A friend of mine just bought his first Corvette a 1985. What tire brand do you recommend. This car is just a daily cruiser. Thanks, in advance

 

Cooper Cobra

 

Few things to consider:

1. Is the car a Z51? If so, it's going to be hard to find decent tires in a size that fits the wheels.
2. If it's not a Z51, then step down to 245/50/16, which will offer good choices.
3. Is the car in Ohio, and is it going to be driven in winter? If so, we need to consider snow-worthy all-season tires at the very least. If not, we can look at some good "three-season" tires that are labeled as summer tires but also work really well in cool and wet conditions.

For 245/50/16, the General G-Max RS may be the best "summer" option in the right size. The BFG G-Force Comp-2 A/S Plus is the best all-season available in this size. The very best "three-season" and "all-season" tires aren't available in this size, but these are still very good options.

If the car is a Z51, then you really need to stick with 255/50/16. In that size, there is no all-season option at all. None. The only decent street-tire option is probably the Toyo Proxes RA1. It's an older track tire that has real tread and is very good in wet conditions. In fact, it's often been used as a rain tire for sports car racing. It just won't last 50,000 miles because the tread compound is soft, but it will grip hard. There just aren't any other good options in this size these days.

 

I'm using the Toyo RA-1's on my '84 Z-51.

Here is a recent thread that Matthew and I recently participated in. Lots of good info and some typical forum arguing.
https://www.corvetteforum.com/forums...e-options.html

 

Additional consideration, move to 17" or 18" rims, plenty of tires options for those. Fun part is finding what rims will fit, see https://mirrockcorvette.com/c4-parts-guide/wheels/ for the stock specs over the years. Big item is the offset, earlier had higher offset than later years.

My '87, I switched to 18x9.5" rims with +40 offset, typical for a C6 Corvette (can't recall if front or back), seven years ago. Allowed me to upgrade the front brakes to C5 rotors and calipers as well. Tires are 255/40R18. I switched to Continental Extreme Contact DWS06+ tires last year, very happy.

 

Another vote for Continentals. Great tires.

 

I have a base ’94 (non-Z07), so 17x8.5" fronts and 17x9.5" rears. The car is mainly for autocross. The previous owner put 500TW Nankang all-seasons on the front, and I replaced the dry-rotted rears with Continental ECS02s. Unsurprisingly, the mismatch makes the car push hard in the front.

I'm not trying to chase trophies, but I’d like to at least run a proper 200TW autocross tire. The stock sizes (255/45/17 and 285/40/17) don’t leave many options beyond max-performance street tires like ECS02s or NT555 G2s.

From what I can tell, my options are:

1. Pick up a set of 17x9.5s for the front and run 275/40/17 square. (Unclear if Z07-spec wheels are still legal for Street class.)
   
2. Run 245/45/17 and 275/40/17 on the current wheels.
   

Do either of these make sense, or should I just commit to ECS02s all around? Any advice from those who’ve been down this road would help.

 

Run square. They switched to the staggered tire sizes to induce understeer in the car and make it easier for less skilled drivers.

That said, are you keeping the car stock for autocross, or would you consider upgrading things like brakes? If so, step up to 18s now. You'll eventually want bigger brakes, and 18s make that a lot more feasible.

 

I would eventually like to track it, so I presume a brake upgrade would be necessary. The stock front brakes at least don't seem like they'd be able to handle the heat of an HPDE or something like that. I'm going to wait on moving to 18 inch wheels for a bit though so I can save up (and get a little more space to keep the old wheels).

In the meantime, do you know if it would be possible to emulate the Z07 wheel setup at least by finding an extra pair of rear sawblade wheels from another C4 and putting them on the front of mine? People in my area are selling them for relatively cheap, although I'm sure that comes with pitfalls concerning the condition of the wheels.

 

If you mean legit actual 17x9.5 sawblades...by all means go for two more of those up front and use 275/40/17 tires at both ends. That is in fact the later-C4 Z07/Z51 setup. Buy yourself Continental ExtremeContact Sport 02 tires for this and you'll have great three-season tires that will also double as killer rain tires for track and autocross days.

By far the best bang for the buck in bigger brakes is the Wilwood 6-piston kit for C4s. With those brakes and the right pads you can track all day. I didn't even have their rear brakes on my C4 - just the fronts with stock rears - and they were great. They can allow pretty much any 18" wheel, and some 17" wheels fit. I know the 17x8.5 sawblades do NOT fit over them. I never tried the 17x9.5 sawblades though. I had some AFS A-Mold replicas in 17x11 and they fit over the Wildwoods, as did some 17x11 CCM wheels.

 

Someone will correct me if I'm wrong, but I think a 94 should already come with J55 brakes standard. That means with the right pads and fresh fluid they'll handle track duty just fine, they'll drop the hammer as well as anything else. Certainly enough braking force to slow down a 300hp car, lol, especially for someone without a lot of track experience already.

My car has J55s as well, and I just bought Powerstop track day pads and rotors (the rotors are just their base rotors that are blanks). Haven't had a chance to test them out yet, but they get positive reviews.

If you can get a second pair of wide saw lades, go for it! My track tires are on sawblades. They aren't really my favorite wheels style wise but theyre doing and that's what matters lol.

If the ATSV/Camaro brake kits work out that one dude is working on, they might become the best bang tmdor the buck, but that's tbd. I still think someone with a modest amount of brai power and time could stuff C7 (maybe even z51) brakes in our wheel wells, and those calipers are cheap and widely available.

 

I don't think mine came with the J55 brakes. The sticker on my center console lid had RPO JL9 on it, so that's what I got when I replaced what was left of the old brakes. The parts going in were just like the parts going out, so I don't think I accidentally downgraded the brakes. That's why I was thinking even with my limited (zero) track experience, it may be worth getting better brakes.

As for the sawblades, I don't exactly love them either lol but I like a lot of the aftermarket styles available even less and used sawblades are super cheap. When it's time to track the car, is it a good idea to swap to DOT 4?

 

Maybe it was 95 they made J55s standard? I dunno, I converted mine. It's a fairly easy swap, change out the calipers, holders, and rotors and boom you got beefier brakes that are basically the same as C5 brakes. It may be more cost effective to convert to C5 brakes these days than convert to J55s. Sometimes you can find people selling the J55s on here though.

Definitely upgrade to DOT4 and flush the whole system. I used Valvoline synthetic dot3/4 for a few track days, it's cheap and readily available, and I was.flishing it before each event. Maybe overkill, but it was a cheap way to do it and to be honest, I was running older street performance tires and modest pads, so my fluid wasn't the first thing to go. Even fresh super tech dot4 is a big upgrade over dot3 and probably good enough for a mostly street setup.

Beyond that, everyone has their favorite fluids. People love motil and ATE, I bought some liqui moly on Amazon that had a nice mix of price and performance, and some people swear by stuff like OEM BMW fluid if bought inexpensively. There's a prestone max dot4 that looks interesting too - not the highest performance fluid out there but priced well and available easily at advance or AutoZone. And you can totally run dot4 daily. Don't mix it up with dot5, that's silicone based and not compatible, but dot3 and 4 are compatible and it's totally fine to run dot4 daily. I put dot4 in all my cars because why not, it's hardly more expensive than dot3 and is better. It's a good idea to flush it quarterly at a minimum before a track day, some people do more, some do less. Personally I find brake fluid way cheaper and less time consuming to flush than it is to deal with a wreck due to boiled fluid.

I have an unpopular take though. You having zero track experience don't need to upgrade brakes or anything like that. Your first few events are focused on learning safety, not speed. Learning where you're going, where the corner workers are, what the flags mean, how to handle the chassis, where you need to be to plan your next move... All that stuff is way more important than the brakes you run (provided you bought at least OEM equivalent semi metallic pads and not ceramic pads).

Change out all your fluids. Get a high pressure power steering pump line from DRM. Make sure all your hoses are good and start looking very closely at all your rubber bushings. Make sure your shocks are good and ball joints and wheel bearings don't have play. Run some events as a basically stock car, making sure you have acceptable parts for tires (summer tires with probably an under 400-500 tread wear rating - you don't need 200s yet something in the 300s is plenty and should hopefully not chunk from heat on track), and brake pads (semi metallic pads at a minimum, I don't think it hurts to run something like a Powerstop track pad, but something that's a street pad is probably not ideal like a z23 or z26, I've heard the z23/26 can handle the temperatures but you'll burn through the set in a weekend).

Focus on safety and learning. It's so tempting to want to mod the car early on. Mods are fun, they look cool, and they're instantly gratifying. But you don't need them yet, you got a build your foundation skills before you start learning to go fast. Plenty of people will disagree with me, but that's my take as someone who is frankly not fast enough to have a respected opinion lol.

 

FAUEE is correct that someone new to track days probably doesn't need dedicated big-brakes. Track pads, yes. Good DOT4 fluid, absolutely. My minimum would be Motul 600, but if you spend more, then Castrol SRF will have a great dry boiling point and the highest wet boiling point on the market. You can easily leave it in for a year and do multiple hard track weekends on it before flushing.

As you get more comfy pushing the car on track, you'll want more brake heat capacity than even the J55 can provide. That's when something like the Wilwoods become worthwhile. But you don't need them to start out.

 

Right on, thanks for the advice guys. I was just worried about the JL9s because I saw someone saying they were inadequate somewhere on the internet (nobody would ever lie on the internet, surely). I agree that modifying the car a whole bunch is not worth it for the stage of driving that I am at, so for now I guess I can scratch that itch by fixing up the things that are worn out

 

Another reason to go to 18" wheels over 17's is that you'll have a much greater selection of tires in that size.
Performance tires in 17" are getting scarce.

 

275 40 17 has a lot of decent options. There are likely more in an 18" wheel, but us 275 square guys have it very very good for tires.

 

NEVER go cheap on tires and brakes, no matter what the value or intended use of the car.