Picking up my 06 STI Today, never owned a manual - any tips?

Humor me, what tires do you currently have on your WRX?

I don't have RE-070 and don't plan to have them ever. The only good reviews I could find is from WRX owners who dumped RE92, installed 070s and could not be happier. Well, duh, just about anything would be an improvement over RE92s. Google for "070 comparison test" and post a link here. Could not find any tire comparo? Me neither. That's the tire that is made by Bridgestone specifically for STI. Why they had to do a one off tire just for STI is totally beyond me. Maybe some hand greasing was happening or maybe Bridgestone provided some very good lay for the FHI brass. The mysteries of corporate deals are well above my reach. Maybe CompUser can explain in his endless wisdom why Mitsubishi rolled the dough over to Yokohama for a proven max perf tire and FHI pinched a few pennies. I'm not saying that doing 40 in 4th reflects particularly well on the skills of the OP, but with ADVANs possibly another tree further down the apex would've sacrificed itself to stop his sti. If there were other trees. I also get an impression that Bridgestone ships the shittiest tires in its bin to the OEMs.

You'll note that I specified when not under power. Many many many people hit the ditch because they think AWD is some magic traction aid in all situations. Truth be told, AWD makes no difference under braking or coasting.

I'm not sure. It almost sounds like he needs a less capable car to learn self control in first.

It's very common advice in the world of motorcycles, and I think it applies to performance cars too.

(snip)

Ah, so you've never actually tried them. Okay. Are you trolling?

(snip)

(snip)

A couple of minutes playing with Google found me a hundred reviews on tirerack.com, many of which mention comparison with other tires the owner's had, e.g., "Absolutely much better than S-03s or Pilot Sports." "Driven AVS Sports and Kumho 712s on WRX and Audi S4.. would definitely not pick either of those over this tire." etc.

I also found some tire comparison threads on NASIOC - e.g. "I personally loved the RE070 and rate them close to SO3's"

I also found people comparing them with other tires on other sites, such as at

Maybe you just need to learn how to use Google?

-- Mark

I believe it does make a difference under compression braking. I don't have any subjective proof, but early-on I noticed that the Subaru had a nice grippy feel during moderate compression braking that my 2-wheel drive cars never had.

Not really. I don't test tires for living. But I do have sufficient second hand data to make the conclusion I made. See below.

Maybe I should excercise restraint and post from home so that I can waste more time googling. Ecsta 712 is uhp. RE-070 is max perf tire. Comparison is invalid.

712 grip is on par with ASX with slightly better handling. Same for AVS. As for S-03s I think they closed next to the bottom of the pack in the 15 tire C&D comparo whereas Advans finished in the top 5. S-03 is a dated design. It should probably be downgraded to summer uhp category by now.

Sumitomo HTRZ II 17"s now. Previously Yokohoma AVS ES 100 17"s, with Bridgestone RE-92 16"s before them.

What kind of tires do you have on your WRX or STi? Ah, that's right...you don't have one.

Hmmm...what kind were on the one you sat in, at the car show?

LOL

Wow. Wonderful set. Enjoy.

Not only I don't have STI, but I won't buy it. Ever. Unless it goes thru a major redesign and becomes competitive with Evo. Or Evo departs along with Mitsu. Which is a possibility considering how Mitsu fares in the US. For the reason I have explained in this and preious missives. For WRX life is simpler for FHI because they don't have major direct competitor and lots of people are into muscle cars. I'm writing mostly for the benefit of FHI and Bridgestone since you obviously are non comprehende of the problems outlined. Next time Evo owners talk shit about your ride have your ears peeled. They might be onto something.

For someone who's bee scattergunning automotive newsgroup, Body Roll actually wants more.

Did you get your wish for alt.autos.mazda there guy?

Are you practicing you reporting skills so that you can be a new Betard?

A custom tire is not "penny pinching."

If it was dry pavement, I doubt it.

I find them excellent, and I bought another set when the first ones wore out. They are noisy, but awesome grip in the dry, not bad in the wet and no good below 4C

Maybe you should just post about subjects that you have first hand knowledge of

That got me thinking for a while, but ok, I'll bite. I'm not sure where I can stick the 140 figure.

140 of what? That is dry grip? Does it mean that the tire just does not last? Hey, there is RE-92 that 1) Does not grip 2) Does not last 3) Cost a lot It probably got low treadwear rating too. I expect to get 25-30k miles of them on my OBS. Good riddance.

I deeply care about wet grip of max performance tires (and turn in response, because if I did not uhp all seasons would be no brainer). Understandbly the snow grip is close to 0. That is not what max perf tires are designed to have anyway.

What is sorely needed for further progress in decent tire sales is an overhaul of the traction ratings by the tire industry. What I want to know is:

1) Dry traction 2) Wet traction 3) Snow traction Say you mount a set of tires to measure on G35, 325i or IS250 (basically anything with a decent (firm) suspension) and measure what you can get on a skipad. For example 1.0g/.82g/.01g is useful to me because I know that it's better than 1.02g/.67g/.02g on wet. Ice traction would be nice to know but I'm not sure how many companies have an ice skipad to test the grip on ice.

Mind you the difference in wet grip in C&D test was between .67 (who pulled that? KD?) and .82 (F1 GS-D3). Since 070 was not in the test your guess is as good as mine regarding wet performance. Being a Bridgestone I'd expect it to be pretty good, closer to .82 than .67 But how could anyone be sure? There is absolutely no transparency in the tire performance ratings.

Is treadwear index useful to you? Would f1 gs d3 last as long on a tire shredder like evo/sti as on econo car like basic Impreza? Probably not. Not that I care.

Then there are ratings on tirerack. Not sure where people pull the numbers from 0-10. Probably out of their posterior. What would've been useful (if the tire companies won't budge and overhaul the traction & treadwear ratings) is a peer 2 peer comparison of two tires. You rate

1. Dry grip of tire A vs. tire B
2. Wet grip of tire A vs. tire B
3. Snow grip of tire A vs. tire B

That may help to kill the 80000 mile warranty garbage for people who matter.

Any CS students want a programming/web design project? All I care about are max perf tires and uhp all seasons. I don't think there is a need to compare the high performance garbage like RE-92s.

A treadwear rating is 140 means that whatever the baseline of "100" is for your locality's tire ratings, you can expect to get 1.4 times that. Up here, that means I have an expected lifetime of 14,000 km. That's puny. A normal AS tire has a treadwear up in the 400s (40,000 km.)

In the RE-070's case, low treadwear really does mean "basically slicks." They're so soft that they wear down much more quickly than normal tires do. Softness, in this case, translates to "insane dry grip." Plus, it basically has no tread pattern on it. It's literally just one big, flat tire with a couple of lines through it.

Who's 'KD'?

It is. It tells me how soft my tire is and what I can expect if I autocross to work every morning. Which I don't.

Oh, what low standards we have these days that we think we need a CS undergrad to design a website. I remember when the S in CS meant just that to Joe Q. Public.

Depends on the max perf tire. Some are designed for the wet and some for the dry

Depends on the tire. There are max performance snow tires and gravel tires as well

OK. Now you have three numbers that few understand rather than one.

And set the expectation that they will grip at the same level with an SUV.

Depends on how you drive it. I got 40,000 KM (24,000 miles) out of the OEM RE070s.

Lots of tire review places that already do it. Why would the tire companies need to overhaul their ratings? The They already have treadwear, temp and load ratings that describe the behaviour of the tire. It is more a matter of educating oneself on what that stuff means. All the info you need is already on the tire.

Why would a CS student want to do a website? If they are interested in this stuff, they probably already know it. And they sure don't need the practice building a website.

What I meant was I deeply care about wet grip of max performance summer tires. Proofreading is important :-(

Right.

That's exactly the main point of my post. I have no idea what I'm supposed to do with 140 treadwear AA traction. So you have one 140/AA that have a wet grip to a tune of .67g and another AA/140 that grips at .82g when it's wet. It's a large enough spread for me to chose f1 gs d3 instead of king of dry, don't you think???

You mean there are SUV tires that actually offer some grip under some conditions? What are they?

Really???? How does RE-070 compare to Advan Neova on wet pavement? You see a lot of reviews for performance winter tires with any numbers quantifying the grip? The three at a time tests on tirerack are useful but it takes forever to dig thru all of them. C&D did an awesome 15 tire comparo a while ago but I haven't seen anything like that for uhp all season tires or winter tires.

In very rough terms maybe. But it's up to the tire maker to put AA rating on the tire that might be marked by traction A by another manufacturer or artificially place uhp tire (RE 950 for example) into hp category next to crapenza

92 (Do I hear anyone snickering?). To punch below weight so to speak.

Ok. I'll refrase: any volunteers hungry for that kind of work?

Ok. According to your theory RE-92 with rating 160 A A in 205/55 HR16 size (apparently it varies depending on size from 160 thru 360!!!!!) offers insane dry grip?

160 is not much higher than 140, don't you think? Ecsta ASX (which cost about 1/2 of RE-92 btw) has a rating of 420 A A or AA A. 420 is much higher than 160 so you are saying it grips worse than RE-92? No bloody way. The only place where 92s outperform ASX is maybe snow. I haven't driven the same car with 92s and ASXes on snow to tell which one is better.

Links to the spec pages:

Looks like the traction part of the UTQG was developed in stone ages. AA is above .54g? .41 on aspahalt? Wow!!! That's fine graining! Maybe the turanza customers can appreciate that fine index.

Tire rack gives reviews as do a number of palces on wet versus dry grip

140 treadwear tells you how soft the tire is, and how long it will last. A treadwear of 280 would last twice as long under identical conditions, but the compound is harder. That means it will never develop the same grip as a 140 for the same tread pattern, but its grip also won't vary as much with temperature.

What difference would it make? A number is just a number. It will be no more meaningful than the UTQG is now. You can take the treadwear (which gives the softness of the compound) and the contact patch size (available from the manufacturer) and the percentage of the tread that is in contact with the road (not too hard to figure out by looking at the tire) and get the figures for how much water the tire can displace (also available as part of the tire spec) and you can calculate it roughly yourself.

Well, they test it. But the test is standardized. Tires manufacturers have their own set of standard processes for producing, testing and labelling tires.