[s-cars] Confession: Cheap tires on my S4

[Taka Mizutani]

That's weird-
I got good mileage out of my set on the 200- some inner shoulder wear (I
wondered if my toe settings were not right) but no real irregular wear. They
did get a bit noisy after about 15-20k. No issues with wear in the center. I
ran about 36psi all around on 255s. The only complaint that I really had was
that they tend to flat-spot badly when the car sits- takes quite a while
before the "whump whump whump" goes away.

Have you tried Falken RT-615s? They're great. Very grippy, great feedback,
great turn-in, no issues in the wet, inexpensive. Only caveat is the wear- I
wouldn't try them on a 3800lb. car. If you get these to run on the highway,
you'll hate them- they kill your mileage (high rolling resistance due to the
compound) and get very noisy as they wear.

I'm going to either get Goodyear F1 GSD3 or Bridgestone RE-050A PP for the
V70R, unless something even better comes along in the meantime.

Taka


On 6/7/07, djdawson2 at aol.com <djdawson2 at aol.com> wrote:
>
> I've run the Sumitomo HTR-ZII's on 2 cars... never liked them from either
> a handling or wear perspective.  I've also mounted/balanced MANY sets of
> those same tires for other Audi folks... one set just last weekend.  They
> were the same as all the rest of the Sumitomos I've looked at... irregular
> shoulder wear (could be the car) and an odd tendency to wear in the center
> leaving 2 sort of high "humps" on either side of the centerline.
>
> I've never liked any Falken tire I've ever tried.
>
> I have one set of Kumhos that aren't bad, but are somewhat disappointing
> in the handling department.
>
> My most recent experiment in the cheap tire category is the Generals.  I
> tried them first on my A4.  Great results (with 18s).  Good ride,
> responsive handling, great in heavy water, and no tendency to tramline.  In
> the past, I've always been let down in at least one of those areas when
> buying tires in the "cheap" category.
>
> After 10k happy miles on those, I decided to try them on my 200 20v that
> serves as the airport commuter... spending most of its life in airport
> parking garages.  I only have 500 miles on that set, but so far my
> impressions are them same for those... way beyond what I expected out of a
> low cost performance tire.  And they have a treadwear index in the high
> 300s.  It'll be interesting to see how long they go.
>
> FWIW,
> Dave