Subject: Re: high performance street tires?

[Vittorio Bares]

Taka - I agree on the used snows. I've bought both - and fresh tires do
very well, especially when you're dealing w/icy conditions. Same tire
w/4 seasons, although lightly used, was dramatically changed for the
worse.

On another forum they mentioned heat cycling over a few seasons may have
an affect - perhaps - could be - don't know enough about heat cycling
tires yet.

Its freshies from here on in...

Vittorio -

-----Original Message-----
From: quattro-bounces at audifans.com [mailto:quattro-bounces at audifans.com]
On Behalf Of Taka Mizutani
Sent: Tuesday, March 27, 2007 7:27 AM
To: Tom Winter
Cc: thejimrose at gmail.com; quattro at audifans.com
Subject: Re: Subject: Re: high performance street tires?

The need for real snow tires in real snow is definitely there. I've
driven
cars with good and bad snow tires, all wheel drive,
rear drive, front drive and the biggest factor in being able to stop and
turn is your tires. AWD won't do you any good if
the tires have no traction.

We had a freak blizzard a few weeks ago where we got a good 5-6" of
sleet
and ice- with crappy Hankook snows, some
weight in the trunk and some care, I was able to get home in the Miata
(although it got dicey near the end- had the back
end out a good bit).

I've driven in fresh snow on too-wide snows and not been able to stop or
turn- that's scary.

That's also where the stability of 50/50 quattro really works well. Not
the
crappy Haldex system, not the fancy DCCD system
in the STi, but plain quattro I/II/IV with the nominal 50/50 torque
split
F/R. IME, the most predictable and stable system, even
though it still needs good snow tires to work properly.

BTW, speaking of deals on used tires- you better be careful with buying
used
snows- the compound in today's snow tires
simply does not last much beyond 3 or 4 seasons- I noticed a significant
drop-off in performance on the Dunlop M2 as well
as Nokian NRW after year 2 or 3. My NRWs are now basically useless
(compound
has changed due to time and exposure)-
even though I have plenty of tread, they don't work nearly as well as
they
did. My old Firestone Winterfire did not exhibit this
type of drop off even after 3 seasons- old fashioned tire compound (not
nearly as good when new but more consistent over time).

I would not buy used snows except in a pinch for these reasons.
_______________________________________________
quattro mailing list
quattro at audifans.com
http://www.audifans.com/mailman/listinfo/quattro
---
Watch this space for ads :)