Tires and Steering Response

BF Goodrich KDWS g-Force. Awesome feedback through steering, you can feel the grain of the concrete and/or road surface through the steering wheel and your butt, vibrations and all. Very harsh and noisy ride. Car turns in very fast. Straight line acceleration grip quite good, but no match for RE01R.

Bridgestone RE01R. Best absolute grip. Very progressive. Steering isn't as quick in the turn in as the g-force. Ride is slightly improved while still being stiff. Tire is MUCH quieter. Wet road grip is not bad (not including standing water). Very good straight line acceleration grip.


Bridgestone RE92. These are the touring tires. Comfortable ride. Steering more numb than above tires. Quiet ride, but as tread wears, can get rumply on concrete roads. Poor straight line acceleration grip. Somewhat okay corner but causes car to plow more into the turn during initial turn-in. Lower cornering limits and grip, but progressive. Weak sidewalls fold under during very hard cornering.

Tires and MPG

Looks like tires can affect gas mileage by 5-10%. With heavier 17" stock wheels, I was getting about 1-2 miles per gallon better than with the stock 16" wheels for the same car but more aggressive tires. The tires with better fuel economy were the Bridgestone RE-92. A terrible tires for any enthusiastic driving. The RE01R on the other hand is quite good for enthusiastic driving, but mpg is consistently down.

My commute consists (in mileage) consists of 10-15% city and the rest highway. According to time, the commute consists of 35% city with the remainder stop and go high driving from a dead stop to about 70mph in stretches over a course of 25-30 miles.

Bridgestone RE01R

Back in the summer, I believe around July, I attended a track day with the then brand new Bridgestone RE-01R tires. These tires were quite amazing. I'd put them on 2 days before driving to the track day at Thunderhill in Northern California.

The tires performed admirably. Tires temps hit a peak of between 167 driver side rear the hottest around 183 or so in the passenger side front. The ambient temps were around 105-108 degrees F. At that tire temp, the tires were getting squirmy (4th 30 minute session of the day). The best times were had the second session, were the tires peaked around 168-170 degrees on the passenger front, and about 10-15 degressF cooler on the driver side rear.

According to GPS, I was about to put in over 30 laps per 30 minute session, under 1 minute a lap, and I was hitting an indicated 110mph before hitting the braking zone on the front straight (numbers were according to instructor riding in car, I was too busy driving!)

Anyway, at Thunderhill, quickly found the Maxima is not geared well for this track. There were many times I found myself between 3rd and 4th gear, popping it into forth just for 1-2 seconds then back into 3rd gear, except near the end with the 2nd gear turn...

Brake fade hit me first session and I did the best I could for the next 3 sessions of the day. I was/am running Axxis/PBR MetalMaster pads. My other car runs Hawks, which I am curious to how they'll do. A week after commuting in the car and I could still see chunks of the brake pads fused to the rotors.

The Maxima faired fairly well. Even with those ambient temps (108 degrees F or so), and constantly bouncing off the rev limiter at 6500+ rpm or so, the engine temperature gauge never rose. The car has over 194,000 miles and the clutch was only changed once at about 150,000 miles or so. The car will get 25-28mpg on a normal commute with energy efficient tires and speeds under 70mpg. With the RE-01R I get between 23-26mpg (more rolling resistance?), and at the track I was getting 9.5 or so.... the low fuel light, which normally lights around 360-400 miles (18 gallon tank) lit around 137 miles. :(

Couldn't even get out on the open session at the end of the day :P