drpepper

I've bought bare rims with a plan of having two sets of stock wheels for my GS. I have Michelin Pilot Sport PS2 summer tires, and I was thinking of getting a set of winter or all-season tires for seconds.

After sitting down and plotting everything through and picking up information along the way, I'm thinking I allowed myself to get caught up in a fool's plan. My fault totally. I got carried away with nice sounding ideas and I wasn't really adding up all of the costs (especially TMPS sensors and programming) and effort involved in switching and storing two sets of wheels.

Standing back now as the not-so-proud owner of 10 five-spoke GS rims (don't ask about the extra two) I have to say this is silly relative to my needs - I'm not any extreme driver. I'm just a normal commuter type driver in the mid-atlantic (hot summers - mostly mild winters with the occasional bit of snow). I don't need ultra high-performance tires. I don't need to have summer tires. I'm now thinking I should cut my expenses and just go with all-season tires and one set of rims. Sell the second best set of 4 wheels out of what I have.

I've seen a lot of talk here about the large influence of tires on the subjective experience of ride.

My car came with the PS2s. I didn't choose them--having them is just happenstance. One thing I didn't know about them until after developing this two wheel sets plan was the apparent low milage wear expectation (12,000?). Again, I didn't choose the tires and I've never have "summer tires" before.

Anyway, the big "BUT" in this is that I absolutely love the ride of this car. Are there any all-season tires that will give approximately the same ride feel?

Any direct comparisons in terms of ride quality?

Pilot Sport A/S?

Continental? Which one?

noncom23

You've read this post I assume...

https://www.clublexus.com/forums/sho...d.php?t=298027

steviej

iTrader: (1)

I currently run the Michelin Pilot Sport A/S on my 18" rims. Totally loving the ride, smoothness and the quiet, but they are brand new (<1000 miles). Prelim reports say these tires are marginal in light snow. That being said, next winter I will either run with the 17 Dunlop DSSTs that came with the car or put them up on eBay and run with dedicated snow tires (Dunlop or Michelin) on the stock 17" rims.
I haven't decided yet.

steviej

flipside909

Pilot Sport A/S hands down.

drpepper

Thanks for the opinions. I consider myself steered toward the Pilot Sport A/S.

I see that they are still in the "Ultra High Performance" class, which if I'm understanding this correctly doesn't have published tread wear mileage.

I took from an article that the PS2s are good for about a typical 12,000 miles. Any idea what the realistic expectation is for the Pilot Sport A/S?

flipside909

I put about 20k miles on my PS A/S and still had about 50% treadwear left on my stock 17" wheels on my 04 Lexus IS300.

ba-b4

I got a set of Bridgestone RE960AS's. I have no complaints.. rides quiet, good traction, long lasting and the tread doesn't look too bad either.

http://www.tirerack.com/tires/tests/...y.jsp?ttid=106

drpepper

Interesting, thanks again.

drpepper

Cool. Thanks for the link. I hadn't noticed the comparisons

Very interesting on the Bridgestone that it's an Ultra High Performance class tire, but it actually has a tread wear warranty, and it's 40,000 miles.

The head-scratcher on the comparison is that it actually groups the tires what I'm reading as very close. The Bridgestone ride comfort rating is 7.39 and the Yokohama Advan S4 is 7.32. The numbers on noise are similar. I find this to be a bit curious because the I've been seeing the Yokohama pretty uniformly panned by a number of CL members as a tire for the GS, particularly on noise and, I thought, relative ride comfort.