Tyre Hunt Part II

Just to close up on the Tyre Hunt posting earlier, its over and well its actually been over for the past 2 months but i kept quiet on it as I wanted to scrub in the tyre's first and didnt want to jump the gun on the tyre performance first. So I finally settled for a set of Falkens FK452's with following staggered setup;

1. Front - 245/40/18
2. Rear - 265/35/18

These are some pictures of why I had to change my existing car tyre's, they were quite badly worn out and it was quite a surprise that they didn't run me off the road any earlier.

Front sets

Rear sets

Pretty badly worn out especially for the rear sets, looking at the thread wear on the insides of the rear typre's, I could see that the car is setup for a negative camber on the rear. A few days before finally deciding to swap out the old rubbers, I did a couple of FOT runs and the rears just couldn't grip the tarmac, my DSC indicator kept on blinking on and off, it was really time for a tyre change.

And below are the pictures of the new brand spanking sets of Falken FK452's manufactured in the early part of 2008.

Yummy....my only advice when running new rubber's, dont try doing any fancy turns and stuffs at least for the first 500km's as it takes time for the first layer of rubbers to wear off and never ever judge the tyre performance until you've used them at least for 1000km.

My comments on the tyre's after running them for the past 2-3 months, they are a good set of medium performance tyre's good for both usage in the wet and dry. In terms of road noise, due to the wider tyre profiles, its louder than normal but the tyre's give back in terms of road holding comfort. Not sure exactly what it is but it gives me supreme confidence when I'm piling on the kmph's. In summary, they are highly recommended for those on a budget and want performance orientated tyre's.

Tyre Hunt Part I

Its time to change some new rubbers for my car. The challenge as usual when making purchases is the ability to make a wise purchase that has ample servings of performance per money spent. The tyre sizes that I'm specifically looking for is;

- 245/40/18 for the fronts
- 265/35/18 for the rears

They are much larger than the previous rubbers I bought for my Satria GTI which were sized at 205/17/45 all round. The purchase this time around is going to be burning a pretty large hole in my wallet.

As with all smart and wise purchases (not sure how smart and wise i can be when it comes to buying stuff for my car) I started out with a short list of all possible tyre brands that I'm considering. Below is the short list, its short as there is not that many low profile, W or Y rated tyres.

1. Continental Sport Contact 2 - Creame of the crop from the Continental line up which is superceded by the latest version of the Continental Sport Contact 3. This tyre comes with rave reviews, the only downside that I've come across thus far is related to its price. It wil definately blow a hole in your wallet. This is one high tech tyre with the thread pattern designed for balanced performance over both dry and wet roads.

2. Michelin Pilot Sport PS2 - This is again one of the top of the range tyre's from the Michelin stables. The thread pattern is quite similar to the CSC2. Have heard some negative feedback about this tyre's noise and thread life but then again its a performance tyre so should not be compared with the run of the mill tyre's.

3. Dunlop Direzza DZ101 - A mid-range tyre from Dunlop with a more aggressive thread pattern than both the CSC2 and PS2 but looks can be deceiving. Again its a mid range performance tyre so the prices are a little bit more swallowable and with that the road noise of this tyre is higher.

4. Yokohama Advan Sport - This is perhaps the 2nd highest performance tyre in the Yokohama stable with the Yokohama Advan Neova AD07 taking the top spot. This is type is rated to withstand speeds in excess of 280kmph (not that I can even reach that kind of speed in my car).
5. Falken FK 452 - This is one yummy looking tyre and the price to performance ratio is pretty darn good. Falken has been bought over by Dunlop so we should slowly see these 2 companies blending their product stables soon.


I've already gotten indicative pricing from my rounds in the City, so this weekend it will be a day trip down to Klang to bang some bargins so hopefully I should be shod with some new rubbers soon.