Lorrie, keep in mind the "W" in Marc's handle stands for "Wisdom." *NM*

I have Michelin PS 19's on my car. (Love / Hate me now.) I am debating at what point to replace the tires. Anyone have recommendations as to at what tread depth they should be replaced? I know Tire Rack says 4/32 but of course I realize they are in the business of selling tires so they'll suggest maybe a bit earlier than is optimal for both wear and my wallet. I'm getting ready to go to BRBS and don't want to get 600+ miles from home and have tire issues.

Any recommendations?

I assume you're speaking of the PS2, but whether this iteration or earlier ones, they are excellent non-winter tires, but not the best in the rain. For that you'd have to have tires with more "micro"-siping, like many all-seasons do. Such siping does sacrifice some dry weather precision though. That said, tread depth is all the more important, so you ought to be changing out PS tires when they're anywhere near 4/32nds. Alternatives these days seem to be Bridgestone RE050A Pole Position, Continental DW (and maybe consider the DWS, too,) and Boxsterra has mentioned the Bridgestone S-04 PP, so perhaps he'll have more to say about them by now. The Continental Sport Contact 2 or 3 should also be considered, subject to sizing compatibility (as with the others, of course.)

I think the non-PP 050 is one of them. Get the Hunter road-force balance done, too, although this may need to be re-done after the tires have broken in at about 500 miles.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/17/2011 01:27PM by Laz. (view changes)

bars are reached. (A CA police officer gave me a fix-it ticket once when he spotted teh rear tires on my car (not a Porsche) down to the wear bars.)

What tread depth this is I have no idea.

However, as the tires wear, and the rear ones especially, they are more prone to pick up nails/screws/stuff and suffer from a leak or worse. (The saying is the front tires kick up the stuff, the rear tires pick up the stuff.)

So, you could end up like I did trying to squeeze another bunch of miles (5K miles in this case) out of tires that were nearly down to their wear bars only to get about 250 miles from home and suffer from a puncture and then race around the northern half of CA a day and a half before scoring a set (4) new tires way up in Sacramento (the puncture was discovered way down in Fresno). Hundreds of miles of extra driving, on a rear tire with a slow leak along with an extra night in a motel, and a day or more lost of my precious vacation time simply because I tried to squeeze another road trip out of tires past their change date (due to wear).

Therefore, since you are about to head out a longish road trip you might consider being proactive and replacing the tires before you leave. You gain a bit of protection against a puncture and should you encounter any wet driving conditions with the new tires they'll perform as well as they can in the wet. (Might mention after I have 4 new tires installed about 1K miles later on I-40 in NM I ran into a pretty good snow storm and had I had those worn out rear tires on the car...)

Sincerely,

MarcW.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/17/2011 01:38PM by Laz. (view changes)

But i typically get every mile i can out of them. A tire without tread is nto necessarily a bad tire in the dry. That is more a matter of heat cycling.

So it comes down to how aware you are of their limitations.

Wear marks are typically 2mm.

Grant



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/17/2011 02:01PM by grant. (view changes)

Lorrie, if you're anywhere near the wear bars, I wouldn't risk driving to BRBS and back with them. Specially on the mountain roads, you want good tires and brakes.

I'm on my second set of Continentals -ContiSportContact 3's. My rears have 22,000 miles on them and have about 50% of the tread left on them. They've lasted a lot longer than my ContiSportContact 2's. My fronts are done at 20,000 miles, but that's due to an alignment problem probably caused by some of the rough back roads. (Gotta find some smoother back roads for the CURVEN8R.)

Safe travels to BRBS. Only 14 days for the early birds.

Wow. If i get > 18k on the rears before they are *dead* i'm happy.
Fronts 2x that.

Grant

Then I moved to where I do a lot more highway driving and the wear rate doubled.

Quote
Laz
Then I moved to where I do a lot more highway driving and the wear rate doubled.

I'm surprised. I would think that the tires would last longer if you're doing more highway cruising. You'd think that stopping, starting and cornering would increase tire wear - specially the rears.

Guenter
2014 Boxster S
GT Silver, 6 Speed Manual, Bi-Xenons, Sports Suspension (lowers car 20mm), Porsche Sports Exhaust, Porsche Torque Vectoring, Auto Climate control, heated and vented seats, 20" Carrera S Wheels, Pedro's TechNoWind, Sport Design steering wheel, Roll bars in GT Silver
[www.cyberdesignconcepts.com]

I'm a lot more sedate with cross-street, stop-light situations. Besides, I came from Staten Island, where the roads eat cars if you drive too fast. (Care to regularly change suspension pieces and rims?) Decades ago I think it was Goodrich that ran a two page ad in the national car magazines. One side had a diagram of roads on SI and the Nurburgring on the other. The copy read something like, "Which is harder on your tires?" On SI I looked down for potholes, now I look up for deer.

and quite a little autoX and track. Which may be unfair.

Maybe the ContiSprot Contact 3's have more straight line driving with 2 trips to BRBS (about 4.5 K total) OK, so the roads in NC weren't all that straight. . And one trip to California, (about 7.5 K miles) a lot of that was relatively straight roads, but managed to find a few curvey ones.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/17/2011 07:06PM by Guenter in Ontario. (view changes)

I usually change them when the cord is showing through. Otherwise I'm not getting my money's worth.

1998 986 Turbo-Look Cab
172,000 Miles
Dilithium Crystal Supercharger

means 1200 miles you'll run the tires before you get back to your local dealer. And probably a week of running in who know what weather. And much of that you'll want to be running at speed.

I'd presume you asked the question because you weren't confident in what you were driving and would feel better changing to something newer with a deeper tread.

Why not change early, drive locally to make sure everything is right and then set out on the long trip?

Thanks for all the suggestions, appreciate the help. Mainly I was looking at not what tires to buy but rather when to buy them. My current ones are just a fraction above the wear indicators, and they are 3/32 to 4/32 (or 1/8 as Red Lightnin pointed out) so they're really borderline. I might could get the trip to BRBS on them, but I don't think it's worth the risk. I'd rather not get 600 miles from home and have issues, as Mike mentioned too. Even though I can't imagine being someplace with more people who would offer help if I did!

I think I'll be getting new tires before making the trip to BRBS. I'm not entirely lacking confidence in the tires I have, but I can tell they have lost a bit in performance. It's not a huge change, but it is noticeable.

I don't know how you guys get so many miles from a set of tires. 18000? 20000? I've never seen anything remotely resembling that kind of life out of tires!

alignment and how you drive. Over the last couple of years, my alignment has been a track alignment and I've counted tire life mostly in track days. Now that I've gone to R compounds on track wheels, I'll be back to my usual street driving mileage which has never been more than about 12K miles on the fronts. Since I'm keeping the track alignment, my sense is it will be a bit less now. If I want to drive straight, I usually take a different car...

If you're getting new tires, get the car aligned too.

Dave

Dave - 06 987 S coupe SG/NL; gone (but still my first love): 03 986 AS/GG/BK;

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/19/2011 09:40AM by Lorrie. (view changes)