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Best Performance All Season Tire?

B

ballmode

Lifer
Right now I currently am wearing Michellin Pilot Sport A/S Plus.

I love them as I really gotta drive my car unsafe on public roads to get them to squeal... but even with my suspension setup, under body brace, and thicker sway bars... I still understeer 🙁


Yes yes, I know its AWD with a front engine with 60% or so over the front...

anyways, I'm at tirerack.com and my Michellins aren't the highest rated anymore... it's actually the Continental ExtremeContact DWS

wasn't sure if you guys here know anything about performance all season tires or not. Right now I currently only have one set of wheels on the subaru so I'm trying to get a tire for all year round.
 
Good way to reduce understeer: dial up your rear sway and/or dial down your front sway if they are adjustable. Put your stock front sway back on if your new one isn't adjustable. Magic will happen.

Putting on better tires that will improve grip on both axles won't change the balance of your car.

Edit: better tires may increase the threshold at which understeer becomes apparent, but your car will still understeer.
 
Last edited:
JCH13 said:
Good way to reduce understeer: dial up your rear sway and/or dial down your front sway if they are adjustable. Put your stock front sway back on if your new one isn't adjustable. Magic will happen.

Putting on better tires that will improve grip on both axles won't change the balance of your car.

Edit: better tires may increase the threshold at which understeer becomes apparent, but your car will still understeer.
Click to expand...

I agree with this. Also increasing the rear spring rates will help alot too.
 
I tend to understeer when I don't give my car enough throttle, but I need to drive it completely in the wet hard because I don't know how the car will act.

The limits are so high for this car that I really gotta go about 50mph before the tires just give up and I don't want to wreck into something that bad haha

Maybe I need to warm the tires up, maybe I just need sportier tires... I don't know.

As for spring rates and Sways, I am running Tokico D-Specs on the softest setting. The sway bars are 25mm front, 22 rear.
 
First off, OPs tires are about on par with the Conti DWS according to TireRack's test. The DWS having a slight edge in wet and braking, the Pilot Sport A/S having an advantage in dry and response. The fabled DWS got last place and the Pilot Sport's got 3rd, not by a wide margin though.

http://www.tirerack.com/tires/tests/spiderChart.jsp?ttid=147

ballmode said:
Right now I currently am wearing Michellin Pilot Sport A/S Plus.

The limits are so high for this car
Click to expand...

Try a Max-performance summer tire and prepare to shit bricks. You haz no idea :awe:

ballmode said:
Maybe I need to warm the tires up, maybe I just need sportier tires... I don't know.
Click to expand...

You've got all-seasons, not R-Comps, you don't need to warm them up.

Sportier tires? Hell yes you need sportier tires.

ballmode said:
As for spring rates and Sways, I am running Tokico D-Specs on the softest setting. The sway bars are 25mm front, 22 rear.
Click to expand...

Dial up the damping on your fronts, soft front shock settings = understeer. I'd go around 1/3-1/2 of the way up and see how it does. You didn't say you had adjustable shocks! Sheesh 🙄
 
ThatsABigOne said:
Are they a quiet tire? And how is the thread life?

Might be buying for the next set...
Click to expand...

So far they are pretty quiet. I was coming from some Yoko Avid S34D's:
http://www.tirerack.com/tires/tires...autoMake=Mazda&autoYear=2011&autoModel=Mazda3 5-Door&autoModClar=s Sport
that got pretty shitty reviews and were pretty loud.

I'm pretty happy. They're pretty quiet. As a comparisons sake. When I had the Avid's on the highway I was listening to my radio around 30-33 for a decent sound. Now I can do 20-22 or so for similar sound. So it's knocked it down considerably.
 
MotF Bane said:
Don't a lot of high performance tires not squeal before breaking loose?
Click to expand...

In my experience high-performance tires will squeal less before they let go, yes. When you get into real R-Comps they're damn near quiet before they let go. A high-perf road tire should make some noise before letting go, but not as much as an all-season. Your car will give you other clues besides sound when it wants to let go, the steering wheel will go numb and not respond to increased steering angle, the car will roll less (un-roll, if you will) in a turn when grip is starting to fade, and there are probably a few more hints that I haven't noticed or learned yet. The clues are there with quieter high-performance tires, if you read them.
 
coxmaster said:
Star Spec's are noisy as hell on the highway, otherwise they're absolutely AMAZING tires.
Click to expand...

I can't hear shit over the noise of everything else...so I wouldn't have any idea. :awe:

mmntech said:
Damn, those Firestone snows are cheap. Guaranteed they're twice the price here. I want to get winters because my all-seasons are getting up there in age. Still plenty good for summer but not for snow.
Click to expand...

I ran them on my Forester last year and I really, really liked them.
 
JCH13 said:
In my experience high-performance tires will squeal less before they let go, yes. When you get into real R-Comps they're damn near quiet before they let go. A high-perf road tire should make some noise before letting go, but not as much as an all-season. Your car will give you other clues besides sound when it wants to let go, the steering wheel will go numb and not respond to increased steering angle, the car will roll less (un-roll, if you will) in a turn when grip is starting to fade, and there are probably a few more hints that I haven't noticed or learned yet. The clues are there with quieter high-performance tires, if you read them.
Click to expand...

All I get from my car, with cheap all seasons on it, is a squalling noise from the tires, and then they start to break loose. I've never noticed any other hints coming back from the car - hell, the steering wheel is always pretty numb. So the sound is very valuable to me.
 
I have Dunlops SP Sport 7000 in my car as OEMs. I must admit I like them a lot, specially after the mild reviews on tirerack. As comment, however, my car has the V rated version, and the reviews seem to focus on the H rated version. I remember a BFGoodrich tire (need to remember the exact model) that had mediocre reviews for the H rated and glowing for the V rated, so this might be similar... The SP7000 hold quite well in the snow, meaning they are true all season.

I posted a thread asking about the Cooper Zeon RS3-A, but it has no answers so far 🙁
 
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