Looking for new tires. Drive my car 6-10k/year. Varies depending on what I do and what the weather is like.

Here's the options I know about.

ADVAN A048
Toyo R888
Toyo RA1
Falken Ziex 912
Khumo Ecsta AST
Maxxis MA Z4S

My experience is these cars are pretty easy on tires unless you are running a real aggressive alignment.

In the passed I've run Michelin SXGT. These lasted many summers. Hankook RS2 and Dunlop Direzza seemed to last just right, but I'd like a little more diameter in the rear for gearing. Dunlop and Hankook are now only making a 225/45/15.

I'm tempted to run RA-1's and see what happens. They wear real well on Miata's running 24 hour races, but I'm not sure I'd get much more than one summer out of them. 3 summers would be fine for me.

Any other ideas?

Kelly

anything under 200 tread wear will dry rot, harden and or crack in less than 2 years

The two Toyo tires you mention are recommended for competition use only. I would not recommend them for a daily driver.

Sorry guys, I have some other experience with the toyo tires I should have shared earlier. My mom and dad have been runing RA1's on their 914 for about 8 years. I also used to run Khumo Victoracers for weeks at a time when I was autocrossing and was too busy to swap tires.

Scotty, I have not seen the cracking issues you have been referring to on the toyos or the Khumo Victoracers. Maybe this has to do with less heat here on the northeast. You bring up a valid point though. If the RA1's are just going to get rock hard after a couple years, if the tread lasts that long, there's really no advantage over running the falkens. My mom and dad are retired, so their car doesn't see a lot of miles and it's mostly driven by my mom no so aggresively. It's possible they are now hard as rocks as I haven't driven their car in 3 or 4 years.

My concern about the Khumo, Falken, and Maxxis high performance all season tires is with wear ratings over 350 I've found these tires take so long to run off I end up chucking them with tread left because the traction goes down so much in the rain.

What I'd really like is for Dunlop to make the Direzza in 225-50-15, but that doesn't seem so likely. Just looking to see if there are options out there I have overlooked.

Thanks,

kelly

I think the RA1's would be a great choice
I'm thinking about running a set also
I can't wear them out on the track
and I have a 5 year old worthless set that is not dry rotted

a lot of modern super cars (gt3's, ferrari's, etc) come stock with super sticky tires that are even more track oriented than RA1's these days....

brant

Exactly my experience with the RA1 Brandt. There's a reason this was the original tire for spec Miata.

RA1s are a very streetable DOT R-compound tire. Tread pattern channels water a lot better than, say, a Nitto NT-01.

I've got them now on my 914….205s up front and 225s rear. Incredible dry bite, decent wet bite, but they don't like the cold. The compound can crack if exposed to subzero temps for an extended length of time, and tread blocks lose all elasticity (and grip) around that temp too. So a good summer tire, and they'll last just fine if you keep them toasty (either through a balmy climate or heated garage).

Mine are on track to last about 12,000 miles of aggressive street driving, or about 3 years at current rate.

Thanks. That's just the kind of info I was looking for. Now the question is is 12k really enough?

What wheels are you putting these on? 205/225 seems wide?

I have been running a 205/225 combo for the past 5 years on 15x7 cookie cutters, and then 15x7 VTO minilites. Gives a nice aggressive look when the rear fender lip is pulled.

I've been running the falken ze-912's the entire time, and have gone through two sets in the past 5 years. 2.5 years, 2 or 3 autocrosses, lots of trips up the mountains, and 35,000 miles on each set is acceptable I would say. I like the falkens personally. Not super grippy, but they last a while, and at least when autocrossing, they are very predictable when they start to let go, and even when they get greasy. I like tires that don't surprise you when you go past the limit

Food for thought, I installed a set of Kuhmo Ecstas on the back of the car 4 weeks ago, because I had them laying around, and ever since then, the car has been steering itself in highspeed corners, which includes freeway speeds. Scary as hell... I even started altering the alignment to see if I could make it better, and no change..

I took them back, and got a set of falkens, problem solved... I still can't figure out what caused that problem, but it made the car undrivable.

I'm running 15x7 front 15x8 rear on a flared car.

That's great info on the falkens. Thanks. I would like to run the ra1 but I'm dr ing my car too many miles a year right now to do that I think. 35k should last me about 5 years. I think I'll be buying tires every other summer on ra1's.