I was so impressed by Stan’s tires that I requested the Sportracs for the coupe.
@David Stroud IM Roadster D who did you finally buy those from David\?
edsnova posted:DannyP posted:I'm going with Stan on this one. I've got H rated Pirelli touring tires size 185/65/15 F and 205/60/15 R.
The sizes are perfect. No need to go 195 or 185 in the back. If you've got the room in back, use the wider ones. It's smart to have wider in the back with all that weight bias. Also it does say Speedster on the side, right?
However, they don't stick as well as they should. How do I know? Stan and I played follow me/follow you down in the Smokies. I don't think Stan ever slid. I slid at almost every corner. Mind you, we were at or over 10/10ths and above the legal limit constantly. I find myself wondering exactly how much faster I could go with these, especially at autocross or track use. But mostly wondering how much faster on those mountain roads........
I have a theory about that....
And? Mind you, I was threshold braking into the corners, and sometimes sliding there. Sometimes at the apex, but mostly on the exit when the power was all in.
Ray, David said Quattro Tire in Montreal.
Lane, did your ever run your Vred Sprint Classics in the mountains? Just curious.
Yes, although I am not a good enough driver to say the tires are great or merely good. I did have one understandable tail wag when I had no choice but to lift. Overall I don’t think they were as sticky as the Goodyear Eagles I started with, but they were good tires.
If a guy would go with 16” wheels, there would be a lot more choices in good tires. As it stands, quite nearly everything in 15” is an all-season tire.
Even 16” good rubber is getting scarce, but in 15” the choices thin out dramatically. If Vredestein drops the Sportrac in the sizes we’d need, that leaves very, very little to choose from.
Stan, I think that Vredestein will continue to make a small performance tire because of the European market. Just getting them stateside is always a concern. I'll probably run the Vintage rep-popped Pirelli CN36 with Modern compounds on the Alfa Giulia.
A separate thread with available 15” tires (in applicable sizes) would be a great resource to keep current.
Does anyone have any experience with Vredestein's Quatrac 5? This is an all-season tire, but it's Tire Rack's highest rated all-season tire (out of 53 tires), with very high scores for both wet and dry grip. The wear rating is a little low for an all-season, which probably means the compound is a little on the soft (and grippy) side.
It seems to be widely available in a lot of sizes and pretty reasonably priced.
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No idea, Mitch-- but after trying a summer tire (after years of being harangued by every car magazine on the rack), I'm not going back to all-season tires on a sporting car unless I have to.
One thing I did not like about the Sportrac 5s was the amount of weight they took to balance. They took a LOT of weight. I'm not sure how much of that was the handmade wheels, and how much of it was the tires, but balancing them was no easy proposition.
Were they out of round Stan? If your wheel is true maybe you needed to contact the manufacturer sometimes tires are out of round and require a Hunter Roadforce unit to identify the issue then the manuf makes it good. In any case rotating the tire around the wheel helps sometimes.
I like Michelin tires but they run 2-3x what a Hankook/Nankang/Kumho tire costs. They are quite true so easy to balance. I just don't put enough miles on my cars to warrant the extra cost. My side wall crack with age before the tread is worm.
edsnova posted:
Ed, I don't agree. I had an overall less amount of traction. It wasn't just the rear end, nor was it just on corners. Also, I have limiting straps on my swing axles that limit "jacking" to a few degrees.
It was the lack of sticky.
Stan Galat posted:If a guy would go with 16” wheels, there would be a lot more choices in good tires. As it stands, quite nearly everything in 15” is an all-season tire.
Even 16” good rubber is getting scarce, but in 15” the choices thin out dramatically. If Vredestein drops the Sportrac in the sizes we’d need, that leaves very, very little to choose from.
Stan: I have 16" wheels on my IM6, and so far, I've seen a good variety of tires in that size. 15" wheels are limited in terms of performance tires. I run Yokohama Advan Neo tires, 205/50R-16 front, and 225/50R 16 rear, and handling is great. I've never had the rear end break loose.
I've even thought of going to 17" wheels, but as of now, that's just a thought.
Meanwhile, in Australia...summer-compound tyres getting hella sticky
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Somewhere down under is a county road commissioner seething about the idiot driving through his tar repository.
Went to Ireland this past summer - the roads are designed for lots of rain and freezing but not for heat. It was so hot this last summer that roads were "melting" with the tar oozing up. You could see freshly applied stones on most of the roads. Not great for car handling but I was driving 6 speed manual diesel Skoda.
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