LILBENZ230

You know, I expected to go through 2 sets of rears for every set of fronts on this car. That has not been the case. The car is on its 3rd set of tires with me and each time, all four are worn out together. The first 4 went from 75% tread at purchase of the car used at 25,000 to 40,500 before ALL four were worn out at the same time. Replaced with Ecsta ASXs to 69,500, again, all four worn out together.

I get just as much front tire wear as rear tire wear. Alignment is monitored and in check. I think it is due to a couple of things.. 1. My spirited driving style on 2. the curvy roads all around here in the country.

At 12,000 miles the RFT on the BMW are holding up quite well. I can't wait to get rid of those things, though.. too damn rough.

johnand

Matt, what is your mix of city to highway driving?

LILBENZ230

Probably 50/50 almost.. But lots of "highway" time is really country back roads. It's demanding on front tires. The tire guy called it "Steer wear" on my car because the alignment was in spec.

Glyn M Ruck

Front wear is usually balanced to rear wear by the amount of braking demanded in your duty cycle.

LILBENZ230

John, for you..

I'm about 1,800 miles in on these Continental tires (car mileage - 71,232) and they are excellent so far. Grip and comfort increased at about the 600 mile mark, I assume from break in. We're "supposed" to get some snow here on Thursday and I hope to test the snow rating out and I will report back at that point.

skittles

LILBENZ! anymore info on that tranny connector leak? i think thats my problem..

Norwichdelta06

lilbenz those pics you have with the hid's onj the dark road...is that also with the HID fogs or just the HID headlamps?

bdgdl08

He just has the HIDs for his low beams.

LILBENZ230

Drew is correct.. HID lo-beams only.

Patrick, my car's transmission connector leak was fixed under warranty and it hasn't came back. I don't know a lot about the issue.. sorry.

I took my car on a 400 mile interstate trip last night. These tires are great at high speed stability, too.

johnand

Thanks for the update on the tires Matt

samaritrey

Yeah thanks matt ordering new tires this week so thanks

LILBENZ230

Road conditions tonight were very poor here. Lots of slush and snow-covered-ice on the roads. With these tires and ESP, my car was brilliant. A van in front of me lost control on a bridge, my car flashed its ESP light at me a few times but never wavered. Also, I was able to power up pretty steep grades that were covered in snow and ice. I kept my foot about 50% throttle and the car crawled up them with little drama, regulating wheelspin and staying perfectly straight. I felt much better in my car than in my friend's Pathfinder with 4WD.

samaritrey

what do you think of the sidewalls? i was about to buy the dws's but found out some people were having sidewall issues which has scared me. The Dws's are 356 the Bridgestones i have already are 432 and the Michelins i am thinking about are 524. that is a prety big price difference which is why i am not buying the Michelins right away.

Glyn M Ruck

Talk to splinter - he has the PS A/S Plus - think it's the "Plus" on his AMG. From discussions with him he is about as delighted with them as I am with my new 235/45/17 PS2's. splinter is running 245/40/17 all round with Koni yellow struts. - You can't run a 245 with standard struts & 8 or 8.5 wheels without going to an offset of about ET25. The dimple in the standard strut is not large enough.

If you are fussy about noise & harshness. I'll put money on the fact that you will become fed-up with Conti's over time as they wear. The sidewall problem is well known.

samaritrey

yeah i am looking at the ps a/s plus 131 a tire vs my Bridgstone re960as that i am replacing which are 108. a few weeks ago i could have gotten the re960as's for the same price as the dws's which are 89. the problem is that my car is due for inspection this month and i know the dam place will make a fuss about the tires so i don't really have a choice to wait for another deal. i love the re960as's but i would like to try another tire just because i have had bridgstone's on my mb since i got it. Bought the car with g009's then put on the re960as and now need my third set of tires. if only i had rotated them better i would be good for like 10k more i left the set on the rear to long so they wore like 2x more then the front. and no i don't do burnouts or any of that crap just drive aggressive lol. if i stick with bridgstones i might buy 4 but only put 2 on until i wear out the older 2 more but we shall see.

Glyn M Ruck

$131 a tyre is a good price compared with here where they are double that price on a good deal - A/S tyres are not popular here because we have a mild climate so they tend to be slow movers. I paid $243 a tyre for my PS2's on a hell of a good deal from a friend from racing days in the industry. The full retail price of PS2's in SA is now a disgusting $432 a tyre for 235/45/17.

LILBENZ230

It's well documented on here that I tend to disagree with Glyn about tires.. well, not disagree, really - no one disputes the fact Michelin makes some of the best tires you can buy - what I disagree with is the question "Are they worth the price premium?"

In my experience, no. I've had three types of Michelins. MXV4, Pilot Exalto, and Primacy. The MXV4 tires lasted and lasted.. but they had very little grip, wet or dry, past about 25,000 miles. Even new, they were poor in terms of steering feel and grip. The Pilot Exaltos had superb grip, but were hugely expensive and lasted 10,000 miles - even with proper rotation. The Primacy, well that's just garbage altogether.

I refuse to pay the price premium Michelin asks for their tires. I am very demanding on my vehicles, I live on curvy country roads, and I do a lot of spirited driving on them. I also do quite a bit of highway travel. For the money, in my experience, you can't beat Kumho Ecsta ASX. Tirerack.com ratings show its performance to be excellent, indeed very close to the Michelin competition that cost 2x more. I can get two sets of ASX tires (and 30,000 miles from each) for the price of one set of Pilots. Sure, at 29,000 aggressive miles, the ASX tires on my Benz were noisy. But that's not a big deal for me, the music drowned it out.

I'm not familiar with the sidewall issue, unless we're talking about the "soft" sidewall Continental is known for? It's not an issue for me. I'm running the Sport 17s, staggered, so I dunno if the sidewall was bigger maybe I'd notice? Not sure, but I now have 2400 miles on these DWS - they are excellent.

johnand

As Glyn pointed out Splinter and I both have the Michelin Pilot Sport A/S Plus's. They are an EXCELLENT tire. The rears are just about shot (4/32") at 22K miles. The fronts still have tons of tread. My only 2 gripes are they don't last much longer than the Primacy's or the Goodyear A/S's. Plus, the 203's tendency to feather the front tires, doesn't play nice with the tread design of these tires. I literally have small chunks of the tread blocks on the inner and outer edges coming off.

Based on Matt's experience, I will probably try the Conti DWS's this time around. At least with the asymetrical tread pattern, I can rotate side to side to help even out the feathering.

Matt, are you still happy with the Conti's?

QQQ

Just say hi... my car is doing Service A this weekend.

LILBENZ230

Hello everyone..

My car is (as near as makes no difference) at 75,000 miles now. That's 50,000 since I picked it up in July 08. A couple of things have cropped up recently:

1. There's a popping sound from the steering. Phil (nlpamg) has had the same issue and was told that it was a sensor and that if it went out, it would throw an error and otherwise not to worry about it (I think). It doesn't affect anything but I don't like hearing it. There is some front end noise over speed bumps and stuff.. so in general I think the car just needs some front suspension bushings and stuff of that nature. Not an emergency but something to think about as it presses onward - will cross 100,000 this year no doubt.

2. It took an excessive amount of time to reach normal operating temperature once last week. I expected the CEL and P0128 code to tell me the thermostat had stuck, but it seems to be working fine again. This is a cheap fix and very common. Not concerned.

The continental tires are still doing fine.. think I'm at 5000 miles or so.. Not quite sure. I'm happy with them. These should last a while, and pleased John mentioned that these can be rotated side-to-side! I should do that, since my car did feather the immortal hell out of the ASXs it had last time.

As a side note (it would be comical if it wasn't so damn expensive) I took a gander at the 135i's Potenza RFT tires at about 9,000 miles. They still looked mostly new. Now at 13,000 the rears are completely shot! WTF $338 a tire and its gone through a set of rear tires before it has had an oil change. Still says I have 3500 miles till an oil change is due.

No word back from Blackstone labs on my oil analysis for the Benz on the 13,000 mile-paper-filtered oil. Maybe it didn't ship? I dropped off and didn't talk to postal workers, so maybe they threw it out because it was liquid. Not sure. I'll post up the results if I ever get them, though.

A couple of other notes:

It is neither using nor leaking oil.

The brakes now have 22,000 miles on them since they were done at 53,000 and are fine.

A transmission service is being done this week.

bdgdl08

I'm glad your car's doing well! I hope you don't have any major problems arise any time soon. I have started to have some frond-end noise as well. Mostly just creaking over bumps when cold. I no notice, thoug, that I get a clunk if I go over any bump while reversing and turning. I don't know what that is.

Glyn M Ruck

Isn't she magnificent! And designed & built in Europe

LILBENZ230

Sigh.. I love Europe.

I have that signature because they're just now putting the AF 4590 crash in the courts. If you haven't seen the Youtube video of the British Airways farewell (where I got the quote in the sig) you should watch it. No one who appreciates machines, in design and engineering, could fail to understand just how absolutely fantastic the Concorde really was. Aviation took a huge step backwards in 2003, and the skies are an emptier (and much slower) place without her. I still can't believe it's over. What a travesty.

Glyn M Ruck

Yes - I've seen it. It was indeed a sad day. She was a beautiful beast. Only flew in her once in 1995 as a pat on the back from my boss when I won our chairman's prize while in Dallas. Wonderful memory. Having been in the SA Airforce I'm a bit of a plane nut. Also had a short flip on the unsilenced prototype when she did her high altitude landing & takeoff trials in Johannesburg. Man the thing was noisy at that time.

LILBENZ230

So you're one of the lucky ones who had the chance to fly onboard! Presumably you reached Mach 2? Sooo jealous.