matt777

I removed my 17 inch Micheline PS2s and mounted my new 18 inch turbo twists with Sumitomos a few weeks back. This morning I was getting ready to put the 17s back on for a DE day Friday. I started looking at the tires to see if it mattered which side they went on when I noticed that there is an "outside" label embossed on each tire. The "outside" label is on the inside of each tire pointing towards the inside of the car! Have I driven 6000km with tires that were mounted incorrectly? What affect might this have had on handling?

Quadcammer

yup, thats wrong. handling affect? probably not major, but certainly affects wet weather performance.

race911

Hard to say. I'm sure each manufacturer has different ideas about directionality. For aquaplaning? Yes, until you realize a tire on the RR, correctly mounted with "outside" facing out, could be going the identical direction if mounted incorrectly on the LR. (Yes, some tires aren't built symmetrically.)

But to get to the meat of your question, you don't want to know how many R compounds we've run practically every which way EXCEPT how the manufacturer recommended. Starting on the old Yoko 001R (circa 1983), rumor had it the belt overlapped and you only wanted to run it the recommended direction. That lasted through the original BFG RA1, but maybe not the early Hoosiers. Hard to remember.

Ultimately, I guess you have to sense if you felt anything weird.

matt777

The only thing I noticed is that the car had less grip than I expected at a high speed AX. I spun the car twice on the first go around although it was my first experience with high performance driving so who knows. I'm just going to run the Sumis this week.

ps the local Ford dealer mounted the tires. They had the car for the out of province inspection after I brought it up from Arizona and wouldn't pass it without new tires.

simpsoap

Probably little you would have notice in terms of handling unless you were pushing the tires near their limits. Definitely would have suffered in wet weather.

This is why I always check when I get tires mounted, because this has happened to me before, luckily I caught it before they were put on the car.

Andy

ilko

Drove through torrential rains to Montreal last month in my newly installed PS2s. A little while ago I found out that one of the front tires was installed the wrong way. I didn't have any handling issues in the rain at very high speeds. But the pattern on the PS2s is almost identical in each direction. If I had a set of the original Pilot Sports with the V-pattern, things may have been different...

VNTGSPD

Are you guys talking about Pilot Sport Ribs or PS2s??? The PS2 has a very smooth shoulder and is clearly assymetrical. I would think you would quickly see the difference and feel the difference if driving agressively. The Sport Rib is also assymetrical, but barely noticeable.

I saw lots of "PS2" references above and got confused

Amfab

How did it handle backing out of the driveway in the rain? Pretty good I'll bet

RDS928S

My shop messed up & put one rear on backwards. Can't say I can tell.
I track the car occasionally too.

matt777

It did excel at that.

Yes, PS2 which has a substantially different pattern inside to outside. I think the compound is different too.

jan the man

Contact Sumitomo they will tell you. When i got my Porsche i notcied one of the sumi,s on the back was mounted with "outside" on the inside. Took it to a tire place they said it should be changed because of water shedding and some manufacturers use different componds on different parts of the tire. Dont know if its true or not, but i paid the $20 to have it done.

kjr914

Yes there's a difference if you have asymmetrical tires, thus inside/outside. Not to be confused with "directional" tires...
http://www.tirerack.com/tires/tirete...jsp?techid=180

bart1

I think the big issue with the PS"2" is that it has 2 different compounds on the tread of the tire.

I would say you should swap.

Magdaddy

I had Yoko A008R' s asymetrical and directional, as well a BFG R1's from 89-91 or so, that were hyper specific corner placement. Both Yoko and BFG had somewhat regional support for the SOLOll autocross series at the time. The Yoko's were way too out of round for my taste, the BFG's were better.

Ahhh, those were the days, running A stock with the old 911, with something like 17psi in the front tires, 22 in the rears? Car only weighed 1800lbs and change...throw your kidney out the window when ya turned.

I didn't realize when I bought my C4S with Pilot sports, that I was returning to the days of 5K miles on a set of tires.

Well, when annual tire cost is greater than annual insurance costs, I guess that means your doing something right!

Kein_Ersatz

+1