Which tyres??? need to prevent another spin.

[acacb]

Just fitted new front tyres (bridgestone) a couple of weeks ago to my elise, 5-6mm left or rear so thought it would be ok to run for a while. However as taking a right hand bend at only 40mph the rear end kicked out and i powered towards to posts on the other side of the road, but i caught it and the car whipped round 180 the other way leaving me facing the way i had unscathed. Could not believe how lucky id just been not to have ripped the front or rear clam off!

Not wanting to push my luck or have quite that excitement again i need to replace the rear tyres asap.
I've got 2 options, put 2 bridgestones on the rear which a mate can sort me out with for £250 or replace all the tyres for just under £700 with AD07's and sell the 2 new fronts
but i dotn have £700 sloshing about but i dont want to scrimp on a few hundred pounds if there the AD07's really are worth the extra dosh.

Car is used for fast road and lots of country driving and mini road trips, i've lost abit of confidence in it now so am after some much needed advice.

Are AD07's really that much better than bridgestone and is it worth paying more for them?

thanks

[philthy]

5-6mm left? Thats loads...

Sounds like you hit diesel rather than the fault of the tyres.

[Shug]

Yup - not tyres unless they are 5 years old and solid - that's more than enough tread. Either slippy surface or too much right boot for conditions.

[Stewart]

Geometry perhaps out? Also check your tire pressures.

Only once had the back end step out once on the road in the elise in damp conditions when I thought I was taking it very sedately. A geometry check found that rear wheel alignment was out and it certainly felt more stable following an adjustment.

[j2 lot]

As above - don't think you can blame the tyres, 5-6 mm left means they are only a couple of mm down so should be good. (8mm new?)

Roads are exceptionally slippy on the damp mornings just now - the cold, damp, greasy conditions are worse than fully wet roads and it is very easy to spin up the rears unintentionally.

[robin]

Whilst it may be true that some of what happened is "driver error" it is also true that mixing tyre types on an elise is just daft unless you're doing it for a specific handling reason (e.g. using MH compounds on the rear and M on the front of a race car).

Ordinarily the rears wear faster than the fronts so people tend to replace the rears once during the life of the fronts. This tends to mean that the car's grip and handling change slowly during the initial wear period and then when you fit new rears you bias the car towards (safe) understeer.

You've just taken a car that would probably understeer on the limit (and you probably knew where that limit was, too) and made it into a car that will oversteer on the limit (and you probably don't know where _that_ limit is, at least you didn't ).

Can you tell us exactly which tyres you've got fitted now (there is more than one bridgestone tyre!) and how old the rears are (mileage and age)?

When all is said and done I would spend the money on getting the very same tyres that are new on the front fitted to the rear; at least whatever handling you then end up with, it will be reasonably balanced.

BTW, is it S1 or S2?

Cheers,
Robin

[tut]

"(there is more than one bridgestone tyre!)"

Or better still, you could buy genuine Bridgestone ones.

tut

[Mr Momo]

Bin the Bridgestones - get the Yokos

[IanD]

I debated and asked for advice about whether to mix tyres recently and decided £300 savings wasn't worth writing a car off for (or worse damage to yourself) so wouldn't mix tyres as a solution.
I swapped Bridgestones to Yoko AD07 but haven't given them a good try out since so can't compare yet.

Surely tyres isnt the key issue and I would check
1. Tyre pressures
2. Age of tyres if you don't know history, week and year is marked on side of tyres
3. Get a Geometry check/reset


If tyres are 4 years old then change them
Last option which i want to do sometime soon is do some driving training so you know what to expect and have some experience and ability to react. Most people can catch a 1st slide but not the backlash from it.

[Edin430]

Buy T1R's for half the price and be done with it !

[GBOBM]

uh oh!!! Not potenzas aka "widow-makers" are they?

....awaits Lazy Donkey's words of wisdom.

[campbell]

Sorry to hear this.

Relative balance of tyres front to rear may well have played a part here, as Robin has described, despite the levels of tread. The compounds have a big part to play too.

For a year or so in the early days, I ran with the original P-Zeros on the front of my S1, and the then cult Bridgestone SO-2 Monsoon Defeaters on the rear. Ideal combo as the understeer was heightened and as a previously front-driver kinda guy I was at home with this. However I junked the P-Zeros as soon as funds allowed.

However since then I've always managed to match all 4, albeit had Toyo T1-S on front and T1-R on back for brief period a couple of years back too. They are much more closely matched though.

If cost is an issue, then 4 Toyos or 4 Kumho Ecsta Sport KU31 or KU39s should come in sub-£300. And depending what you have on just now you may well be able to sell those on somehow.

Clearly don't ignore the tracking pointers above either, but diagnosis should start first with the thing you changed last

Campbell

[Lazydonkey]

uh oh!!! Not potenzas aka "widow-makers" are they?

....awaits Lazy Donkey's words of wisdom.

As others have said its unlikely to be the tyres by themselves. Ive done 65k on potenzas, usually taking them down to the indicators and ive never had the back step out unless i was on the power at the time. Im sure they arent the cutting edge of tyre design anymore but they arent awful and 5-6mm is loads of tread.

[Corranga]

uh oh!!! Not potenzas aka "widow-makers" are they?

....awaits Lazy Donkey's words of wisdom.

As others have said its unlikely to be the tyres by themselves. Ive done 65k on potenzas, usually taking them down to the indicators and ive never had the back step out unless i was on the power at the time. Im sure they arent the cutting edge of tyre design anymore but they arent awful and 5-6mm is loads of tread.

Presuming these are the standard VX tyre (Bridgestone Potenza RE040 or sometihng?) that we're taling about here, they are decent enough, but age REALLY matters.

My girlfriends Vx come with these, the car is a 2000 year, and had original tyres (only 6,500 miles when bought). they were rock solid and in the wet the ultimate ditch finders.
We replaced them with a shiny new set, even the tyre guy commented on how much tread was left (they looked like new) until on closer inspection they were cracking around the edge, and the date marker read as the year 2000!
The change onto new rubber was unreal, made it a completely different car.

In summary: Don't mix tyre types (and don't assume same brand = same type!)
Old tyres = bad.

Chris

[acacb]

Thats alot of reasurance thanks,

The car is an 05 S2, i bought it in May with about 50k on the clock. No idea how old the tyres are or exact type, i'll check tomorrow.
The tyres do feel smooth, and tracking is slightly out (booking it into CLCM this week) tyre presure was ok, only one that was slightly out was front offside which was 32, but that should have made rear more grippy?

I knew the limits before as I would push it and try to get the trail out slightly on some corners but I feel thats totally changed now and it feels abit unpredictable.

I would ideally like yoko's on it, i like toyo's had them on my westfield but thought the bridgestone would be better than toyo's

I'll check tyre stats and get back to you.