Alex, you are the man. Thanks for the quick shipping and the help.

 

The BS came from the comparitive you did. Take 4 non runflats and let the air out of them and see how far you go. Two stories, one my friends has an 03 Z06, ask him about his trip to AZ. He called from his cell when he could get service saying that the repair kit is as worthless as **** on a boar pig. A nail caused a flat at speed in the fast lane Tore up sidewall before he could get off road. 80 mile flat bed new tire and nearly $800 less in his pocket. Two, Barstoe 11 at night tire goes down in fast lane, damn those fast lanes, sidewall lets go taking rim and front fender with it. It was a 2000 with some off the wall after market tire that was recommended by someone on this forum.

 

No one has any experience with the Pirelli Assimetrico's on a vette?

Also, why does Tirerack only show me two tires available, the Pirelli and the Conti Sport?

 

Add an $9.00 hydraulic jack (real tiny one, easily fits in one of the back wells) and a large power bar with a 13 MM socket and your in business!!
(a 150 torque wrench can be substitued for the power bar--all available from Harbor Freight) Chances are you will never use any of the items. Better safe than sorry!!

 

I just replaced my stock GY's on the C5 with Michelin PS All Season runflats. So far, pretty happy with them. (Not. See second edit.)

Why stay with r/f's? Three reasons. 1) Occasionally I get a little speedy, and the peace of mind from knowing that I *cannot* have a blowout helps a little. 2) Don't want to carry a repair kit, and don't really want to change a tire on the roadside. Ask Bill Cosby about that, his only son was killed doing exactly that. Besides, I've changed enough tires in my 38 years to last me a lifetime. 3) You can actually get a little more wear out of the tires, knowing that if they go kablooey the sidewalls will support them long enough to get home and order from Tire Rack. Wore the GY's bald and with nylon showing before replacing them. Got nearly 30K miles out of them, and the fronts went before the rears due to relative restraint concerning burnouts, but not quite so much restraint in corners...

Why go All-Season? I'm in Mobile, AL. We get more rain than Seattle. And my car is a daily driver. Yes, I know the performance is not quite as good as some others, but performance is useless if you're hydroplaning.

As an aside, and somewhat OT, the active handling really helped the other day as I was driving home. There was 1" of water standing on the Bayway (8 mile long bridge over Mobile Bay) due to getting something like 8" of rain in 24 hours, and I hadn't quite gotten around to replacing the rears yet. I could feel the AH cutting back the power every time I'd go over an expansion joint and unload the suspension somewhat. Without it I'd probably have spun right off the bridge at the first joint. Needless to say, my PS A/S's are now on the rear too.

Edit: I just found another vette site (the corvette action center) and this thread made me curious so I was reading tire posts there. Apparently a r/f *can* blow out, though it is much less of a problem than a regular tire. The guy who posted blew one at 95mph and had essentially no damage, and was able to drive 120 miles to a facility. So I still stand by my post, though maybe with a wee bit more worry.

Yet another edit: At the risk of becoming the "long thread guy" don't know if anyone is still keeping up with this one, but must recant my former eval of PS A/S tires. Got it up to speed today and those are some floaty bastards. Not sure if they're connected to the road as well as the stock GY R/F's, but they sure don't feel like it... Would still rather retain R/F's but maybe will try Kumho next time.

 

I have not been stranded by a flat tire in 33 years, and have had only 1 flat tire in my driving career; 34 years ago.

 

Your flat tire record is absolutely amazing!
To what do you ascribe this success?

 

Goodrich makes an exact size OEM replacment for the C6 Z51, but with a Y speed rating instead of the Z, and no runflat. I carry a small compressor and a couple of cans of flat repair aerosol, just like on my Mini Cooper. The ride, traction, and tire wear are impressive so far.

 

Paying enough attention to driving that I see hazards before I hit them, and knowing what lanes besides me are not occupied, I can avoid 99.44% of the hazards. My wife, on the other hand, looses aobut 1 tire per year to road hazards, and we driver the same streets!

 

Wow!
I have never seen or even looked for those screws on the road!
You must have incredible vision!

 

Not to hijack the thread...

But, how do you like the Mini?
I'm looking to get one for my daughter.

 

PS2's will be avail for our OEM wheels in about a week if not now.

I called Michelin and confirmed it!

 

Are you talking runflats?

 

Ask Alex, he nose tyres

 

All-season vs Summer

From the test results that I have seen, from sources like the TireRack, all-season tires don't seem to perform as well as the best highpro summers tires, like the Mich PS2s, in the wet stuff. So you appear to be giving up some grip in everything but snow and colder temps.

 

I have heard Kumho are the most economical if you don't want to spend over $400.00 per tire

 

The above picture is a good example of disadvantages of having low profile tires. (stick with the stronger factory wheel and dump those aftermarket ones)
(Keep it factory GM and you will save yourself alot of trouble on everything in the long run and you won't have to worry as much about reliability)
As you can see on low profile tires there are more rim than rubber/tire yes yes I know they handle better but they ride harder, your chances of damaging your rims are higher on the street or even scraping the sidewalk when parking but we are stuck with them as that is what the engineers designed for the Corvette just like other brands and makes of performance automobiles.
I don't know with this C-6 factory Goodyear stock tire ...it seems noisy to me if going to non-run flats be more quiet? Are there any other advantages to going to non-run flats? Or perhaps they make a more quieter run flat tire? But which company makes quiet runflats?

 

Do you use it for the track? or drive it real hard in the turns?

 

This is going to be alot to print...

 

Some people are not aware that a Y rating is almost always better than a Z. The story goes that Z used to be the fastest rating, rated for 149mph+. That was before production cars (read: vettes, also porsches etc.) could go *way* faster than that. So they stuck the X(? i think) and Y (for sure) ratings in the scale. Y is good for 186mph+. No, it doesn't make sense alphabetically. But believe it or not I had to explain this crap to a *TIRE DEALER* who tried to tell me a Y rating was good for 300MPH! Once I got over his IQ being low profile, I figured out he got the metric rating confused with the standard. But doesn't anybody with any sense know that nothing will hit 300 unless it's running on jet fuel on the salt flats?

Can't believe this thread is still alive, but since it is, an update on the PS A/S tires. After some road time and a little less air pressure than they were installed with, they've settled down quite a bit Wouldn't call them "floaty bastards" now. More like "mediocre bastards". Sort of tolerable. They're definitely not as good as the stock GY RF's on dry pavement. Haven't gotten them wet yet.