Trying Bridgestone S-04 Tires; at the Track, Too
05-26-2011, 02:34 PM
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Trying Bridgestone S-04 Tires; at the Track, Too
I needed new tires for my 993 Turbo since the Goodyear G-Force that were on it were nearly corded on the inside even though they only had 4,000 miles on them, due to a bad alignment. I needed them quick as I planned on attending an HPDE coming up at Miller. I know many people are quite happy with less expensive tires, but I decided to not worry about saving money for this first set of tires.
The new Michelin PSS were not available in the right sizes, as everyone here knows, and the PS2’s were on backorder. My tire store talked to the Michelin rep and he said the PSS would be available in our sizes in two or three months, although other sources I’ve read don’t seem so optimistic. I considered Continentals and a few others and they were also out of stock for awhile.
So that led me to the S-04’s which I guess are the latest generation of the original equipment tires that came with the car. They seem to have two apparent disadvantages to the Michelins: They are heavier, and Bridgestone is not nearly as good at marketing – there wasn’t much info about them and not many people talking about them. They cost just about as much as the Michelins. But they were available and so I had them installed. One side note: They took relatively little weight to balance, in contrast to complaints of some inexpensive tires.
Here’s the disclaimer that I might not know much about what I’m talking about. I’ve only had the car two months and haven’t had very similar cars. But in trying the tires, they are quite nice and smooth, and the road noise in my car seems as low as I’ve experienced in a sports car.
Because of the rare but continuing monsoon season in Utah, I was only able to put 300 miles on the tires before the DE. This was my first DE and I discovered that I don’t really know how to drive and since I was driving like a conservative Carmelite nun, I’m not qualified to say much about track performance. But, toward the end of the day, my instructor suggested I ride along as he drove my car in the instructor group. They go a bit faster than the group I was in. Oh, my goodness, in fact (my actual thought was somewhat stronger than this). I held on and was glad I bought HPDE insurance.
At one point my instructor waved a couple of cars by, including a nice 911. Then he tucked in behind them and said “Yeah, they think they’re going to smoke us, but we’ll stay right with them.” And he did, too. There were lots of turns and the extra power of the Turbo was not an advantage. He said I had a really nice car and that we were doing great because both of the cars in front were on racing tires. I was running the same air pressure I run on the street, 36 and 40 psi. This was fine when I was driving, but my instructor said he felt they should have had a few psi more when he was pushing them.
I had heard cautions that new tires might chunk out on the track, so I examined them when I got home. There were no missing chucks and the rears looked fine. The fronts had some thin rolls of rubber stuck to the edge of the outside tread groove. So all in all I was impressed with the tires and I think that, for street tires, they’re reasonable at the track, at least when nun-driven.
The new Michelin PSS were not available in the right sizes, as everyone here knows, and the PS2’s were on backorder. My tire store talked to the Michelin rep and he said the PSS would be available in our sizes in two or three months, although other sources I’ve read don’t seem so optimistic. I considered Continentals and a few others and they were also out of stock for awhile.
So that led me to the S-04’s which I guess are the latest generation of the original equipment tires that came with the car. They seem to have two apparent disadvantages to the Michelins: They are heavier, and Bridgestone is not nearly as good at marketing – there wasn’t much info about them and not many people talking about them. They cost just about as much as the Michelins. But they were available and so I had them installed. One side note: They took relatively little weight to balance, in contrast to complaints of some inexpensive tires.
Here’s the disclaimer that I might not know much about what I’m talking about. I’ve only had the car two months and haven’t had very similar cars. But in trying the tires, they are quite nice and smooth, and the road noise in my car seems as low as I’ve experienced in a sports car.
Because of the rare but continuing monsoon season in Utah, I was only able to put 300 miles on the tires before the DE. This was my first DE and I discovered that I don’t really know how to drive and since I was driving like a conservative Carmelite nun, I’m not qualified to say much about track performance. But, toward the end of the day, my instructor suggested I ride along as he drove my car in the instructor group. They go a bit faster than the group I was in. Oh, my goodness, in fact (my actual thought was somewhat stronger than this). I held on and was glad I bought HPDE insurance.
At one point my instructor waved a couple of cars by, including a nice 911. Then he tucked in behind them and said “Yeah, they think they’re going to smoke us, but we’ll stay right with them.” And he did, too. There were lots of turns and the extra power of the Turbo was not an advantage. He said I had a really nice car and that we were doing great because both of the cars in front were on racing tires. I was running the same air pressure I run on the street, 36 and 40 psi. This was fine when I was driving, but my instructor said he felt they should have had a few psi more when he was pushing them.
I had heard cautions that new tires might chunk out on the track, so I examined them when I got home. There were no missing chucks and the rears looked fine. The fronts had some thin rolls of rubber stuck to the edge of the outside tread groove. So all in all I was impressed with the tires and I think that, for street tires, they’re reasonable at the track, at least when nun-driven.
993, boxster, bridestone, bridgeston, bridgestone, cayman, continental, correct, michelin, noisy, porsche, pressure, s04, so4, tire, turbo
