Run flats or ?

C6 is notorious for inside edge front tire wear. And unless we look, it can get downright dangerous. Point in case. Three years ago I noticed a slight rhythmic shake in my steering wheel Just before I was headed down into Wyoming for a week's run. Tires looked fine from a walk-a-round look but thinking I might have thrown a balance weight, I took it car to my local go-to shop and was pretty shocked to see a beveled edge and exposed cords on the inside edge of both tires. There was 30,000 k on the original F1 tires and the fronts still had 6/32 tread depth everywhere else. Since I don't track my cars, and two new tires later, I had him back off a hair on the negative camber (which is supposed to help avoid that edge wear). Went on my 5000 km run and noticed no difference in steering or handling whatsoever. Sold the car shortly after so don't know if it helped tire wear or not. They also warn not to back off the camber too far or it can cause other problems.
 
Wide Ovals by Firestone are a fantastic run flat I had on my 05 Z51. You could not hear them and the handling was terrific. I don't advise moving to a nonrun flat as your suspension is designed for the stiffer sidewall and your high speed handling will deteriorate without the run flats. Believe me when I tell you this because I went to non run flats on my Beemer daily driver and really noticed it. It didn't ride on rails like it used to. But if you're just tooling around town at lower speeds you'll probably not notice a difference. The Goodyear run flats and Bridgestone I don't recommend.
 
My PSS are the non run flat version and I have been very happy with them. I've read that they are questionable as far as traction is concerned in low temps, but I don't intend to ever take my car out of the garage in such weather anyways. I've only had them on the car for one season now, but so far I can't say anything bad about them. Traction and handling with them are leaps and bounds better than the Eagle F1's that were on the car before. :ohoh:
 
Supposedly the PSS and the PSS ZP are exactly the same tire compound. The diff is the ZP sidewalls. And yes... they are questionable for traction in the low temps. I was unavoidably delayed getting my fall oil change and took mine to Town in a morning about 5 degrees C. The tires broke free quite a bit easier than in warm weather, Nothing that troubled me as I had already researched it and didn't try to corner up in the high G's and was testing it a bit anyway. Yes. They are far better than the F1 for performance. I'm not familiar with the PS2 tires Paul but unless you never drive in the cold and always winter your car in a heated garage, I would recommend staying away from the Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2. They are a great warm weather track tire but they are also the tire that has the cracking problem in freezing weather. They were the stock tire on the 2015 Z06 but now the stock tire is the PSS ZP. The Cup 2 is an option only.
 
Michelin also has a new Pilot Sport A/S 3 that is suppose to be a great wet or colder weather performance tire as well. Wasn't available for the 19/20 inch combo or as a run flat last time I looked but that may have changed.
 
More spread in the price than I was told but whatever. That's a lot of coin. I guess it's whatever you're comfortable with. If i wasn't running PSS ZP tires though I would definitely have a plug kit and a compressor and hope that got me back on the road. The damage a tow truck can do to your Corvette in a very short time far outweighs the security cost of a ZP tire. JMO.
 
I'm about to upgrade my rubber to a larger size and without going into the long drawn out details. I went through a lot of info and spoke with friends who own tire businesses. I will be going with Pilot Super Sports. There are other good alternatives out there that are less money but it all depends on what you want to do with the car and how hard you want to play with it. Some will notice a difference in tire and others won't depending on their driving style and what they demand from the car and tire.

Best info I can pass on is this Kal tire will beat anybody's price by 5% and I really whittled down the price on my tires by a lot. Send me a PM and I'll send you the link to the shop who came out on top for me on my upgraded sizes ( 345 & 285). I took a screen photo of the tires and prices with my phone ( date showing in lower monitor corner). I will now use that at Kal tire to beat the lowest price I found. Prices for my 345's started in the $670.00 range at the first few shops I called. The 285's in the $400.00 range. I got that down to$549.00 and $366. Then toss on the Kal tire price match 5% and I'm down nicely from where things started.

If you are looking to save a few bucks I have a set of new 275/35ZR18 high end Bridgestones that are on the front of my car. I will be selling them when I grab my new tires. Have dealer installed bill for them as well shows 2000km since install. Also have a set of the 325 Goodyear F1's on the rear. Installed at the same time. Both still have the little rubber numbs on them. I will do a really good price on them. Buy them as a pair or set if you like. I will be pushing the car some and wanted to upsize, and have a matching set front to back.

P.S. Toss in a road force balance vs a regular balance. No matter how good they say their machine is... road force is by far the best way to go. No comparison between the best tire machines and the best road force tire machines like a good Hunter. Money WELL spent. Can make a set of tires feel night and day different.
 
Ahh NB, hadn't looked at your location. Dealerships and good quality tire shops tend to have the road force machines. You should still be able to find somebody out your way. The machine basically exerts pressure with a roller to mimic full road load on the tire and gathers data. They rotate the tire on the rim to eliminate high spots, matching it to the rims low spot and so on. Was night and day when I first did it. A set of new tires I had bought just weren't as smooth as I would have liked even though they were in balance. I had heard of road force balancing but never bothered a buddy's shop had a Hunter and said he would toss them on. Results were fantastic. This video explains it well but not fully. he starts to mention side wall changes but doesn't follow it through. However the full explanation is not really needed. A Google search will reveal more details.

 
No problem. Balance is just one aspect of getting a good ride. Our wheels are never perfectly round and neither is a tire. Matching high to low spots and accounting for tread and assembly defects helps a ton. A road force balance helps with these other factors. Often reduces the amount of balance weight needed. By adjusting for the imperfections in wheel and tire we reduce the amount of vibration etc due to factors other than just balance. It will also show you if the tire has any belt shift defects etc that a regular balancer will often miss. Manufacturers actually have a spec for the amount of force a tire is allowed to exert before they call it defective. I think it was around 24-26lbs of force for a passenger car tire off the top of my head. In the video he mentions 18lbs of road force was measured and the machine does the calculations and tells him where to re-position the tire to get that force down to 8lbs. The tire and rim assembly putting out 18 pounds vs 8lbs would be quite noticeable to a keen driver . Especially at higher speeds. I was not that bad when first balanced but the road force was like another set of tires, especially over 120kph...if I actually went that fast lol. Here is some good info right from Hunter. Hunter GSP9700 Wheel vibration Control System solves wheel vibration and tire pull problems that balancers and aligners can't fix
 
A lot of the articles etc seem to not go the extra bit to explain some of the other aspects of how the tire causes the transmission of force that can make it feel like it's out of balance. In an easy to understand term, a tire's sidewall is like a spring. The problem is that tire stiffness varies as it rotates -- meaning some areas of a given tire's side wall are stiffer or softer than others. So going down the road, a perfectly balanced tire can still have vibration caused by this sidewall stiffness variation ( as well as other factor like highs and lows we mentioned earlier). The Hunter machine can detect this and help the operator compensate for it. Smooth safe motoring whichever tires you pic guys.
 
:):)
Rruuff Day said:
If I remember correctly Tim, your F1's were the customized models... You know... The ones with all the tread burned off.... :rofl:

hqdefault.jpg
Click to expand...
New hybrid corvette, burns fuel and rubber :)
 
  • Like
Reactions: Movie Muscle and Tinman
10Fore said:
I'm in the same boat.
I drive a 2011 Grand Sport Coupe.
My fronts will need of replacing soon but my rears still have lots of life.
The car has MSS run flats right now.
At one point this winter I was ready to go with Super Sports (Non run flat) all around.
Because the rears are still good my other option would be fronts only MSS in run flats.
The car is in storage for another 6 weeks or so I have some time to decide.
Click to expand...


Order as soon as possible, availability is always low and dont forget in may or june, they are already producing winter tires so for many company, when its b/o it means next year unless they have left over production time and enough orders.
 
Old Thread: Hello . There have been no replies in this thread for 100 days.
Content in this thread may no longer be relevant.
Perhaps it would be better to start a new thread instead.

Similar threads

Users who are viewing this thread

Total: 1 (members: 0, guests: 1)
Top Bottom