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Re: Which Tire? Let's Share Experiences

To: Mark Sirota <msirota@isc.upenn.edu>
Subject: Re: Which Tire? Let's Share Experiences
From: Brian M Kennedy <kennedy@i2.com>
Date: Fri, 05 Mar 1999 14:05:30 -0600
Mark Sirota wrote:
> 
> Brian M Kennedy wrote:
> > Very interesting.  My Pilots should be toast by the end of the next
> > two autox weekends.
> > ...
> >     (Not that Pilots are great in wet; but they are drivable.)
> >   * Does street driving greatly shorten the life of your R tires?
> >     (... my Pilots may make 7000 miles.)
> 
> When you say "Pilot", which tire do you mean?
> 
> Michelin MXX3 Pilot SX
> Michelin Pilot SX-GT
> Michelin Pilot XGT Z4
> Michelin Pilot XGT V4
> Michelin Pilot LTX
> 
> I have the XGT V4's on my Jetta, and they'll last a LOT longer than 7K
> miles (no autocrossing, though) -- they've got about 17K so far with
> no noticable loss of tread.  And they're great in the wet.  So you must
> not mean those...

The MXX3's.  But before you conclude they are shorter-lived than XGT V4's, 
you should know that almost all the wear came from about 60 autocross runs,
the first 10 of which I was overdriving them pretty badly.

If I flip them, they should last another 30 runs, but won't have much tread
left for continued street driving.

So, if you don't overdrive them, you can probably get a good 100-120 autox
runs out of MXX3's.

I should also say that I have some nice, wide twisty streets that I drive (fly)
on regularly to and from work.  I went through a set of XGT's in 8000 miles,
but that's partially because I didn't rotate them soon enough -- being new
to BMW's I didn't know I'd need to consider rotating at 4000 miles (10K was
typical for my other cars).

So, all in all, you shouldn't draw any wear conclusions from my tire
experiences (other than that I'm hard on front tires).  Given that, I wonder
if for _me_ a set of R-compound tires might last just as long or even longer
than a set of street tires (given that I will both autox and street them).

Thoughts?

Brian

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