| Re: Driving Impressions today |
Subject: Re: Driving Impressions today by Josh on 2008/12/8 23:02:14 JSUP asked a tire question, which is far more germane to everyone's car than most things. Every car on this board has tires on it. Every person on this board has bought tires at one time or another. I think that is reason for the number of responses. JSUP, as far as traction is concerned, I think you need to get a little direction and make some choices before anyone can legitimately recommend a tire for you. First, there is no super tire that will do it all. There is no tire that will yield stellar straight line traction, great all weather performance, handle the curves, and last a long time. The tire isn't out there. You need to decide how you are going to use the car, and choose a tire based on that. If you need severe multiple functions from the tire, you need 2 sets of tires. Also, decide on the braking system you plan to use. You keep bouncing around on wheel size, and that will affect your tire options. Once you have the brake choice made, and hence the wheel size determined, then move on to tire selection. Right now, all of us are wasting our time giving you recommendations because no one, not even you, knows what size wheel you are going to use. I don't think you need a brake that won't fit under a 17 inch wheel. You said you mostly street drive the car, and it being an automatic I doubt you'll be storming a road course any time soon, so I really don't see the need for a brake that won't clear a 17 inch wheel, especially in the back. What size wheels are on the car now? I saw you mention something about 16's? You mentioned that needing to upgrade the brakes was a necessity now. I assume you mean that because the car now has more power, you want better brakes. While good in theory, once you have the ability to lock the tires (or engage the ABS) at any given speed, better and more powerful brakes won't help in a panic stop situation. Repeated stops will be better because the brakes will be better able to deal with the heat build up, but stopping distances won't decrease dramatically, if at all. Changing wheel size, (going to a 17/18 etc...) will not affect your speedometer as you implied, as long as you use the correct size tire the total diameter of the wheel/tire package should stay close enough to stock to leave the speedometer largely unaffected. This is how I ASSume you plan to use the car, so here is my recommendation on tires: You will street drive the car, on nice days, less than 3,000 miles a year. It should not see rain, but it is possible. You will drag race the car a handful of times through out the year. You will not auto cross or road race the car. You are using a stock width (9.5 inch), 17 inch, rear wheel. You intend to stay with the automatic and semi-aggressive stall converter. If all that is true, I would recommend a 275/40-17 Mickey Thompson ET street radial. Of the drag radials, it will have the most straight line traction. Wet performance is sub-par compared to a conventional street tire, however the tires will get you home with no drama if it does start to rain and you keep your head on straight. The difference between hot and cold traction is considerable, so you'll need to drive the car far enough to warm the tires, or do some kind of burnout to warm them up to see the best traction. Like all drag radials, they recover poorly once traction is lost. If they start to spin, they will not bite down without lifting the throttle. This is main difference between a drag radial like this and the bias ply tire options out there, in my opinion. An ET street, as opposed to the ET street radial, will recover traction MUCH better than the radial. However, the ET street will put you on the side of the road if it rains, and the cornering ability is next to nothing. I made a ton of assumptions to get to that recommendation, so it could be right on the money or off in left field, I don't really know. No one knows until we figure out what you want the tire to do, what size options are available, etc... |
