Review: Uniroyal Rainsport 2s

[Eeyore]

Hi All,

For the past two years and on two cars I have run the same set of 195/50/15 Uniroyal Rainsport 2s. These were bought for about £45 per corner from Camskill. At the time these were considered to be a good 306 tyre and thrown in the category of budget performance.

My experience of these on a 1.8 XS on track was that the sidewalls are very flexible and are easily sucked under the tyre. They were fantastically predictable in the fact that the entire car would slide sideways in a controllable manner.

On a rallye with the heavier gti engine the lack of grip was concerning and there was a lot of understeer. They could easily be spun up. Wear on the sides was very obvious but with plenty of tread left in the centre and inside.

My experience of these tyres in this time has been that they are a good road tyre but not a performance tyre. This is reflected in the price. They are great value and deliver a lot for the price point but I wouldnt recommend them for any track work. Tread pattern looks cool though!

[Poodle]

I would add that the rainsports wear rather quickly compared to better brands when driven hard, although that is only to be expected considering they are a budget tyre with reasonable amounts of grip. I had a set on my 205 and went through them in a little under 10k miles. While the 205 is tuned it isn't as quick as a stage 1 306 hdi, for example, and it's a lot lighter, so i expected to get much better mileage from the tyres.

[Eeyore]

Yes agree with poodle. The edges wear down quickly no doubt due to the flexi sidewalls.

[r3k1355]

The story is the same with the later Rainsport 3's, I've found sticking an extra 5-10psi in over normal helps quite abit.
Still if you're going to be doing lots of track work you need to be looking elsewhere for tyres.

[gti_jim]

im yet to test out rainsport 3s on my 306 rallye. i went for the XL as they have a stiffer sidewall. i run rainsport 2 on my old 306 hdi for 2 years and absolutely loved them

[Joep83]

I have the RainSport 3 XL fitted on my Challengers, Rinjani's, and Cyclones. I really like those tires under my GTi6.

In wet conditions they still stick to the road!