Another tire discussion

[Grumblebuns]

Brian,

Unfortunately, the Toyo Proxes T1R are no longer available in 205/50-15 (at least they weren't listed on the retailers I checked and didn't see them on the Toyo website!).

Clifton,

Thanks for the suggestions. I'll be looking into them.

A thought I had was that since the R-11As had a wear grade of 200, even if I go to a tire with a grade of 300, I would only expect to get another 50% longer life out of them - or probably a max of 15,000 miles.

And then I had another thought (this is getting dangerous!!). Why is it that our rear tires have such a short life? Discussing the situation back in the '70s, the thought then was that all the weight and power went through them. Well now we have front engine, front wheel drive cars. The tires not only hold a weight that is likely heavier, but also transmits all the power AND steering inputs. I haven't seen any reviews from people who describe their driving as "spirited" who get the low mileage we get.

BDA, have you looked into the Toyo R1Rs. I believe they are one of those DOT legal track tires but if you are looking for traction as a priority like I am they may be another option.

Your question on short rear tire life on our cars made me wonder how other mid-engine cars of the era fared on rear tire life. I remembered when I was driving my TCS almost every day commuting to work back in the 80s that I was replacing my rears 2 to 1 vs the fronts. On the last two rears I was using, the long lamented Phoenix Stahlflex 3011s, I was only getting between 3000-4000 miles on them. At least for my part, it may have been driving technique. I never resolved the oil starvation issue on long hard right hand corners with the twink engine so I had to back off mid corner when I started to lose oil pressure finally able to get back hard on the gas when the turn started to straighten out wearing out the rears.

Curiously on my 05 Elise, I'm currently on my third set of rears while running the original front OEM tires. I don't have to worry about oil starvation with the Toyota motor so I'm able to keep the power on for a long time throughout the corner and I'm still using up the rears more than the fronts. 

[BDA]

3000 - 4000 miles on rear tires! Yikes!

Those R1Rs have the same wear grade as my RE-11As but better traction. The S.Drives have 50% higher wear grade with the same traction grade (both are better than the RE-11As in traction). Of course those numbers mean a lot less when you actually mount those tries and drive on them. I think I'm going to see if I can get better wear and reasonable grip. If I were tracking or autocrossing, the R1Rs would probably be better.

I think somewhere here I mentioned that when the car was new, the fronts seemed to last forever. Alas, I didn't have a lot of total miles on the two I had (the one I have now is the second one I had) but 50,000 miles seemed possible. We'll see what the final numbers will be but the fronts I have now seem to be following that pattern which is to say the fronts seem to last more than twice - maybe more than three times as long - so I'm a little surprised at your 2-1 ratio.

Out of curiosity, how many miles to you get out of your Elise rears?

[Grumblebuns]

For the Elise rears, I'm estimating around 5000 miles before replacement. The fronts will need to changed out next tire change due just to age, they'll be around 13 years old this year if I got the arithmetic right. The sidewalls still look good.

[BDA]

Yikes! That's not much! On the other hand if you don't put many miles on the car, it forces you to change them before they get too old!

[surfguitar58]

Folks on one of the BMW forums seem to like Federal SS595 tires, and they are available in both 185/60R13 and 205/60R13, which cannot be said of Toyos except for R888 and R888R models. Suspiciously, the Federal tires are 1/3 the price of the Toyos. (~$50 ea vs $150 ea!) I have seen Federal ss595s mounted on a Europa. Has anyone had experience with these?
Tom

[jbcollier]

The key thing for a Europa tire is that it is true and round.  Any out-of-round or true (side-to-side) will result in vibration issues.

Tires I have experience with:

Vredestein: very good quality, no issues with out-of-round, long-lasting street tire, better than anything back in the day

Michelin "classic" tires from Longstone and others: absolute crap, massively out-of-round and true

Michelin 175/70-13 modern mini-van tires: mostly good quality, long-lasting street tire, better than anything back in the day.  Ask to see each tire spinning.  I went through 6 to find three perfect ones.  Still looking for the fourth.  "Bad" ones are nowhere near as bad as the Longstone offerings.  I'm building a tire shaver so I can lightly shave my own -- only good for fixing out-of-round.

[GavinT]

The key thing for a Europa tire is that it is true and round.  Any out-of-round or true (side-to-side) will result in vibration issues.

Ain’t that the truth.

Way back in the late 70’s I bought a set of Minilite wheels (genuine magnesium ones) that came with some Avon 165/60 tyres. 60 series tyres was considered quite radical for the day.
They were absolutely fantastic and I was revelling in the new found grip.

After a couple of months I detected a vibration and I chased that vibration all over the place. I thought I’d checked everything and had swapped the wheels around a couple of times.

Yep . . it turned out to be the tyres . . all four of them.
I was sorely disappointed because otherwise, they were uncannily good.

Looking back, I wondered if they could have been skimmed much like the Formula Ford guys do but maybe that wouldn’t have helped an out of round carcass. Dunno.
The interesting part of all this was that the out of roundness seems to have developed from nothing. They were great when first fitted.

Anyway, it’s probably still a good idea to see what the Formula Ford guys are running.
They usually know their stuff and are forced to use tyres on relatively narrow rims like a Europa.
In Oz, they’ve recently changed the mandated tyre to the Yokohama A048 . . not exactly cheap though.

https://formulaford.org.au/Portals/0/FFA%20Tyre%20Flyer%20Low.pdf