Mismatched tires
Thread Starter
Melting Slicks
Joined: Jul 2010
Posts: 3,479
Likes: 93
From: Between Tally and Gatorville ,Florida
Mismatched tires
I've been looking for a set of black wheels for my car for awhile and today I found a set of wheels with brand new Michelins pilots tires. However, The front tires are zp tires while the rear are non zp. would there be an issue using them? Would there be any handling issues.
Team Owner
Joined: Mar 2001
Posts: 21,325
Likes: 3,841
From: small town in S.E Pa. PA
St. Jude Donor '03-'04
Sidewall construction between conventional tires and run flats are so different that when the need arises, the car will not handle properly because the stiff sidewall of the run flat won't give, while the flexible softer sidewall of a conventional tire will.. this can cause a very dramatic control issue, when pushed to get out of someone's way or avoid and animal in the road... It could cause you to lose control. I would never run these two very different tires on the same car.
1/4 mile/AutoX
Joined: Jun 2014
Posts: 11,443
Likes: 2,189
From: Buffalo Texas
Sidewall construction between conventional tires and run flats are so different that when the need arises, the car will not handle properly because the stiff sidewall of the run flat won't give, while the flexible softer sidewall of a conventional tire will.. this can cause a very dramatic control issue, when pushed to get out of someone's way or avoid and animal in the road... It could cause you to lose control. I would never run these two very different tires on the same car.
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I would not run mismatched tires on the car.
Racer
Joined: Mar 2005
Posts: 379
Likes: 10
From: vancouver wa
I had michelin pilot sports on all four and the rears needed to be replaced. I replaced them with proxy 4's. The fronts still had 6/32nds so i didnt replace them. All I can say is my car was all over the place, I had to keep both hands in the steering wheel and couldnt relax. I couldnt keep it straight I really thought there was another problem, like something broken. I put all new nitto invos on and everything was back to normal.
Pro
Joined: Jan 2016
Posts: 519
Likes: 66
From: South Salem NY
The handling of a high performance car is very much a factor of the tires. If you want and expect the car to handle like it is designed to you need to have tires that are part of that "package". Different tires have different handling characteristics. a mixed set of tires will make the car unbalanced with regards to how it handles.
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