Any one know whats a good brand tire company to go with besides the Bridestone potenzas that come originally with the OEM 19's??

I have been buying those tires ever since I bought the car new and those tires are just getting too expensive and they wear out quick!! Plus the grip on them arent that great.

I hear Nitto555 are good but will the last longer than the Bridgestone Potenzas? How are the grips on these?

Any other suggestion would be appreciated.

 

Where do you live?

The 555s are a pretty much summer dedicated tire, so if you live somewhere with nice weather year round then they will be a good choice.

If the Re050As are wearing out too fast maybe give the RE960s a try(also much cheaper than Re050As) yet are still an "all season" tire.

 

http://www.tirerack.com/tires/TireSe...tpackage=false

i've had good experience with the sumitomo htrziii, but anecdotal evidence is pretty worthless.
the hankook ventus v12's seem pretty popular on forums, though the htrziii looks to me to be better and cheaper (http://www.tirerack.com/tires/tests/...y.jsp?ttid=149)

a utqg of 140 is pretty low. probably just about anything else in the max performance category should last at least as long if not significantly longer.

the nitto nt-555 is a UHP(ultra high performance) tire, which is a step down from max performance. i've never tried the nt-555, but i've had the nitto nt-05, their max performance offering, and it was okay. couldn't notice too much difference between them and the htrz-iii, but i'm not very sensitive. definitely a step down from the hankook ventus rs-3 that i had on before.

 

Nt-05 and HTRZIIIs are different worlds completely. The NT05 is pushing the limits of being street legal. On par with Bridgestones RE11s.

Also, I find myself explaining this way too often, don't get hung up on treadwear ratings. They are not uniform from brand to brand and are only a good unit of measure when comparing tires made by the same company.

 

errrrr... what? are you thinking of the nt-01?

As I said, i've owned and driven the nt05, the htrziii, and the r-s3's. The utqg isn't perfect, but a utqg of 200 for the nt05 is a worlds apart from "pushing the limits of being street legal". the Nitto nt01 is closer to being on the limits of reasonably streetable at a utqg of 100 (for autox and club racing/time attack purposes, a rating of 100 is an important cutoff)

The nt05's might be stickier than the htrziii, but it didn't seem worlds apart for me. The nt05's are generally placed in the max-performance category, not the ep like the re11's. But i'm not the most sensitive, and i changed the tires after the previous set go hard and bad, so it's not like I was able to make a good side by side comparison. It didn't seem to me like as big of a difference as between the nt05's and the r-s3's (which were incredibly sticky)

the re11's aren't even close to pushing the limits of being street legal. there aren't even as sticky as the r-s3's or the kumho xs. and even then, those are still considered street tires and reasonable to daily drive around. Then there are the r-comps such as the toyo r888 and toyo ra1 and yoko ad048 and pilot sport cup that could be driven short distances on roads.

I would think of "pushing the limits of being street legal" as those ridiculous dot legal tires that you would never dream about driving on the road for any distance. Things like the hoosier r6, or toyo rr's, which are still DOT legal,

 

I don't mean that they actually aren't legal, I'm saying that if you drive it daily and you drive in rain often, then good luck!

NT05s and Sumi HTZR3s are not at all a like, you definitely need to try one then the other and make a better comparison.

Nt05


Sumis



The RS-3s on the other hand are considered to be one of the best street legal aggressive tires out there. The NT05s and RS3 aren't on the same level in driveability, although they are considered a similar classification tire for street use.

Sorry I just don't see your comparison, I use to sell a tonne of Nitto. Neo, triple nicks, etc. I've also personally run Invos and Nt05s on my cars. I have installed the HTZRs for customers and I would put them in the same category as RE050As and 960s and possibly Neo Gens, but never the NT0s or RE series tires.

 

I think the difference here is in how big our respective buckets are and that you place more consideration into wet performance and hydroplane resistance in categorizing your tires. I agree with you that the nitto nt-05's probably are stickier than the htrz-iii. I wish tire rack carried nitto and toyo and tested them so I could see how much stickier.

I've driven both in the rain in norcal as a daily driver though, and I thought they were both fine. I guess it's not like torrential rains and I wasn't like, trying to drift over puddles or anything, but they were both fine in the rain. I do drive more carefully in the rain in general though. I probably did hydroplane with both tires, but nothing really sticks out in my memory about the nt-05's. Maybe I am getting dementia or something. I do remember that the nt-05's were hilariously bad in the cold mornings, which was similar to the r-s3's. I am wracking my memory and unfortunately I don't think I ever tracked the nt-05's in heavy rain where hydroplaning resistance would have really mattered. I did track the htrz-iii in heavy rain at infineon (pretty scary) and it performed all right.

Nitto themselves markets the nt-05 as a max-performance category tire. It might be one of the best max-performance category tire out there? I think it's designed to compete in several competitions in the "street tire" class with the utqg of 200 and probably performs very well for a utqg that high.

The htrz-iii definitely is a pretty respectable max-performance category tire
http://www.tirerack.com/tires/tests/...y.jsp?ttid=149
I guess I care most about dry traction. OP seemed to be fine with running max-performance tires (re050), so I assumed he also cared most about dry traction. The htrz-iii pretty handily smacks down the re050's in that regard. the bridgestone re960's and nitto neo gen are both UHP all season tires.... they will be gobs worse. The re11's probably are better than the htrz-iii, but they are usually placed in the ep class tires above max performance and so should be competing with the likes of the hankook r-s3's

 

What about the toyo proxes 4 plus? Arnt these good and last a long time?

 

They say all season but if you lived else where, where you actually have more than one season, you'll find out that all season is really just another term for mostly summer.

960s and Neos are not a tire I would push in the snow or even when the weather starts to freeze around November.

Re11s are kind of in between the NT05s and the R333s IMO, they handle wet and ugly conditions like the NT05s yet handle dry more like the Hankooks.

But all depends where you drive and how you drive, to know what you really want to get out of your tires.

I can't argue with a single Toyo product, their tires are bang on every time.

 

I live in Dallas TX. We get snow every here and there when winter rolls around.

My main concern is getting tires that are....
- Longer lasting than the OEM Bridgestone Potenza
- Better performance than the OEM Bridgestone (mainly dry, but that doesnt mean I want it to perform bad on rainy days)
- Lighter on the coins bc those Potenza run abour 380+ a piece..

 

Which model?

 

I dont exactly know. All I know is that I have been buying the same exact tires ever since I got the car off the show room floor brand new.

Its the tires that come brand new on the OEM 19s when you first buy the car. Damn tires are like 380+ a pop.

 

You live in Texas!!! Hell, put whatever you want on there then.

555s, invos even neo gens will do the trick for Nittos.

Hankook V12 as totopo are a decent option but sometimes wear a little fast in some people opinions.

If you're willing to continue to drop money on tires, Michelin PS2 are the best tire out there IMO.

 

I'm running the Invos down here and have been very happy with them. I replaced a set of Hankook V12s that gave me 40K miles with them and the Invos are a much better tire IMO.

 

If you plan on a summer only sport tire then the Hankook V12's would be a great choice. Longer life, more cost effective, better wet, etc. Overall a great bang for the buck. On an all season for your area I would look at Yokohama's Avid Envigor or the General G-Max AS-03.