were going to charge me 600$ for 4 new tires that were this size . Instead I went online did some shopping and saved ;DThe only downside is that they are noise when driving or then again it might just be my car.Also they charged me 120 for balance rotataion/alignment and to put all 4 tires onUpside is that they got here a day earlier than expected and that they run smooth I highly recommend buying them

They are a great bang for your buck. Pretty noisey But had them on for 7k miles so far & been great to me. By all means there are definitely better tires out there but if you just need some normal tires that you are going to stretch or go low on and you don’t want to wear out good ones then go for these