Seize the storm

Driving home yesterday from the Twin Cities, we caught some really pretty cloud waves in the sky.

I had the awesome privilege to run up to St. Paul, MN and see Shawn perform at Bethel University.  Let me start by completely squashing the rumor that Shawn’s shows aren’t very good.  If you truly like his music, you’ll love his concerts.

Quality of Music

Listening to Shawn perform live and on cd is almost exactly the same.  He’s just as good and most likely better than he is on cd.  After every song all I could say was, “Wow.”  He plays with a couple different guitars and I believe he does some different style tuning for each song to make it easier to play.  I can’t say enough though how much I enjoyed the concert - he did a wonderful job and his music really speaks to my soul.  After I ordered my ticket for the concert, I dusted off Ripen and now I love it!  It just took some time of listening to it, reading into the words, etc.  So I went back and re-rated the review and up’ed the stars to 4/5.

Personality

Shawn seems like a very quiet individual.  I don’t know the average size of the crowds he’s performed for.  The Hall he played in at Bethel was packed.  He didn’t talk too much but when he did, he was very simple and to the point.  There was an interesting “tick” that he had when he talked, he tended to fiddle with the tuners and capo on his guitar.  Was this a nervous tick?  I’m not sure.  It was for sure that he was having a lot of fun with his band though.  They had some things happen that they snickered about to each other.  So there was some sense of comfort.

Stage Appearance

This will come out more harsh than it really is - he’s not very stage/crowd friendly.  He didn’t really get the crowd going to sing along with his songs (unless only a few in the crowd actually knew his songs).  He sings every song with his eyes closed and bare feet (at least for this concert).  He did do some beat-boxing and scat - which totally rocked, he’s really good at it!

Encore?

Don’t even think about it.  Shawn does a lot of songs and he says they’re now over-rated because now you have to do five encores to even be “cool”.  “So this is the last song of the night, thanks for coming!”

After the Show

I guess sometimes Shawn doesn’t come back to the merchandise booth after the show.  This was one of those times unfortunately :(  I try and get musicians whom I really admire and really inspire me to sign a guitar given to me by my wife (then girlfriend) on our first Christmas together.  So far, I just have Chris Tomlin but was really looking forward to adding a Shawny Mac sig.  Oh well, hopefully he can get down to SD soon.

Why the change?

Due to most likely cutting corners on the part of some tire place, my wife had all the wrong size tires on her car (it was that way when we bought it).  A Honda Civic LX Sedan must have 185/70R14 tires however 185/75R14 were what my wife was rolling around on.  Concerned about small differences on your tires?  5 on the middle number doesn’t seem like much but most tire experts recommend staying within a 30% boundary on this magic calculation about tire sizes.  That little difference (of five) causes that boundary to be at 33%.  Every tire place I have called and every person I have talked to state that the difference is really too close for comfort.  These differences can cause problems in transmission, struts, and gear ratios - plus the obvious that your speedometer will be off.  If any readers are tire experts and want to chip in their two cents, please feel free to register and leave your comments, they will totally be welcomed!

Popularity of Comparison

I regularly get hits to my site from people searching about the comparison between the Michelin HydroEdge and the Goodyear Assurance TripleTred.  So I give you the ultimate resource for your comparison.  As time goes by, I will use my website as a first-hand review of each of these tires.  The only variant of the TripleTred will be that more of the driving will be done by my wife.  I will do my best to link the posts together as I do not know when exactly I’ll have new reviews posted.

So let’s get down to business!

The HydroEdge so far…

I’m approaching my second oil change on the Escort since putting these tires on.  They’ve been wearing at a normal rate says the guy where I get my service done at.  I commented in my initial post of some weird shimmying - this has long since passed.  I haven’t noticed anything like this at all since that first day.

Pros - The water-channeling of course is the biggest positive.  Treadwear seems to be wearing well - it better be if it’s a 90,000 mile warranty tire.  I’d have to say the handling is pretty good - I have never lost traction while turning and haven’t sqwak’ed my tires very often which only happens once in a while because I drive a stick-shift and accidently let out the clutch too fast.

Cons - Rocks, rocks, rocks, no amount of picking can get all of the rocks out of the channels of the tires.  Even if you do spend the time to take the rocks out, the next time you drive it you’ll pick up more.  It doesn’t matter which channel - the center, the outs from center, or the side chutes; they all pick up rocks and pebbles.  This directly affects the amount of water that can be channeled and the efficiency that it is ejected.

Price - $112 a piece for 185/65R14

Pictures at zero miles…

Pictures at 6500 miles…

TripleTred

Their look is pretty cool.  The channels are shaped differently so I’m eager to find how this affects rocks getting into the channels.  I’m definitely not going to expect any miracles.  I probably won’t get the chance to test these on high amounts of water until next year.  Also, I can’t give any pros and cons yet because not enough time has been given to ascertain a good judgement.  You definitely can’t beat the fact that they are less expensive.

Price - $105 a piece for 185/70R14

Pictures at zero miles…

Penny Test History Comparison

 
                      HydroEdge                                                        TripleTred

Legend:

Black - Zero miles (Brand New)

Cyan - 6500 miles

General comments about these tires

Regarding water-channeling - this doesn’t give you the right to drive through the biggest puddles at a high rate of speed and expect it to channel every fluid ounce of water out of the way and give you a solid connection with the pavement.  It was designed to handle a maximum amount of water-channeling.  It was also designed to channel that maximum amount of water at a certain speed.  I wish I had these limits for you.  If I end up finding them, I’ll put them in here.  If you’re curious as to how I deduced this, it’s pretty much simple engineering and fluid dynamics.  Depending on how fast the tire is moving, it changes the angles of the channelers of water from the center.  If one were to design an “ultimate” tire, it would be that the channels change their angle depending on the speed of the tire and amount of water coming through.  So far, I know of no technology or material that can accomplish this.  If you hit a puddle that exceeds the maximum amount of water that can be channeled away from the tire, you will lose a little speed.  The tires are doing their job but you are pushing them too hard.  At some point, it becomes like you trying to fill your gas tank with an I.V. hose.  It just doesn’t have the capacity to channel water efficiently.

It does seem as though the TripleTred has a little bit more tread to begin with.  However, the initial treadwear is pretty fast and slows down after the first couple thousand miles.  My pictures may be off a bit - I don’t have a nice camera that I can manually focus in on the penny.  I’ve taken many pictures while attempting to get the penny in focus.  I don’t think anyone really cares about how long the tread lasts - if it’s in the warranty, then we don’t have to worry about it, right?  I will still continue to document this as I still think it’s an important issue.

Winter is coming and this will be the first time both sets of tires will experience winter conditions.  As soon as we get some wintry weather, I’ll be sure to get the cars out on the ice & snow and see how they handle.  A review will soon follow.

More about my “research” that I did.  I read through many reviews at TireRack and other tire sites around the internet.  Consumer Reports says that the TripleTred barely edges out the HydroEdge.  So the TripleTred is supposed to be the better tire.

One factor that was common with both tires in reviews was the noise.  I don’t know exactly how I’ll do it, but I’d like to do some testing on the highway of the tires at different speeds and measure decibel levels, both inside and outside of the car.

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