Talk:Treadwear rating

Help! How do I change the name of this entry. from "Rating" to "Grade"? I was researching the article, and discovered that I started the article using the wrong term Evenprime 23:23, 24 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Feel free to be bold and make the move yourself, if it's uncontroversial, or take to WP:RM if it is. -Patstuarttalk 00:28, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

Proposed Changes
There are quite a few things about this article that bother me. Rather than make the change "I" think are needed, then discuss (argue!) whether they are warranted, I'm going to post them here first and see if anyone comments.

1) Like Evenprime, I think the title needs to be "Treadwear Grade".  While many folks refer to this as a "rating", the G in UTQG is "Grade" and I think the terminology ought to be consistent.

2) "....The treadwear grade describes how long the tire manufacturer expects the tire to last. A Course Monitoring Tire (the standard tire that a test tire will be compared to) has a rating of "100". If a manufacturer assigns a treadwear rating of 200 to a new tire, they are indicating that they expect the new tire to have a useful lifespan that is 200% of the life of a Course Monitoring Tire....."

I think this ought to say:

"The treadwear grade describes how a tire manufacturer views the wear of a given tire. In theory, this means that a tire with a 200 grade will wear twice as long as a tire with a 100 grade.  However, tire manufacturers are not under any obligation to grade a tire based on the test results, except to say that they can not overstate the grade.  This is enforced by NHTSA requiring documentation to justify any assignment of a grade on a tire.

Please note: As Course Monitoring Tires have changed, their treadwear grades have changed to numbers considerably higher than 100. As a result, it would be incorrect to say that a tire with a treadwear grade of 200 gets twice the life of the Course Monitoring Tire.

3) I want to change the "Limitations" section to:

Notice that the treadwear grade is a ratio and not a mileage. This is because there are a lot of factors that determine treadwear rates and most of them are a function of driving conditions and operating environment, and not the tire itself. As a result, reports tire wear vary considerably within the same tire line. The phrase "Your mileage may vary" applies here.

The assigning of UTQG grades is done solely by the tire manufacturer. In many cases, this has resulted in the UTQG grading system to be more of a marketing tool than was originally intended.

It is legal and permissible for a tire manufacturer to give a given tire a lower treadwear grade. For example: If the highest treadwear grade in a manufacturer's line up is 600, then a tire line with a lower treadwear test result might recieve a grade of 400, instead of the 480 it could possibly receive.

Also, it is common for tires whose treadwear grade is of little commercial value, such as "DOT" racing tires, to be assigned extremely low values - sometimes even zero.

4) I want to remove the section "Trends".  This seems to be more of an opinion, and is certainly unsupported.

5) I want to remove the section "Uses".  It also seems to be strictly an opinion, and unsupported, and the points raised are quite debateable.

References:

The last 2 reference links don't work. I propose deleting them. —Preceding unsigned comment added by CapriRacer (talk • contribs) 19:02, 30 September 2009 (UTC)