mooty

back from Thunderhill.
996flt6, carlooz, mjb, fred, james were all there. 3RS's, 1 7gt3, 5 996gt3's.

without further delay...

R888 report:

Size: 245/40/18 and 305/35/18
Full tread
Not heat cycled
200 street miles then went on track.
Ambient track temp.: 65-70 deg. F

Alignment: track alignment per manual, one from full soft front, full stiff rear.

Road noise: scaringly loud

Side wall stiffness: I can’t tell the difference b/n R888 and RA1, both had very crisp turn in on my car.

Full tread R888 is much better than full tread RA1. More grip for sure, no tread squirm

Some mentioned rear end instability under heavy straight line breaking. I had that on my full tread RA1, but with R888 it was very very stable. Braking from 138mph to 90 at turn in, dead solid, no wiggle or squirm… EXCEPT once. I don’t know what happened. I got hard on the binders and car just drifted left (this is on the straight away). But never happened again. It was probably lap 4 or 5 for this set of tires since new.

Lack in braking grip until I had 100 track miles on it. Still lots of tread at that point, but turning and braking grip increased dramatically. I am 1 second slower on the full tread R888 compared to my 3/32-2/32 RA1’s. and I did not have even one single clean lap all day. I love these new tires.

I run 36/38 hot, compared 38/40 on RA1’s. I did notice that tire temp increases much faster on R888 than RA1.

Doesn’t need much time to heat up. After 2 miles with some heavy braking to heat tires up, I can go full bore.

Hank Cohn

mooty, great info and good to know there's another good option on the market.
Thanks for the writeup,
Hank

CWay27

Great write up. Thanks for the info. Sounds like they will last less then the RA1...

multi21

Mooty,

Have you tried the Nittos NO1? If so, how do the R888 compare? What was your wear looking like at the end of the day. I've got the R888 mounted up right now, but don't have another track day for a few weeks. I loved the Nittos, but I want to see how the R888's compare.

rmag

Glad you didn't have the stability problems that stisseront and I had! I definitely like these tires! Wait until you get your hands on the 255/315 combo ...it only gets better

mooty

never tried NT01, heard its same compound as 888?
tire wear: started full tread, visually I see NO wear. Still looking full tread after 170 trk miles and 400 stret miles. I will not b shaving these for my future sets either. Tread is even across tire.

Will try 255/315 next.

No rubbing on 255/315, correct?

rmag

Zero rubbing ...about an inch shorter ... make the final drive ratio a bit nicer for the track also. What front camber are you running? I've been compromising because my car sees 1/3 track/ 2/3 street (just hit 15k) ... so running 1.7 up front. The outside of my tires after track days wear MUCH more on outside. Looks like I'm going to suck it up on the street and increase front.

mooty

btw, Ryan, saw a meteor gray GT3 parked next to me at track. I LOVE the color!

mooty

2F/2.5R
has more outside wear after trk but after160 mile drive home it gets evened out.

996FLT6

Mooty was as u know his same old fast self. Me I just suck both days. My brakes didn't feel normal( no confidence braking late) and flat spotted my front tires today and both mooty/karlooz left me all alone eating tacos/drinking margarita's(casa ramos) all by myself : (. Miserable weekend. Have u thought of trying kuhmo 710? U be surprise they do well on wet too. Regards. Mike

rmag

Thanks ... it hides the rubber marks from the track great! All my friends with white ones are sooo jealous now.

Yea, one day we have to stop slumming it and buy trailers!

Thanks for info on Camber, I'm going to boost mine to 2.0 up front next season

mooty

i almost bought a white GT3. now if i were to get another, it would be meteor gray (very rare at the moment) or GT silver. i am getting very lazy. the RS hasn't been washed since friday track day. oh, well. i will be at laguna tomorrow and infineon 8 days from today ;-)

trailer and tow vehicle are too big to hide from my wife. she's near sighted but not blind unfortunately. (take that back, she's almost blind, she did marry me hahha)

gweedo911

Amen to that...I finally washed mine today after last week DE. Rubber marks all over the back panel. Pain in the *** to clean. But, I have to say, it looks good in white....

karlooz

dude, how do you flat spot your tires with ABS?

hope the margaritas were nice and strong

it kinda sucked for me too. you're probably right that it was due to the cold track. it's weird, my fronts are getting more outside shoulder wear than the insides... and i have -3.5 degrees camber. i think i will go back to MPSCs, once the nt01s finally cord, just to get a good comparison between the two.

glad i left a day early. i would have had to stay till sunday because of the rain... my nt01s are close to being slicks now. anyway, i got my fill on friday with 9 sessions/3.75 hours.

996FLT6

Karlooz for one reason 1st time I got the abs malfunction lite on my car saturday- karma wasn't good to me that weekend. Mike