Help Choosing Tires

[Matt D.]

What about G-Force T/A KD's? (not the KDW's etc) A good friend had them on his 300z a few years ago and they were great at Brainerd(road course) and on the street.
The KDs are probably fine, 200 treadwear, though they are not a popular tire at all when it comes to the autocross community which is where tire manufacturers look to when creating a high performance street tire. The Kumho MX and Falken RT615 were the dominant tire for quite a while until the MX was no longer produced. Along came the Dunlop Z1 two years ago, then this year Kumho released the XS which is supposedly the hot ticket, doing really well on the national level.

For the price, I'd pick a Dunlop Z1 or Kumho XS over the BFG KD as the KD is $50 more in 245/40/17 size.

[asshanson]

What do you guys think of the NT05? It's in a similar price range as the 615 and Z1, about $150 per tire. I've been reading a lot of great reviews on it.

[Matt D.]

What do you guys think of the NT05? It's in a similar price range as the 615 and Z1, about $150 per tire. I've been reading a lot of great reviews on it.
Good tire, but I'd spend my money on a Dunlop Z1 or Kumho XS. The NT05 is good, but not quite as great as these other two tires.

[Shane@DBPerformance]

When are you going to the drag strip next and do you have coilovers? I might have some slicks you can use.

[Halon]

Who me? I'm going on the 30th or 31st. And no coilovers. I'm just on a basic Eibach Pro Kit / AGX setup.

[asshanson]

How many miles would you expect to get on the Z1 or XS? 15k?

Brandon, why did your tires get so bad after just 4k miles? Bad alignment?

[Halon]

Well the outsides of them are shot from the cruise. The insides have a lot of wear, like you'd see from real bad camber. Although I don't think the front has that bad of camber. So I'm not 100% positive on that.

[Matt D.]

How many miles would you expect to get on the Z1 or XS? 15k?

Brandon, why did your tires get so bad after just 4k miles? Bad alignment?
My Z1s lasted 19 autocross events and at least 12k miles (winter tires) but probably more. Figure at least 4 runs per autocross, up to 6 usually. I rotated them religiously and had them flipped left/right once midway through last season. I wouldn't doubt that with a good straight up alignment you'd get 20k street miles out of them.

[Speedfreak]

How many miles would you expect to get on the Z1 or XS? 15k?

Brandon, why did your tires get so bad after just 4k miles? Bad alignment?

I'm assuming alignment issues. The inside of the fronts looked very bad. I've only seen wear like that from rears with bad camber issues.

[asshanson]

The same thing happened to my last set of rear tires. Too much toe out and the insides were completely bald after one summer. Been driving almost a year on these now and no issues because I got it aligned.