11,000km = time for new tyres. Suggestions?

[MikeVictor]

I checked the wear indicators on my Pirelli's today and I reckon there's 2mm at best until I'm on them, which means I'll be speaking to Gill when I get back from China in June

Wearing them out over 12,000km is probably on the low end of expectations but not a great surprise. I haven't done a track day on them and don't drive incredibly aggresively.

I'll be having Bob Jane do an alignment for me and check wear patterns, maybe dial in a couple of degrees of negative camber on the weekend.

So now I put the question out there- what next? What I'm after is a good sport tyre, maybe not as quick to wear as the Pirelli's have been. I've read a lot of you are fans of the Hankook V12's and Dunlop Direzza D1's but are they on par with the PZero Rosso's?

I'll be sticking to the same fitment as I currently have, 225/40/18 fronts and 255/35/18 rears.

[123D-M]

11,000km? Geez. I've done 37,000km and my tyres still look almost new. Must be because I always drive on motorways and Belgium doesn't have any windy roads.

[OOOSQ]

How hard do you drive? jeez.

[harpoon]

Well I can vouch for the Direzza star specs mate. I drove in the wet today and they were a lot better than the oem runflats. If you are at all interested in a performace tyre I think this is the way to go.

How will you "dial in" the -ve camber? I'd like to do a bit too but no idea how.

[MikeVictor]

Honestly, OOOSQ, my driving's been fairly tame I think by most standards. Since I had the Pirelli's fitted and replaced my RE050A's last June, I did about 6 months of weekend only use, one motorkhana, 3 months of daily commuting about 30km/day and for the past two months weekends only again.

I definitely don't flog my car around the place, but I take advantage of the grip when cornering given the opportunity.

Harpoon, the camber adjustment I'll have done by Bob Jane when I get them to do the wheel alignment.

Be good if there was a track day in late June or July about the time I'm changing over

[OOOSQ]

Originally Posted by mattyv

Honestly, OOOSQ, my driving's been fairly tame I think by most standards. Since I had the Pirelli's fitted and replaced my RE050A's last June, I did about 6 months of weekend only use, one motorkhana, 3 months of daily commuting about 30km/day and for the past two months weekends only again.

I definitely don't flog my car around the place, but I take advantage of the grip when cornering given the opportunity.

Harpoon, the camber adjustment I'll have done by Bob Jane when I get them to do the wheel alignment.

Be good if there was a track day in late June or July about the time I'm changing over

Thats just crazy wear mate - i'm shocked.

[AussieRacer]

Apart from lowering, front camber is adjusted by moving the strut top hat. Need to remove the alignment pin to move. Most alignment places probably won’t want to change/adjust that. You can also add about 0.7 degrees of negative camber with the M3 wishbones.

For the rear, camber is adjusted by rotating a concentric adjuster. However the range of adjustment is quite limited, pretty much in the range of spec per se. Some M3 suspension pieces can be changed to add camber, but some will remove a little as well. Lowering will work as well.

[s747]

are you heading over to the expo up in shanghai?
I'm avoiding the place during expo, there is already more than enough people around shanghai haha

does the 255 square up the sidewall on the rim a bit or not noticeable?

[Brissie]

Originally Posted by s747

are you heading over to the expo up in shanghai?
I'm avoiding the place during expo, there is already more than enough people around shanghai haha

does the 255 square up the sidewall on the rim a bit or not noticeable?

The pirelli must have pretty poor thread wear then.

[DTNJNQ]

Originally Posted by bmw135fan

The pirelli must have pretty poor thread wear then.

I've had pirelli P zero tyres before on my Subaru WRX. They wear out a lot quicker than the original bridgestones and I also thought that the bridgestones made the car handle better.

I had my OEM bridgestone RE050A run flats on my 135i changed this week (24000Km). Replaced them with new OEM bridgestone RE050A. Didn't have much of a choice as I lease the car through ORIX and they want run flat tyres on it as the originals were run flats. I'm impressed with this new set. They seem to have a better ride than the original set that came with the car. Maybe bridgestone has improved the tyre since they made my original set.

[alik01]

That is pretty damn quick wear, happy I didn't go with the P-Zeros! I think Sparoz, runs them as well, wonder if his wore so quick too.

I highly recommend the Michelin Pilot Sport 2. Offer incredible grip on dry and wet and has so far got about 4000Kms under the belt and looks as good as new after some tyre shine.

[x5mad]

Wow, 11k is very surprising.

If you remember I also changed to pzeros on same day as yours at the same place. Your post made me go have a look at mine. They still have at least 5mm on them and I have covered about 12,000 km.

For the large part I drive very conservatively with mostly (>90%) motorway usage. I keep the tyre pressures 36psi all round and check them approx every 2-3 weeks. If I continue same style of driving I would expect at least 30-40k out of them.

I am finding however, once past 10k the tyre is noticeably noiser and rides harsher.

Would love to hear from Sparoz and see how his pzeros are faring.

[x5mad]

Originally Posted by DTNJNQ

I had my OEM bridgestone RE050A run flats on my 135i changed this week (24000Km). Replaced them with new OEM bridgestone RE050A. I'm impressed with this new set. They seem to have a better ride than the original set that came with the car. Maybe bridgestone has improved the tyre since they made my original set.

Im pretty sure the new ones you got would be next generation runflats (3rd or 4th gen? I cant quite remember). Read an article about it and bridgestone were saying that this new generation closes the gap in terms of ride comfort to within 10% of same tyre in non RFT.

[sparoz]

Will have a look tomorrow morning, too lazy to stumble into the garage. I checked mine a few weeks ago after some hot runs and it had plenty left and I have done 17k on them.

[BMW86]

My RFT tyres were losing traction around 11,000km and completely gone by 15,000km as well. I drive fairly hard though.

I replaced my RFT with Bridgestone Potenza RE-11 tyres. Awesome tyre, grip very well and inspire confidence but not so great in the rain. Recently purchased some Yokohoma S Drive tyres for my E46 and they were a lot cheaper and seem very good too.

[Taymaishu]

I dropped my rear Eagles in 8000kms.

Had Firestones on since then (235s now) and they have not worn much at all. The 'wear hairs' are still there!

[MikeVictor]

Thanks for the tyre tips, very much appreciated.

Originally Posted by s747

are you heading over to the expo up in shanghai?
I'm avoiding the place during expo, there is already more than enough people around shanghai haha

does the 255 square up the sidewall on the rim a bit or not noticeable?

Yes it does, I prefer it to the standard size. No, avoiding Shanghai, I'll be visiting Ms Matty V's family in Chengdu for a couple of weeks, spending a week in Beijing and a couple of nights in Singapore on the way home.

Originally Posted by x5mad

Wow, 11k is very surprising.

If you remember I also changed to pzeros on same day as yours at the same place. Your post made me go have a look at mine. They still have at least 5mm on them and I have covered about 12,000 km.

For the large part I drive very conservatively with mostly (>90%) motorway usage. I keep the tyre pressures 36psi all round and check them approx every 2-3 weeks. If I continue same style of driving I would expect at least 30-40k out of them.

I am finding however, once past 10k the tyre is noticeably noiser and rides harsher.

Would love to hear from Sparoz and see how his pzeros are faring.

I remember

I've just started thinking it "feels" a little different after doing about 10k km. My driving has been mostly around town, not a lot of highway so that may explain some difference. I'm inflated to 36psi as well using N2.

A mate of mine said his experience with the tyre is when they go it's almost like a switch, they just turn to poo. By poo, I mean hard, non-grippy poo.

Originally Posted by sparoz

Will have a look tomorrow morning, too lazy to stumble into the garage. I checked mine a few weeks ago after some hot runs and it had plenty left and I have done 17k on them.

I'm going off the wear indicator, not the overall depth of tread left on the tyre (big difference).

I've cancelled my alignment and camber adjustment today, I'm going to make the time to see the Bob Jane near Sparoz, they were very good to deal with and a drive to the coast is never a bad idea

[m 135]

Originally Posted by s747

are you heading over to the expo up in shanghai?
I'm avoiding the place during expo, there is already more than enough people around shanghai haha

does the 255 square up the sidewall on the rim a bit or not noticeable?

Thats why i have not seen you around yokine lately.

[sparoz]

Originally Posted by mattyv

I've cancelled my alignment and camber adjustment today, I'm going to make the time to see the Bob Jane near Sparoz, they were very good to deal with and a drive to the coast is never a bad idea

You should come through the back way like we did for our drive - you should be able to find the route some where .

Only have 2mm left from indicator as well, but I have driven > 18k now. I would say I will make it to 30k, if not, 25k.

Originally Posted by x5mad

Wow, 11k is very surprising.

If you remember I also changed to pzeros on same day as yours at the same place. Your post made me go have a look at mine. They still have at least 5mm on them and I have covered about 12,000 km.

For the large part I drive very conservatively with mostly (>90%) motorway usage. I keep the tyre pressures 36psi all round and check them approx every 2-3 weeks. If I continue same style of driving I would expect at least 30-40k out of them.

I am finding however, once past 10k the tyre is noticeably noiser and rides harsher.

Would love to hear from Sparoz and see how his pzeros are faring.

Noise may have been marginally increased but I take it to them every 5000km for them to have a quick look so that they can address any uneven wear. I also use Nitrogen so the pressure should be more consistant, runing 38 front, and 36 rear.

The only times I notice a degradation in ride was a full load or the backseat down.

Our tyres has got a harder side wall, but I am still surprised how much better it is compare to my wife's RFT on the 125i.

The PZero's last 6-7k on one of the C63 that David service, and approximately 13k on a 911.

I was expecting 25k as that's what the info seems to indicate on some US sites when I picked the tire, and it seems to turn out pretty close for me.

I would probably be sticking with the same tire when it's time to change as there's plenty of thread on the fronts and I am very happy with how they are performing. I personally don't like mix tires as I never have good experience with noise and ride when I had the Conti1 fronts, and Conti2s rears, and Conti2s Front and PZero Rosso rears.

[E92325i]

For what it's worth i had hankook ventus S1 Evo's fitted to my E92 and i was very happy with them at the start although lately i feel that it tends to let go a lot easier (never really happened with the stock RE050 runflats). checked pressures and had the alignment done which didn't make much difference. I've done 20,000km on them so far.

i also had the Bridgestone adrenalin re001 fitted to my 147 GTA and the difference was amazing (it had some shitty tyre on there before), very happy with them so far

[s747]

Originally Posted by mattyv

Yes it does, I prefer it to the standard size. No, avoiding Shanghai, I'll be visiting Ms Matty V's family in Chengdu for a couple of weeks, spending a week in Beijing and a couple of nights in Singapore on the way home.

nice - I'm using www.skritter.com at the moment, it's pretty good - check it out if you're learning chinese?

Originally Posted by m 135

Thats why i have not seen you around yokine lately.

I'm still local - just using cape st instead of royal st. There is a black 125i with Msport just 2 doors up from me as well.

[MikeVictor]

Wow, the Hankook Ventus V12 evo's are a great price and seem to be getting great reviews.

I'm also thinking the Dunlop DZR101 may last a bit longer while still being performance oriented.