new shoes

RodneyWright · **Posted:** Tue Aug 04, 2015 10:30 am

ok tire nerds, I need some advice. I'm "sorta" considering some new tires for the NCAC. Considering the low grip of the current Z II and 2 years worth of abuse, I think new tires might be needed but I really hesitate to spring for these right now.

What would be my best bet for the mustang. I'm thinking either the Rival, not sure about the Rival S or the Z II's again. The mustang is 3500 lbs, but it does have camber. Tire wear across the tread is remarkably even considering the abuse...

I think I can easily go to a 295, but I've not found anything that wide in the popular choices. The new ventus R-S3 is about to come out in a 283x35 and they are relatively cheap. Thoughts on those?

Chad Culbertson · **Posted:** Tue Aug 04, 2015 11:13 am

RodneyWright wrote:

ok tire nerds, I need some advice. I'm "sorta" considering some new tires for the NCAC. Considering the low grip of the current Z II and 2 years worth of abuse, I think new tires might be needed but I really hesitate to spring for these right now.

What would be my best bet for the mustang. I'm thinking either the Rival, not sure about the Rival S or the Z II's again. The mustang is 3500 lbs, but it does have camber. Tire wear across the tread is remarkably even considering the abuse...

I think I can easily go to a 295, but I've not found anything that wide in the popular choices. The new ventus R-S3 is about to come out in a 283x35 and they are relatively cheap. Thoughts on those?

I haven't seen much in the way of anything bigger than 275/35 when looking for a 18" wheel. The new Bridgestone RE71R is available in 275 and people seem to love them, but not sure how they work on a big car.

I didn't know the RS3 was coming out in a 285, that will be good to know, i've been wanting to go 285 on the Camaro because it's somewhere in the 3800 lb range. I know for Camaros RS3s have been very popular so they must work fairly well on heavy cars, I don't hear much about the Rivals though.

I've found that for anything bigger than a 275 you seemingly have to go up in rim diameter, to 19's.

RodneyWright · **Posted:** Tue Aug 04, 2015 11:25 am

Chad, release date for the tires is Aug 6th, so 2 days away....

http://www.tirerack.com/tires/tires.jsp ... tab=Survey

Andrew Jonell · **Joined:** Mon Mar 23, 2009 6:43 pm **Posts:** 1350

The R-S3 V2 is a decent choice, but the RE71R and the Rival S have R comp-like grip (think A6). It's apples and oranges, but from the Miata crew:

Quote:

The new 200TW Rival-S and RE71R are faster than any 100TW R compound tires and likely faster wearing too. Only a little slower than R6's. Just got back from a SuperMiata and Miata Challenge weekend at Spring Mountain in NV, 3.14 mile config. Real eye opener. Took a few passengers out. A few were shocked when I told them we were on street tires. Yeah, 1.5g on street tires. Not a detailed or controlled test mind you, just doing some rough comparisons with a few controls. Same day, a good friend tested RE71R's against R6's that were .25" wider. I think the delta there was 1.5s, so closer to 1.1s on a typical 2.5mile circuit.

I don't know what NASA will do with them but for a short while, some enterprising PT/TT competitors can steal all the milkshakes.

This about 1.25hrs track time, 2350#, 160whp Miata, 3.14 mile road course, 75° ambient, 98° track temps

BriceJohnson · **Joined:** Thu Apr 13, 2006 7:33 am **Posts:** 2230

RE71R's are significantly better than the ZII star specs, having driven my car on both of them. The wear is considerably worse as well. I think your only real choices to be competitive are the RE71R and Rival S though from what I understand. The other ones just aren't there.

Danny Kao ran the RE71R's on his D street WRX. Not quite mustang large, but a pretty large car.

Matt McGrain · **Posted:** Tue Aug 04, 2015 12:16 pm

Splurge for the Bridgestones Rodney and don't look at the price. You won't regret it. Besides, you owe it to yourself for keeping the Bullitt as long as you have. :wink:

I've run ZIs, ZIIs, Rivals, and Hankooks and nothing compares.

RodneyWright · **Posted:** Tue Aug 04, 2015 12:52 pm

Matt McGrain wrote:

Splurge for the Bridgestones Rodney and don't look at the price. You won't regret it. Besides, you owe it to yourself for keeping the Bullitt as long as you have. :wink:

I've run ZIs, ZIIs, Rivals, and Hankooks and nothing compares.

THE most expensive tire in regard to my choices at $334 per from TireRack. Damn, that's a lot of money, but it is the right size at 285x35/18

BriceJohnson · **Joined:** Thu Apr 13, 2006 7:33 am **Posts:** 2230

Is the rival S cheaper? Its supposedly competitive, but I don't have personal experience with it. I like that its assymetric and not directional.

Chuck Branscomb · **Posted:** Tue Aug 04, 2015 2:50 pm

I agree with the others -- Rival S or the RE-71R. Either one will apparently wear a good bit faster than prior versions. That seems to be where the "street tire" class has evolved to: two tire choices, one perhaps better for a given weight/style of car, but either of them are required to even be close to competitive.

In 275/35-18 the RE-71R is a good bit cheaper than the Rival S and easier to obtain (that size S has been on backorder most of the year).

RodneyWright · **Posted:** Tue Aug 04, 2015 3:34 pm

I was looking at some of the specs of the tire options. One thing that grabbed my interest is the new R-S3 285 tire lists the diameter at 27.9" vs 25.6" for all the other tires options. THAT would be a great fix to my short gear problem.

Steven Carter · **Posted:** Tue Aug 04, 2015 4:04 pm

RE71R and don't look back.

I learned my lesson from Rivals. Currently I know of only one situation where Rivals were better (see GRM TW200 tire podcast), whereas everything else has supported the RE71R. Exception: Some of the AS/SS Corvettes are running a mixed brand in order to get optimal sizing on each end of the car. Not sure if that's happening in FS, though.

The new test data from TR show a decided performance advantage on their BMW 3series, even though they ultimately favored the Rival when accounting for ride quality, NVH etc. For autocross, if you care about NVH you are doing it wrong. 3 series is pretty close to Mustang, sizewise so it may translate reasonably well...at least from the perspective of my little car.

Very much disagree that they are on par with A6s, but are certainly a revolutionary step forward in tread compounding (as opposed to evolutionary in the RS3v2, ZII* etc). They do wear faster than before, but after 2500 miles and 60-ish runs I still have right around 6/32" tread. Most people get 120+ runs out of them unless they overdrive the tires. I know Dick Rasmussen runs them so I am sure he will chime in with his impressions if he sees this thread.

Edit: These new tires will require some setup tweaking to maximize its grip advantage. It has taken a few events for me, but I think I am getting it dialed in a bit closer each time.

Chuck Branscomb · **Posted:** Tue Aug 04, 2015 4:13 pm

RodneyWright wrote:

I was looking at some of the specs of the tire options. One thing that grabbed my interest is the new R-S3 285 tire lists the diameter at 27.9" vs 25.6" for all the other tires options. THAT would be a great fix to my short gear problem.

27.9 is waaaay off. It's 25.9 for the 285/35 and 25.6 for the 275/35 so only about a 1% difference between those two sizes. If you want to be competitive grip-wise, forget about the R-S3. FWIW on TR's dry autocross test, it was 29.70 versus 29.16 for the RE-71R, so on a 60 second course, you could possibly be giving up over 1 second by choosing them?

EDIT: From what I've read, the RE-71R is supposed to be very good at putting down power (longitudinal grip), and you will likely appreciate that part too.

Chuck Branscomb · **Posted:** Tue Aug 04, 2015 4:21 pm

FWIW, also I don't think the case is closed yet on the Rival S. At the Wilmington Pro Solo this past weekend, John Laughlin sewed up F-street in a 2011 M3 running the RE-71R (he had to use 265/35-18s as he is waiting on the 275s to arrive), and an E46 M3 was 0.9 behind him running BFG (which I assume is the Rival S) beating Jadrice by 0.18 on RE-71R and in a 2015 Mustang. BFG seems to have had supply issues all year with the 275s. A-street seems to favor the Rival S at the time being as both 1st and 2nd place were running them at this event.

Chuck Branscomb · **Posted:** Tue Aug 04, 2015 8:00 pm

Scratch the above comment on the recent Pro solo -- the 2nd place car in F-street was on the RE-71R not the Rival S. The results pdf is incorrect on tires.

Matt McGrain · **Posted:** Tue Aug 04, 2015 8:35 pm

Agreed on longitudinal grip. Launching on the Bridgestones is a wonderful feeling, even on Z-Max's surface. They're great cold and this weekend reaffirmed that they handle heat very well and I didn't even bother spraying them during the afternoon 4 runs.

Another thing is that they are super sensitive to psi changes. For example, I was running 32 front and 30 rear which seemed to be the 'sweet spot' for Danville in the FR-S. However, the course was really tight on the last 1/2 and the car starting getting pushy so I inverted the pressures and ran 28 front and 32 rear and the tires responded great for predictable rotation, even for a front wheel drive hack behind the wheel.

Tire wear be damned, they're still a waaaay better value than Hoosiers and V710s, and you can drive to work on them the next day.

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