Updated 12302023-074626
Hmm hmm hmm hmm hmm hmm do-do-do-do let's lovely well and forcefully ride together with you Kadi-yap, kadi-yap, kadi-yap, let's go, let's, we're riding in snow, we're riding in snow And that it's Parson Brown, he'll say are you married, we'll say no man But you can do the job when you're in town Later on we'll conspire as we dream by the fire To face unafraid the plans that we've made Walkin' through, the fans that we made Fans that we made?
We made fans?
Yes, yes, not after this song Fanda baby A 54 convertible Oh, I'll do I can hit all of Mariah Carey's notes What's that?
Da da da da da da.
Here's the yoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo It's pretty rapey.
Third overall is pretty good.
And this was interesting because Bridgestone, I talked to Bridgestone a while back about the RE-71RS, which is their new, replaces the RE-71R, which is named after my favorite tire of all time, which is the RE-71, which was 20 years ago, which used to let me outgrow and outgrip everyone.
And my favorite part of this tire is it didn't make a sound at the limit.
So I used to be able to like do burnouts in the Scirocco and slide around people and do all kinds of terrible shit in that car and get away with it because there was no horrible squealing.
Is this the tire that was OE on Lotus products?
I think it was, on the Elise?
No, no, no, this was earlier than that.
This is probably, maybe not earlier than that.
Elise was Yokohama.
There were two tires, two Yokos on the Elise.
There was a, oh God, there was a 08 and then an 07, an ADVAN, AD07, and a something 08.
And one of them was an R-Compound that you got with Sport Pack in the 195 fronts and one was the High-Performance All-Seasons.
RE-75.
RE-75.
Wow.
Anyway, RE-71 was a great tire back in the day and so now they have an RE-71R that I'm pretty sure that I had on one of my cars and now there's an RS, which I was told was a big improvement.
And so I was curious to test it out.
It is available in the Lotus' side, so I kind of was tempted.
But I said, you know what, if you guys are interested in sponsoring the race team, send a couple tires to Bill, right, and we'll just put them.
Couple, just two.
16.
16.
I sent a couple.
Bill was like, you know, they reached out and they're like, how many tires and where can we send them?
He was like, 16, here's my address.
He was like, oh, and they did.
So each car, because we ran two cars.
We went by Bridgestone.
Yeah.
And unfortunately the mail got fucked up and we didn't, they had sent all kinds of banners, you know, as sponsorship stuff does.
Yeah, so you could indicate your affinity and enthusiasm.
And they didn't arrive.
Oh, so you ran the cars without.
I tried.
I went to the gift shop at Sonoma Raceway and I'm like, do you guys have anything that says Bridgestone on it?
I will buy it.
And they didn't.
So there are 200 tread wear tires, which is the minimum requirement.
And we were a little bit worried about wear because the other tires that we've run in the past, and there's a list of them, all tend to wear a little bit better.
And wear is important on an endurance race because this was a total of 13 and a half, I think hours of racing, something like that.
It's called the 24 hours of lemons, but it's no longer 24 hours and it's certainly not in the winter.
So we basically races, you know, start early and then finish at sunset.
And we're a little bit concerned about wear, so we had, but we had two sets going in and it was comical.
Like this car is set up well and it's fast and it kind of does everything really well.
So it's easy to, if you're an idiot and I'm raising my hand for those people watching, listening on podcasts, you can really have a lot of fun.
I passed 1300 cars and it was like it wasn't just like a normal little pass.
There were, I will find a clip because we do have a GoPro on the car.
I have like you pass, like you head into a corner and you got like five wide going in and you're coming up on a bolus of cars.
That's five wide and too deep and you go around all of them.
And it's like you go around two of them and then you flick it in and then you go around on the inside of two on the outside of one back on the inside.
Like you're just passing them like they're not even trying.
And there were so many times during the weekend where I was like, there's no way these poor people are trying.
Like, what are they doing?
And I realized that the car in front of me like is coming into break.
I'm like, they're not using any of their, oh, that's lockup.
Like, it's just the difference between moderately OK tires and a shit box and really good tires.
And this wound up being a really good choice of a tire for that weekend because it rained and then it didn't rain and then it rained and it didn't rain.
And the wet grip was outrageous.
Like genuinely, this isn't fair to everyone.
I don't understand how modern tires do this.
Like I actually that same weekend I was doing a rally and I was similarly moist because we were in the same part of the world at the same time.
And just hauling ass in the rain and it's speed that you don't think the car should grip.
You're just like at any moment the car is going to launch.
And at some point you're just like, OK, the car has genuine grip in the moist.
I don't know if it's on 4S's.
And 4S's, OK, but 4S's as much as I love them in the wet, they're fantastic.
But when they break away, they break away pretty abruptly.
And I only know this from the e-golf.
You get sort of a, I'm going to say these are 4S's, we're calling them by trade.
Michelin Pilot Sport 4S is the best all around performance tire in the world.
And the grip is genuinely nuts.
And in the dry when they break away, they're like an all season.
They're so wonderful.
In the wet, they're a little bit skittish.
They'll sort of skip over the surface.
These RS's didn't.
And that was the craziest thing.
And when you're dealing with 13 hours of racing, you can push to the limit, but I can't wreck the car.
First of all, it's not mine to wreck.
And I don't want to let the whole team down.
There are a bunch of other people who want to drive these cars and I don't want to get hurt or worse hurt anyone else.
You can fucking do this stupid as shit.
It's just come in and you're like, a little sideways here, a little sideways there.
They broke away like winter tires, which is insane.
I don't know how this works.
So hats off to Bridgestone for the RE71 RS because I mean, we went through a lot of tread.
Do they make the Blizzac as well?
Yeah.
So I do have Bridgestones.
I was always a Bridgestone boy actually before I discovered, I don't know if it's before I discovered Michelin or before the latest generation of Michelin's just sort of lept.
The first Michelin I remember really doing that was the Pilot Super Sport.
When those tires came out, I was just like, holy shit, that's the way to go.
That's different.
I was on a launch for that tire.
I'm sorry if you're watching.
I'm turning the heat down because I turned it up way too high because it was freezing in here as it is now you're getting cooked in your wintry mix.
Yeah.
When my wintry mix of of leather, I went on the press launch for PSS, which was Pilot Sport 3.
So Pilot Sport 2 came out and the Pilot Sport was always a good tire.
I had them back in the day on my 911.
Which one was the Pilot Super Sport?
It's technically PS3.
So it was Pilot Sport, Pilot Sport 2, Pilot Super Sport, and then PS4 and now PS5.
And I used to have the one thing that I was a Bridgestone boy, so I had SO2s on the 911 back in the day.
SO2s.
SO2s.
No.
Yes.
SO2 poles.
Right.
There was a SO1 pole position, SO2s.
Yeah.
And the Bridgestones were great, but they would wear pretty quickly on the track.
So at some point, I needed tires for track day and they just weren't available and the only thing that was available was the Pilot Sports, which were the OE fitment on the car.
And I thought, oh my God, they're twice the price.
They actually lasted four times longer.
And so even though they didn't have as much sidewall stiffness, so the steering was sort of a little bit diminished, they were well worth the two times the price.
And that was my first intro to them and PS2 came out was amazing.
PS3, which is Pilot Supersport, I went on the launch of, they had it launch in Dubai for this tire.
Wasn't that tire originally designed, I think it was for the 599 GTO was the first car that received that as an OE fitment, I think, if I remember correctly.
Is that timeline stack correctly?
Yeah.
Yeah.
It was about the same time.
I went on the GTO launch also.
That was really good.
It sounded great.
The launch sounded great.
The car sounded even better.
Yeah and then PS4 just changed the world because PS4 was now Pilot Sport Cup 2 levels of grip or near as makes no difference in the real world.
Even in low temperatures and in the wet.
And then there is the Michelin all season line, which is PSAS.
So Pilot all sport, is it Pilot Sport all season?
Yeah.
I don't know.
PSAS4 now.
I have all season fours on the minivan and I have all season three plus, which was immediate predecessor on the Lotus, which is a strange choice, but the way that car breaks away is very sudden and I like.
You wanted a more progressive departure and honestly the grip level provided by those despite being all seasons is like immense.
It outgrips the original factory Yokos.
So I had the non R-Compound Yokos, AD08 was the one and I have AD007 or something.
But yeah, those all seasons outgrip the original summer near R-Compound tires and then break away so beautifully that I love them.
It helps dull the departure, suddenness of the departure of an otherwise slightly sketchy car.
But this sort of got me thinking we should do a whole episode on tires because there's only one thing that touches the ground.
You're looking around like you're very confused.
What's that?
Looking for the thing that touches the ground.
Is it the tires?
It's a tire.
Ah, okay.
Yeah.
I'm sure this happens to you a lot.
People ask advice on tires and my first piece of advice is don't be cheap.
Mine is Michelin's.
I think we're saying the same thing.
Michelin's are almost always the most expensive.
Also it's interesting to use it as, but I think the 4S's are actually quite reasonably priced for what they are.
Like they cost less than they make.
They simultaneously continue to make the, I don't know, is it the PS2 that they still make?
They make a lot of different.
Yeah.
The PS2 is still made and it's more expensive than the 4S and the 4S is a better tire.
And the only time to buy the PS2 is when they don't make the 4S in the size you need.
Yeah.
I mean, PS2 I don't, I remember liking.
I don't remember loving.
PSS was a, as you said, a big step up.
And then there's, there is a Pilot Sport 4 and a 4S. I don't have too much experience with the 4.
Even though that's an OE fitment, that tends to be OE fitment on things like BMW stuff.
We'll use PS4 and I feel like that's the optional tire now on GR86 maybe.
Something hot hatchy or something hot that I drove recently was PS4 and I thought, why not S?
I want more S. But yeah, the advice is go buy the best tire that meets your requirements and matches your driving style.
But people really forget that at the end of the day, you can have the best car in the world with the worst tires on it and it's going to be a shit pile.
It's always an interesting reference point also when you're looking at a used car and you feel like it has Michelins and you're like, that's going to be a good car.
Done.
How weird is that?
So is that just the two of us that feel that way?
I've definitely come across other people when you see a, when you're looking at considering buying a used car that the type of tires that the owner has chosen to put on it is always indicative to me.
Yeah.
I think any car that has Michelins on it will automatically.
PPI pretty decently.
I don't, I don't, yeah.
You're not going to spend the money, you know, you're not going to buy the, the maybe least obvious choice if you don't care about the car.
Yes.
What gets me are the people who, I'm sorry to be this way now, we're all celebratory and everyone's nice right now.
It's about to change.
It's about the people who are like, I spent all the money and I put the Pirelli's on it.
Well because they're Italian and there's a Pirelli banner at the formula one track or something like that.
That's hard marketing.
Are we going to have to talk about Pirelli's now?
It's up to you.
I mean, I think it might chance.
It costs us a chance for sponsorship ever.
On motorcycles, they are the best tires in the world.
Really?
Yes.
Now, how is it that they're so terrible on cars?
Oops.
I just, I don't know.
I have never met a Pirelli that I've liked.
I like the old ones.
Oh, like 40 years ago.
Yeah.
Like CN 36s and CN 12s.
Because they look cool.
Yes.
Yes.
To me, that's a very important part for an old car.
You have an entirely different set of criteria for an old car, although it depends what it is.
And also the Michelin XWX was always such an iconic tire that was standard fitment to a bunch of Italian exotics plus the Mercedes 450 SEL 6.9, which I always enjoyed.
It's like Maserati Bora and Ferrari Daytona and 6.9.
But the CN tires, look, they looked so cool.
Yes.
They have that sort of octagonal, what...
The CN 36s do have the angled...
Herringbone.
Yeah.
Herringbone rectangle blocks.
Yeah.
I have those on my Citroen, even though it's a French car.
It should have Michelins, but Michelins cost twice as much.
And I figured I was not going to be, I don't know, grip maxing the Citroen.
You know what's funny?
When I bought the Ferrari from you, it had Comp TAs on it.
Yes.
You have good riches.
Yeah.
And they were just timing out and it was timed.
So I was looking at Michelin XWXs and the Pirelli CN 36s.
And the XWXs were four times the price, I think it was.
These are now made not by Michelin anymore, by the way.
They're made by Coker.
And I thought, okay, what I learned, very cursory research, was that they're effectively the original tire in a continuation by Coker, whereas the Pirelli stuff was re-engineered with modern construction methods but kept the same grip designs and compounds.
And so I was heavily leaning towards the Pirelli and then I found the Fredestein Sprint Classics.
And I've been yelled at a couple times from people that say that those look like period snow tires.
I don't care what they look like because they were inexpensive and they're fantastic.
I cannot believe the grip that that Ferrari has and then how beautifully it breaks away when you're sliding.
I would always put them on, when I was flipping 912s, I'd always put them on 912s because they had the right blend of goodness, price and look.
Fredesteins.
Yeah, the Sprint Classics.
And I had them on my Giulietta as well.
Huh, okay.
Fredestein has been the big surprise and that's kind of where I want us to get there because this is a tire company that no one knows.
Certainly not in North America.
No.
They're huge in Europe.
So it's a Dutch company, which would be Fredestein, would be the proper pronunciation probably, but you can call it Vredestein or Fredentein, or no.
And they have, so they popped onto the scene, to my attention, with Sprint Classics on the Ferrari.
And then I was talking to a bunch of different tire companies when we did the E30 M3 versus 2.316 Race.
So this was part of an Icons episode on M3 and I wanted, the Mercedes 190E and the 2.316 and the E30 M3 BMW came out just far enough apart from each other, 86 in the US versus 88, that there was a different generation of tire.
Pirelli had come up with, or Conti or Pirelli had come up with all new tires in those intervening two years.
And so what I wanted was Randy Post to set a lap time on both of the cars and discuss them but have them be on the same rubber.
And Fredestein made a tire called the Sprint Plus that was in the stock 205-55-15 size and I contacted Fredestein.
I said, can you do me a favor, send me this, this is for testing and whatever.
They were fantastic.
Yeah, that's what I have on my Cosworth now.
Oh, do you?
Yeah.
That's right, we do it because you bought it in Europe where they probably are used to seeing that.
I don't think that tire is available anymore in the US.
Oh really?
Something tells me that there was, the last time I looked on tire rack it wasn't.
But it was inexpensive.
It did so well on the abusive track day.
I mean, well, I'll throw a video of Randy doing donuts in my 2.3 16 and the tires didn't care.
I mean, he did long, hard, abusive donuts and we tracked the cars all day.
We wound up flat spotting the set on the Mercedes because my ABS gave out during filming.
It was a wheel speed sensor and then so when Fredestein called and they were like, hey, what do you think?
And I'm like, I loved them but I can't drive this car because you know, the octagonal tires, they sent me another set and they're fabulous, they're so good.
And then so, I mean, it's very interesting that I've gone from a Bridgestone boy always to I've not, to I found this whole Michelin thing and it would be my dream to have Michelins on every car that I own.
However, Michelin doesn't make tires in a lot of the smaller enthusiast sizes that we want.
Yeah, I mean, 15s, your choices are limited.
The smallest size the 4S comes in is 18 or maybe 17.
And so if you're running a car from the 90s that is on 16s or 15s or 14s or 13s, if you're from the 70s then yeah, you don't have a lot of choices.
You can do the Coker XWX's which certainly look right.
They grip well.
That's what's on the Miura actually.
Okay.
They grip really well.
Yeah.
Either that or it's just that car is fundamentally amazing when hello, it's a fucking Miura.
Double wishbones.
Yeah.
But I wound up going, I've had like 50 million sets of Yokohama S drives for example.
Yeah, because if you're 15 inch requirement, there's like two or three sizes.
And they were replaced with Yokohama Fleva, which I'm sorry, whoever came up with that name, F-L-E-V-A, like whoever came up with that name needs to be shot.
And then I was talking to a guy who worked for Yokohama and he's like, they're marginally better than S drives, but I've never had a set of S drives that was round.
Every car I have with them, they grip well, they're wonderful tires, but yeah, I mean, the right speed, you might have a moment.
Enter orbit.
No, I'm thinking you have an orgasm from all the vibration.
It's the vibration.
I mean, it's like my E30 wagons on S drive still, and they're about bald and I'm happy about it because the car is like driving.
So would you do Sprint Pluses?
If they're available, I would do Sprint Pluses.
I would, I've had really good luck with Dunlop stuff.
So the Z2 and Z3, Z2 Starspec and Z3s have been good.
They wear quickly, but they're grippy as all hell.
I have Z3s on Beatrice and Z3s on the Scirocco right now.
I don't think they're as aggressive as the RE71s that I previously had, RE71Rs, but there are plenty of choices.
I won't do business with Hankook, because they wouldn't warranty a set of tires that were eight months old and were cracked radially the entire way around, and they're like, well, it's obviously a manufacturing defect, but best we can do is give you a set of four tires at our discounted price, and the discounted price that they would give me the set of four for was greater than Tyrac for selling them for.
And I'm like, come on, this is like, these tires have no miles on them.
It's clearly a manufacturing defect.
It was three of them out of the four, and they're like, yeah, no, we can give you this great deal.
And I'm like, then fuck you.
So Hankook is out.
Were the tires any good?
No.
I mean, that's one of the, I think we run Ventus, Hankook Ventus as one of some of the alternate tires in the race car, and I don't know.
Some of the Kumo stuff has been great lately.
I just don't have.
Rover has Kumo's.
Yes.
Solus.
Solus Kumho?
Is that what you called it?
No, that's what it says on the tire.
I know.
It's a very awkward name.
It's going to get us in trouble on this.
It's just a collection of letters.
Yeah.
It's slightly unfortunate.
But I'm in this tire dilemma right now, before we get to the science-y stuff behind tires, because as you know, I have Pilot Sport 4S's on the E-Golf, which has decimated range.
And a variety of roads too, I'm sure.
Oh my God, they're so good.
That car, I mean, we've talked about it before, 1.07 G on the skid pad.
It's obscene.
It's so much grip.
And they're great in the rain.
They're great in the dry.
They're great everywhere.
I love these tires, however.
I also went to 18s.
And when I did this back in the day, this is now three years ago, I got two identical sets of 18-inch Volkswagen Seren wheels, which are a Mark VI wheel.
And I put one set of Pilot Sport 4S's on one of them, and one set of Pilot Sport All Season 3 Plus's on the other.
And I got three identical E-Golfs.
One of them was fully stock.
They all had the same mileage on it, same everything.
One was fully stock on the Bridgestone Ecopia EP422's.
The other one had the All Seasons, and the third one had the PS4S. And we did exactly the same, with the same amount of mass in each car.
So two people plus ballast to equal the mass out.
All three cars were charged on the same charger at the same time, at the same place.
Left and did the same route together, with the same climate control settings.
I went crazy on this, and we really did keep it as even as possible.
And the result was both Michelins lost exactly the same amount of range, which was 19%.
And this was...
Of 126 miles.
125.
Yeah.
And the problem there with that test was that it was mostly...
We drove like Christians the whole time, it was just...
We also kept passing each other.
It was a whole thing.
But 19% of mostly slow driving.
In the faster type driving that I do, I'm seeing a more like 40% hit.
Which is huge.
Is that aero, or is that rolling resistance?
Yes.
Probably both.
It's a combination of aero.
Probably both.
Well, hold on.
One of the people who participated in that test was my friend Colin and his wife Shannon.
And Shannon's car, she is the champ.
She's been averaging...
So the car's rated at 125 miles.
I was averaging 140 on the stock tires, so the Z-Golfs do pretty well.
And then just like my old one, which was an 83 mile car, an average of 97, so it's overperforming, everything's great.
She's averaging like 160 to 170 a charge, because she's mostly low speed in city and she drives like a reasonable person, clearly.
And they just replaced the factory size with all season fours, thinking, oh, it's the same 205, 55, 16, all season four.
They got the same 40% hit.
Or T. 40.
35.
I think theirs was 35%.
And they were like, something broke on the E-Golf, swapped factory tires back on, boom, fine.
And that's just the tires.
Yeah, it's not the wheels.
Kept the wheels.
Right, because the aero of those factory wheels is...
Yeah.
So he wound up throwing, hi Colin, if you're listening, wound up throwing those all season fours on his old 911, because it's the right size for that car.
He absolutely loves them.
Bought another set of Bridgestone Ecopia EP422s and boom, right back to 160 miles of range.
So to me, the biggest surprise is how enormous the impact of rolling races can be.
Like 40% for two different tires of the same size.
That's shocking.
Shocking.
So I'm going to try to, so my PS4Ss are wearing, weird, yeah, they have 14,000 miles on them, which is unbelievable, because let's say the original EP422s, the Bridgestones, were okay, they weren't bad.
They have a 540 treadwear rating on them.
And all four of them, I rotated them like six times, all four of them were bald at 12,500 miles, like zero tread left when I returned that car on the lease.
This car, I now have, the PS4Ss, they have a 200 treadwear, so 200, 200, 240?
Oh, I think it's a little higher than 200. 280, whatever it is, substantially lower than the 540 on the Bridgestones.
So I was kind of worried these tires were going to be bald in 6,000 miles and it's been 14,000.
That's the other thing about 4Ss is that when they came out and I was like, how is this tire, it's like the tire that violates physics because there's so much good performance in both dry and wet and cold temperatures and they don't wear fast.
Yeah, it's unbelievable.
It's like, what the hell?
Because I mean, I remember as a kid, my dad would complain about how he would get like maybe 10,000 miles out of a set of tires, like maybe.
Why?
It's mostly me.
I mean, it depends on how you drive it.
I drive like a...
Yeah, so to get 14,000...
It's unbelievable.
And one of them is really good because the one thing about these tires, maybe it's just the E-Golf, maybe this is where I'm going, maybe it's the Michelins.
I get more flats than I've ever...
I mean, I've never had so many...
From foreign object debris?
From foreign object debris.
It's unbelievable.
I think I've had eight flat tires on that car in 14,000 miles.
And you don't have a spare.
And there's no spare.
So one of them is below wear bars.
Two are maybe 3, 30 seconds and one of them is probably 7, 30 seconds.
So this is rainy season here.
When it rains, it pours in the Bay Area.
We get a lot of rain.
And so I started thinking maybe I should put the factory 16s back on the car to get some of my range back and then I can have a winter set of tires for this winter and I'll be able to use these PS4Ss for one more summer season before I have to replace all four of them.
And so I started looking at EP422s again and there are three different grades of them.
Some is one's VW spec, one is somebody else's spec, whatever.
And then I found that the European Union has now mandated rolling resistance grading for all the tires.
So it's like tread wear and temperature and what is the third one?
Traction and temperature.
So tread wear is wet performance and oh my god, we're doing a whole thing on, it's AA. So like it's wet and heat.
Yeah.
Temperature.
That's what I said.
Temperature and water.
Hydroplaning resistance.
But we'll get into that in a second.
So they're given an A through either E or D or F grade on rolling resistance.
With A being the best.
A being the best.
I think the PS4Ss are like a D or an E. Which that would explain.
You would confirm through your experimental testing.
But I started to do research on like the Bridgestones are a B. And I thought okay.
Factory tires.
Factory EP422s.
Like let me just go look at other eco-focused tires in that original size.
Wouldn't you know?
Two Freda Science pop up.
One is their High Track all season, which is a US only all season.
And one is their Quattrac, which looks like an old Eagle F1 with these like radial cool things.
I have those on the cabi.
The cabriolet.
And I like them.
So I'm like okay let me look at this.
Those two tires decimated the entire rest of the grand touring performance class on Tyrax testing.
In terms of all around performance?
Everything.
One of them.
I don't remember which one it was.
Was like what we like about it.
Everything.
We wish other tires would be this good.
And I'm like.
From Freda Stein.
Fuck that.
I'm such a Michelin fan.
And like Bridgestone Boy and Dunlop.
Like all these other different.
Where the hell have we been that Freda Stein gets a tire that makes Tyrax say that?
So I mean in our experience with Sprint Classics and the Sprint Plus.
And the Quattrax that are on the cabi.
I think.
So I'm going to put.
I'm going to probably put Quattrax on the because they're on the A. They're A rated.
So maybe I'll get even more range.
250.
Seven million miles out of a double A battery.
Yeah I just.
This episode should be called where the fuck did Freda Stein come from?
I mean we should have done some research if we really want to answer that question but it seems to be Holland.
I'm going to leave now.
Right.
Be nice to me.
It's Christmas.
Okay.
So let's talk about tires.
We just did.
No.
I mean I think there's probably some usable information that we could give to other people rather than me rattling off about tires.
I think there's a lot of lack of understanding about tire sizes and grading and things like that.
And I think we should just take this time to explain that.
Okay.
The tires have a size.
What is it?
Amazing.
Yeah.
Like your shoe.
What does it mean?
The first number is width.
In?
Millimeters.
Okay.
So a 205. 205 millimeters.
20.5 centimeters.
And that is the tread width.
Okay.
Next number.
It's aspect ratio.
Which means?
It's a percentage of the width.
Which.
Is the height of the sidewall.
Yes.
So a 205.60 for example.
The sidewall height is 60 percent of the width of the tire.
Of the tire.
Right.
And then the 16.
The diameter of the tire and wheel.
In inches.
Which is annoying that.
And there will be an R between those last two numbers if it's a radial tire.
Which everything is at this point.
Almost.
Yeah.
And then there will be another.
In the whole world.
Yours maybe not.
Because you know.
I need bias ply tires for maximum death risk.
And then there will be like a letter before the R which is the speed rating.
Like ZR.
Sometimes yes.
Or HR.
Okay.
So a 255.50.18 is it's annoying that the 255 is measured in millimeters.
I.E. metric.
And the second number is percentage.
And the third number is inches.
Which is dumb.
Yes.
And these conventions are global.
Unless you're doing a metric wheel which was done briefly by Michelin in the 1980s.
With TRX.
And those they came in 390 millimeter diameter and 420 millimeter diameter.
Which we don't know what that means because we're American. 390 is like between 15 and 16.
I think it's 15.6 inches or something like that.
Divide it by 2.54.
Yes.
And then 420 will be taller still.
And so if you go to a wider tire you need to reduce the aspect ratio or you're changing the overall diameter and the height of the car and the tire.
Correct.
And that is.
That's why you use the tirecalculator.com or whatever it is to enter your sizes.
So that if you're trying to plus size your tires you would depending on how much you've increased the width you might decrease the aspect ratio to keep the same outer diameter.
Why is that important?
So that your ABS sensors and speedometer and odometer and gearing are all as close as possible to original.
Yeah.
Also suspension design.
Remember that the distance between the center axle or center of the wheel and the contact patch i.e. the ground is part of how the vehicle was tuned to begin with.
And so if you vastly increase the overall diameter of your tire you're increasing the lever arm and changing all of the geometry of your suspension.
And I'm not a fan.
So I'm putting 33s on an off-roader or anything.
Oh speaking of oversized tires I bought a shitty new car with a salvage title and no paint.
It sounds a lot like your Beatrice.
But.
It's the same color.
It's also a straight six.
It's a it's a it's a later one it's a V6 it's an M112.
I'm leaving.
It was $1,300.
You bought a you spend $1,300 on something with a V6.
Says the man who's got a V6 minivan.
And you spent quite a bit more than $1,300.
You spent more than $1,300.
My Vangina is not salvage title.
Yes, my van is named Vangina matching numbers.
Yeah.
Good.
My Vangina's got all original paint.
Have you metered it?
Right.
So I bought a $1,300 salvage title C280 in 1999 with no clear coat on it for similar reasons that you bought Beatrice.
Because you're stupid.
Yes.
Okay.
Don't worry.
I split it three ways.
So actually my share was only $433 and 33 cents.
Okay.
So for what and why?
So when I originally posted that I had simply bought this car on on my Instagram story and people were like, why did you do that?
Some people were like, it's beautiful.
And they were just like very complimentary.
And I was like, are you blind?
And then other people were like, why did you buy that shit heap?
Especially with the V6 instead of the inline six, because up until 97 they were available with inline sixes, the good twin cam 24 valve.
And I just said for reasons.
And then, you know, the next photo is a tech sticker on the car and we bought winter tires for it.
And only one of my co-owners in this car is the person who also owns a third of the Rover SD1 with us.
And this is how I found out about the new C280 because you said to me, you're going to have to buy us out on the Rover because we spent all our money on some other foolish, irresponsible and inexpensive activity, which is called Rally Cross, which you had never heard of.
I have.
You had?
Yeah.
Oh, you acted surprised to see what we were doing.
I was surprised that I didn't get a fucking invite.
All I know is everything is fine in my life and everything is wonderful and I'm having a great weekend until I get a video from you rally crossing a fucking W202 and I was so jealous that I was sitting like working on my house like an imbecile while you were having so much fun.
How dare you?
So this was the result of us going on a rally while you were at Lemons.
And so this all hatched when the other two owners of the car were drunk one night after we had finished rallying for the day and they're like, we should go Rally Cross.
And then they're like, let's go to Craigslist and set a maximum price of $3,000 and see what we can buy to Rally Cross.
And so I was like, yeah, I'm interested.
So we went and looked at this thing and bought it on a Wednesday and then put new tires on it on Friday and then Saturday we were rally crossing.
So Rally Cross is, it's a combination of rally and auto cross is probably where the name came from.
If I had to guess where the name Rally Cross came from muddy, dirty autocross, right?
Yeah, it's a, it's a non-paved course that is marked by cones with pointer cones.
And if you hit a cone, you take a, you add a second to your time.
So that's like autocross, but it's not paved and it is incredibly, I mean, it's more, it's more expensive probably than autocross.
How much does an autocross cost?
Anywhere between here.
I mean, it depends on dramatic.
Yeah, here.
How much does an autocross cost from SCCA?
I think the last one I did was a hundred bucks.
So it costs the same as an autocross.
So it was $95 to enter plus an SCCA membership, which you should have anyway, if you're an enthusiast motorist.
So it's a lot less expensive than a track day.
And it's a...
Until you break the car.
No.
Crack it in half.
No, not even then.
Crack it, oil pan damage.
Even then it's not more expensive than a track day because the whole, my share of the car was $433 plus $95 to entry.
Plus tires.
Plus tires.
Plus the transmission pan that you probably smashed in, plus broken suspension.
The car is in the same condition in which it started.
This is unbelievable.
I'm so jealous.
It's really, really fun.
I highly recommend anybody to try rallycross.
Yeah.
I'm coming with you the next time.
Yeah, you should.
You should.
We should buy another...
I was just going to bring the Rover.
My experience is much too poor on that car.
You'll collapse...
Van?
Yeah.
The van.
My Vangina is a rallycross champion.
Champion.
Yes.
You actually suggested I take the E-Golf.
I think the E-Golf would be perfect.
The guy who was the fastest in our run group was driving an electric Mini.
I mean, it makes sense.
Yeah, but I want a rear-wheel drive.
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, there was no other rear-wheel drive cars besides ours other than an E36 318 hatchback, which is the multi-link suspension.
It has had tires that were placarded...
E36 hatch.
Sorry.
It's not a trailing arm.
Instead of multi-link.
Yeah.
And it had tires that were placarded as for off-road...
They're not DOT tires.
Wow.
So it...
Okay, so you bought Snows?
We bought Snows.
We wanted to run in the stock class, and if you want to run in the stock, you need a DOT tire that's rated for highway use, and so you can't run a full competition.
So that's the best tire.
But a winter tire is the best for that mud sort of situation you have in all seasons?
You would run a TAK02, which is like a mud sort of off-roading tire, but they were not available in the size that we needed, which was like 205...
I think we went up 5% on aspect ratio, so 205, 60, or 65 15s, and the TAK02 or other similar mud tire was not available in that size.
Oh my God.
It was kind of an inspired choice, that car, honestly, because it has a lot of suspension travel and good cushy suspension and expensively engineered suspension and lots of travel.
The car was cheap.
I mean, they thought we were insane, because everybody else, there was a front-wheel drive horde and an all-wheel drive horde, and then there's the two rear-wheel drive cars, which were just...
Luxury.
Luxuriously going sideways everywhere at a low rate of speed compared to the front-wheel drive cars.
So what were the front-wheel drive cars over there?
Ford Focus, some quite prepared.
Ford Focus, there was a guy in a Chevy Spark in the electric mini and the CRX, and there was a Mk1 Scirocco and a Mk1 GTI.
I mean, I love how, especially in the Bay Area, there are no, there exists no Mk1 Volkswagens and there's a Mk1 Scirocco.
Those things are like...
Yeah.
It was all prepared, heavily prepared.
He was running in the modified front-wheel drive class, and there was a Mk4 Golf, I mean, anything that's sort of...
There was a Chevy Sprint Turbo.
How can I leave that out?
How the...
Three cylinders.
What?
They were on their third one.
They were on their way to a round of Chevy Sprint Turbo on the first car, and then...
Apparently not if they destroyed two of them already.
Rallycross did that.
That car I particularly enjoyed because it made a great deal of noise and none of it was engine or tire noise.
It was all like the hood rattling and the bumper vibrating, like weird noises from the suspension.
And so you could hear this thing coming from quite far away, and all of the noise was not sort of ordinary car noise.
So they were on their third one because they knew how to work on those things, and that was pretty hilarious also.
This is unbelievable.
This means we've been in close contact with three Chevy Sprint Turbos.
Yes, because two of my co-founders, each of them have Sprint Turbos, one red and one white.
That's so crazy.
All right.
So I highly recommend the activity because it is cheap and an absolute barrel of laughs.
After we finished, all three of us were like, I think this is...
Not I think.
This is more fun than a track day, in my opinion.
I think it's more fun than a track day because you spend a lot of time past the limit, almost exclusively past the limit.
Well, so do I on a race car.
Yeah.
Most people in the track days don't do that, especially at fast tracks like...
You don't want to do that at a lot of places at Laguna, for example, or you don't want to do that at Sonoma because there's a lot of stuff to hit.
I know you just spent an entire 13 hours doing that, but most people...
It's a lot easier.
It's a lot lower stakes to spend time past the limit because you're not ever going very fast.
I think we locked it in first gear and left it in first gear for the entire run.
And it obviously teaches you a lot about managing that particular car past the limit.
So I highly recommend it because it's so cheap and hilarious.
That's amazing.
Yeah.
I guess the only downfall, the only real...
The only place where Lemons is so much better is I had...
So we split the car three ways and I had four and a half, five hours of seat time over a weekend.
Yes.
This is like an autocross where you get a handful of couple minute runs and this was a long course.
It was nice, but it was still...
The cumulative total of driving minutes is quite low, so you spend an entire day.
And if you're used to autocross, you'll be like, yeah, that's just the way it is, everybody's got to get their run in.
But if you're used to...
Then again, you probably didn't leave exhausted.
I averaged 160 beats per minute for two and a half hours on my stint, my heart rate.
I was so physically exhausted.
My friend's like, that's literally a half marathon.
Yeah.
I don't understand how you can run a stint that long because after 20 or 30 minutes on the track, I'm like, okay, I need to discontinue.
Yeah.
I was exhausted.
I went home on Sunday and I dropped because Sunday's stint was a little bit less.
I think my average heart rate was 143 or something, but it still is very, very physically demanding and it's a long time.
That level of concentration is unmatched by any other activity that I can think of.
Racing that hard, yeah.
Just, yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, I could use some more cardio at this point, but I was a little bit worried that I was going to be that guy who died in the car when I saw my heart rate.
I was like, yeah.
Of course, Randy Popes was making fun of me, but I beat Randy.
Don't tell anyone, but my fastest lap was faster than Randy's lap.
Normally, I don't look at fastest lap.
I always look at, I'll go back to the data after the race and look at- Did anyone ever at any point have a clean lap?
No.
You can't.
There's too much traffic.
Yeah.
I don't think I ever had a full clean lap.
Really what I do is I look at all of our laps for each of us for a segment and then I throw out anything that had a full course yellow or just 10 or 15 seconds over the sort of normal time and then I average what's left.
Typically Randy's somewhere between 1.5 and 1.9 seconds per lap on average faster than I am.
This time, I beat that asshole on one lap.
My fastest lap was seven tenths of a second faster than his and I'm sure it was a fluke and I'm sure he never got to run that clean and I don't care because I beat an SCCA Hall of Fame race car driver around Sonoma and I'm sticking to that story.
Okay.
Congratulations on your victory.
Thank you.
Sorry, Randy.
I hope he doesn't listen to this.
We went down a very deep rabbit hole just now.
Weren't we talking about tires, sizes?
So there's size and then obviously there's category.
So Tire Act does a really good job of splitting these tires up based on, there's no like, I am a ultra high performance tire.
There's no one measure and it's not a self certification program or something but based on a tire's construction type and tread design and of course compound, there are different categories of tires and so Tire Act will break them up and we're not sponsored by Tire Act or anything.
I've just used them to buy every tire I've ever bought for my whole life.
Really?
Yeah.
Oh.
You don't?
No.
I buy them from the cheapest place.
Which is Tire Act?
Costco is cheaper.
You can get one free but Costco is draconian about deviating from factory size.
If you're not putting tires on the car that are exactly matching the sticker and the door jam, they're like, no, we won't do that and then they get really draconian and heaven forbid you have the wrong size wheel on your car and therefore you can't put the right size tire.
I've literally had to be like, I know what I'm doing.
I've run the math.
Here all of it is.
Just put the fucking tires on the car that I bought from you.
Is that really worth the $10 you saved over Tire Act?
It'll save you like $150.
Oh, I just go look.
I go to tireact.com.
I enter the tire size that I want.
I select it.
I have it delivered either to my house or straight to my tire shop and I drop the wheels off and say mount these and then I pick them up and we're done.
I have also for some of like the weird vintage tires, for example, like the Daimler Double Six that had these weird Pirelli.
They weren't weird.
They were Chintorado CN12s if I remember correctly.
There's a great place in the UK called Longstone Tire and they get the tires to you in like four days and they have a lot of weird vintage tires, but I got the tires for the Citroën also.
So if you need like vintage tires, Tire Act is not going to have like CN36s or CN12s or XWXs.
They also did not have 15565SR13s which is the front tires or 16560SR14s which are the rear tires on the beat.
Yeah.
So I did buy those from two different people in on eBay, but I got Petlas, well then Petlas is the name of the tire apparently, the Turkish.
Oh, it was like some fabulous name like Petlas Fabuloso or shit, Splendid, Splendid, something like that name, but I bought those on eBay.
Everything else comes from Tire.
But anyway, you pick your performance category based on like you do not run summer tires in the winter.
You do not run them below 50 Fahrenheit, 10 Celsius.
They are not safe for use there and it gets even worse when it's cold and wet.
And then Four Ss do pretty decently in the high 40s.
Yeah, they are totally fine in the high 40s.
I mean, those are kind of the exception, but they do like the first couple turns I make in the e-golf when it's cold, they are definitely at a reduced amount of grip.
And then if it's, when it's raining in the Bay Area, it's always in the 50s.
It's always somewhere between 48 and 55 degrees and when the tires are cold and it's raining and it's cold outside, holy shit.
I did that with cup twos once.
Fuck cup twos.
Yeah, that scared the absolute piss out of me.
Isn't that what happened to your GT3 without you driving?
Yes.
Cup twos.
No, thanks.
I will not have them.
So they are, they're so aggressive that when they break, the way they break away is like you've hit an ice patch, especially in the, in if there's any water anywhere to be found in the next neighborhood.
Yes.
But then there are, there's treadwear rating, which is a non-certified sort of standardized thing.
So the idea there is a base, the base rating is 100.
And so if a tire gets a rating of 150, it should wear 150% better or 50% better than the 100.
So if the 100 treadwear tire lasted you 10,000 miles, you should get 15,000 miles out of the 150.
In practice, it doesn't work that way. 200 is a very sticky tire.
Well, 200 is a tire that wears out quickly.
Yes.
It doesn't necessarily have to be sticky.
Yes, that's right.
So one of the ways that we've all started to categorize tires into these max performance summer, ultra high performance, high performance, all this other stuff is treadwear.
Because typically the more aggressive a tire is, the faster it will wear, but it doesn't necessarily have to be that way, again, in this case.
But if the baseline is 100, then that's a very, very sticky, very slow wearing, fast wearing, sorry.
Yes.
Years and years and years ago.
And so tires have gotten better and better and better at wear.
I mean, there was a, what the hell was that tire that was on the Dodge Viper ACR?
Oh, this was kind of a cheater tire.
It had a treadwear rating of 20.
20.
Really?
They called it 120, but the tires that we drove at Motor Trends had 20 on them.
I've seen 20.
I've seen 60.
Trofeo Rs or 60, I think.
And Pirelli's fall apart.
You were there for filming Dark Horse.
Dark Horse, yeah.
And one of the rears just packed up and departed pretty spectacularly.
Man.
And also, look at the Lucid.
Same exact failure.
And the Sapphire.
That's a Pirelli special.
You know, I hate to shit on any company, broadly speaking, but I said I never met a Pirelli I liked.
When we're filming, we do things to tires that just don't happen in the real world.
We're just so hard on them.
And Anthony and I will look at the tires that are on the car and make a decision.
If it's Michelins, we're not worried.
Any set of Michelins will make it through an entire shoot.
We will ask for backup tires just in case we get a flat, but that's kind of it.
If there are Pirellis on the car, not only do we get a backup set, but then we say no burnouts, no slides.
And if you watch the Dark Horse video that should have made a debut a couple days ago, I never got sideways in all the action sequences.
I'm in the Dark Horse and Randy Popes is in the BMW M4.
And he was hooning sideways, crazy tire smoke all over the place.
We never thought about it.
We never worried about it.
But the Mustang had Pirellis on it.
We said no fuckery at all.
And we got the lap time out of them when they were brand new.
We did just normal sort of dynamic filming with no sliding.
And then I did one e-brake slide in first gear.
So I don't know, 26 miles an hour, did a 180 e-brake, Randy flies by in the M4, I dump the clutch in first and the tire exploded.
And we were like, oh fuck, like we only have one spare set of rears and now I've just destroyed in one take.
And I don't know if you guys know this, but it takes a lot of takes to do some of these action sequences.
We were genuinely concerned that we wouldn't make it through.
And that's Pirellis.
Every time we have a Pirelli that happens, Continentals are almost as bad.
Bridgestones are quite a bit better.
But when I see that I can make it through three days of filming on a set of PS4S's or all seasons or whatever, we do horrible shit and they just wear perfectly down to the wear bars and go away versus other tires that delaminate, chunks are missing, they fall apart, they blow up.
I have to think that in the real world, I would much rather be in those Michelins.
Michelin apparently has quite a bit bigger development budget than anybody else.
Maybe twice as much as the next closest competitor is what I've heard.
Or possibly even more than that.
I've heard other tire companies say that their development budget is basically bigger than everyone else's combined.
And I'm sure that was...
It seems to be born out in the way the products behave.
It just lasts forever.
It's amazing.
Look, I'll give credit to Bridgestone on that, 71RS, they dealt with two days of racing.
Where each set of tires dealt with a full day of racing, the front left on our car was worn out by the end of the race, but the other three were easily usable again.
But that is wearing more quickly than some of the other 300 and 400 tire wear tires that people use.
But nothing beats a Michelin.
My God, my God.
If we get PS4Ss on that race car, I don't think it would have outgripped the Pirellis, but they would last for like three seasons.
Yes.
It would be so awesome.
How old are your tires?
2017.
Oh, they've been sitting?
No.
Have you been using them?
Six races a year.
They're totally fine.
They're brand new.
Yep.
It's the Michelin way.
That's why I would always put Michelins on things if I could, but there's just, you know, for some of these weird applications, especially for old cars, that would be my one request to change the, in the universe would be better vintage Michelin support.
Michelin has had many PR people through the years and I've talked to different management and they keep shuffling management in the US.
I don't know what is going on over there, but they did have a big initiative to relaunch enthusiast sizes and I just heard somebody else just did this.
So Michelin does a good job of it with their like 50s and 60s tires.
You can get Xs, radial Xs, which is the original radial tire from the 50s probably, or maybe even the late 40s and the XAS and the XVS and the XWX, all these like 50s and 60s tires are available, but there's a big gap that happens after the, like about 1980.
Michelin has been, sorry, Pirelli has good vintage availability.
The P7s are available now and you know, the Countach tire, I guess that is a P7 and who else has recently come out with an, Yokohama, A008s are available.
In fact, that's what I put on my mom's 911 in the 80s.
So it's nice to hear because some of the, most of my cars have really limited availability and if not none.
And there was a point at which, so E30s are everywhere in the Bay area still, but they're mostly gone throughout the rest of the country.
Their tire in the U.S. was a 14 and it was a 195 60 14.
I don't remember what, I never had 14s on any of my, yeah, well I don't remember what size it was.
I think it was 195 60 14.
And there was at one point not a single tire available in that size.
And I was complaining to some Michelin people and some guys I know at Tire Act, like help, and they're like, there's no market for this.
Think about how expensive it is to develop and manufacture a tire that instead of hundreds Just leave the old one in production then.
Yeah, but it's not, so take that factory space from a tire that will sell 17 sets a year versus one that will sell 250 sets a day.
I hate the economics of it, but that's the reality.
But it has now emerged.
I mean.
We're getting there.
Pirelli's done it and so has Michelin and Yokohama.
Somebody just launched a line of like 80 series tires.
There were for a while there, so 185 60 14 is a very popular size for 80s cars because all of the original VW Mark 1 and Mark 2 stuff was that size.
Miata was also that size, NA.
And then also all the Civics of the day were 185 60 14, so Honda stuff.
And there was for a while there almost nothing, but Dunlop has Z3, which is their latest super high performance, or I think it's a max performance summer available in 185 60 14.
And so of course I have it on the Scirocco.
And then the 15s, Fredestein had that sprint plus.
For a while there, there was only one choice, which was DZ 101, which is a Dunlop, which was not a good tire.
And Yoko S-Drive, which was not a round tire, but a good but not round good, but not round.
And I've gone through so many sets of them and I'm just hoping somebody else will come out with a 205 50 515.
And so I know that this is now starting to be an emerging market where people are seeing, OK, these cars are now collectible enough on the same way that red lines were put back in production for all the muscle car guys and stuff like that.
Probably the sort of enthusiast momentum will.
Because of what it was for a long time was that size of tire that was owned by people who were just like sort of suffering through an old car because they couldn't get anything better.
And now it's transitioned into enthusiasts who are buying these tires.
And so just like a BMW M3 costs the same thing as a seven series when they're both 10 years old because in one case it's just depreciating, the other one it retains its value because enthusiasts keep the values up.
The tires I think will do the same.
I hope so because it was pretty upsetting when I couldn't get a single tire for the for the beat.
Oh my God, this is unbelievable.
And there are strange sizes, but you know, a normal car like somebody told me recently there was a period of time where you couldn't get a single tire for Volkswagen Beetle, which was I think 155 SR15s, 155 70 15s or something, but they just there was nothing available.
How the hell do you take the second most produced car in the history of the world and not have a single tire available?
But the landscape's definitely changed.
I remember this was true about the Miura you had to put TAs, the radial TAs that you had on the 308 and then Michelin, well, you Michelin's a workaround if you have nine eight rear wheels, but you can actually get the correct size.
They were $10,000 when they first came out for a set of tires for Miura SV, but Pirelli started making them.
This was, you know, 10 years ago, whatever.
Anyway, have other topics on the subject of tires?
Are we ready to?
I mean, we probably could round it out, do a whole episode on like UTOQ or the unified tire quality, whatever the sort of ratings of temperature resistance and and water.
So we didn't talk about speed ratings.
We didn't talk about speed ratings either.
I guess we're going to have to do that for another episode because it's Christmas Day and it is we've done an hour already.t