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You sound like a real moron that doesn't know how to maintain a car.

Set of four tires $385 Installation cost $70.

Rear set drum, shoes and hardware $78 Installation Cost $0

Front brake pads $63 Installation Cost $0

Total cost for brakes and tires when you aren't a stupid dumbass like you. $596

Tires have a speed rating. http://www.tirerack.com/tires/tiretech/techpage.jsp?techid=35/

Here is a link to some cheap ones: http://www.tirerack.com/tires/tires.jsp?tireMake=Sumitomo&tireModel=HTR+Z+II&partnum=74WR7HTRZ2V2&vehicleSearch=true&fromCompare1=yes&autoMake=Pontiac&autoYear=2002&autoModel=Trans%20Am%20WS6&autoModClar=

Here is a link to the ones I have:http://www.tirerack.com/tires/tires.jsp?tireMake=Goodyear&tireModel=Eagle+F1+Asymmetric+All-Season&partnum=74WR7F1AAS&vehicleSearch=true&fromCompare1=yes&autoMake=Pontiac&autoYear=2002&autoModel=Trans%20Am%20WS6&autoModClar=

Under $400 for a set of 4 isn't "expensive" and rated to up to 168MPH. Which is exactly what I need since the top end of my car is 167.

Those are only rated to 168mph. The proposal was autonomous cars running 200mph. Those tires won't work.

Here is a link to some cheap ones: http://www.tirerack.com/tires/tires.jsp?tireMake=Sumitomo&tireModel=HTR+Z+II&partnum=74WR7HTRZ2V2&vehicleSearch=true&fromCompare1=yes&autoMake=Pontiac&autoYear=2002&autoModel=Trans%20Am%20WS6&autoModClar=

Here is a link to the ones I have:http://www.tirerack.com/tires/tires.jsp?tireMake=Goodyear&tireModel=Eagle+F1+Asymmetric+All-Season&partnum=74WR7F1AAS&vehicleSearch=true&fromCompare1=yes&autoMake=Pontiac&autoYear=2002&autoModel=Trans%20Am%20WS6&autoModClar=

Under $400 for a set of 4 isn't "expensive" and rated to up to 168MPH. Which is exactly what I need since the top end of my car is 167.

According to Tesla's specs, the Model S with 19" wheels uses Goodyear Eagle RS-A2 245/45R19 tires, which roll at 755 revs per mile. With 21" wheels, Continental Extreme Contact DW 245/35R21, which roll at 750 revs per mile.

So the different wheel/tire combos differ by 0.7%.

According to Tesla's specs, the Model S with 19" wheels uses Goodyear Eagle RS-A2 245/45R19 tires, which roll at 755 revs per mile. With 21" wheels, Continental Extreme Contact DW 245/35R21, which roll at 750 revs per mile.

So the different wheel/tire combos differ by 0.7%.

I would imagine that a lot of accidents at those speeds are caused when people in passenger sedans and sports cars try to pass people in work vehicles with governers, slow gearing, or low design speeds.

If the work vehicles incapable of keeping up with traffic were pulled over for unsafe driving, that would help. If you can't do the speed, take a different route. The problem is the work trucks that think they have more right to the road than everyone else combined.

    My car as a nice tight suspension and performance tires. I think the biggest part for me was that there are plenty of other cars on the roads there these days. Not usually enough to cause a traffic jam (say only 25% of the time they wouldn't make way for faster vehicles), but you had to be very aware the whole time that a car may be coming straight at you because they didn't make their turn properly coming the other way. I had to nail the brakes on more than one occasion because someone else whipped around a turn and ended up in my lane going towards me.

    I could have more than doubled the speed limits, if I could be confident that the roads were fairly empty and could utilize both lanes. :) Since there are so many blind turns, you pretty much have to stay safely inside your lane, so many racing turns are eliminated. That is, taking turns using the entire lane to straighten out the turn a bit. If I'm on the inside line for a hard right, someone else may be coming the other way and may not quite make their turn perfectly, so we could smack each other just before the apex of the turn. No, I always managed to avoid getting smacked, but some people haven't been so lucky over the years.

    I have 275/40ZR17 Sumitomo HTR Z III tires which are rated very high, and perform very well. Even still, with the hard cornering, one run from the SFV to Mt. Wilson, and back, would leave notable wear on the tires.

    My car drives like it's on rails. My ex noted that she felt like we were on a train. The body doesn't roll significantly, so what I tell it to do, it responds immediately. Not to say I couldn't have gotten in trouble, I've just driven my car for so many years I know it's limitations, and feel problems before they manifest into real problems (like missing the road or spinning).

    They may have upped the speed limits since the 60's to accommodate more "modern cars" that aren't so heavy, and have less body roll.

Just remember that Blizzak's actually wear rather quickly and turn into "all-season" tires after about a season's use of driving on mixed surfaces (e.g. snow and pavement). On the other hand, standard modern snow tires like the Nokian, still wear quickly due to their soft compound however they tend to last longer than a season or two simply because they have so much tread.

See http://www.tirerack.com/winter/wintertesting.jsp for some in-depth reviews of tires *and a comparison between all-season and proper winter tires.

Good on ya for driving with snow tires, just don't overestimate how long those Blizzak's actually last!

Ummm, no. You left out the width of your tire (Google guesses you meant 205/60R15). So the sidewall is 60% as tall as the width, or 123mm. The 15" rims are 381mm, plus 123mm*2 = 62.7cm outside tire diameter. Almost the same number but your formula was completely wrong.

Huh? You're just making that up now, aren't you. Let's try that again.

Another Google guess gives it a transmission ratio of 2.714 in first gear, times a final drive ratio of 4.875, for a net ratio of 13.231:1. At base revs, your car is going (850rev/min) / 13.231 * (62.7 * 3.142 cm/rev) * (60min/h) * (1km/100000cm) = 7.6km/h.

The same formula using top revs in 4th gear (0.742 ratio) gives approximately the correct top speed of your car, so I'm pretty sure my formula is right. Since the article is about cars and math, we might as well use correct math when discussing them.

An excellent idea. And once you have tinted your Lincoln, you may also want to invest in some shiny new rims to reflect laser light back at those people.

:-)

Major car manufacturers have been electronically enforcing a speed limit (electronic speed cutoff) - check

My mustang has a speed limiter of 110 mph. Stock, straight off the line, it was built with R-rated tires. According to the site referenced there, R rated tires are safe to a maximum speed of 106 mph. Were I to run my car faster than 110, I would find my tires torn to pieces at a speed that would probably mean my death. That limit appears to be in place because of safety concerns.

Based on that, I doubt highly that it's some conspiracy to make you drive at the pace of a snail. Simply, it is to cover their own ass on liability.

After all, one can purchase 200mph speed-rated tires for a Toyota Prius®.

No you can't.

186/65R15 (Prius' standard tire size) is only built to an H speed rating. That makes it a 130mph speed-rated tire. No manufacturer builds this tire to a Z speed rating - 186mph+.

Car and technology analogies are mostly flawed, as are most generalizations.

I just hit the Tire Rack and could not find a single tire for the Prius that was Z- or better rated, let alone rated to 200mph.

Which tire is submitter referring to? Where would I find them in the stock Prius size (195/55-16) ?

BTW... some cars have unadvertised built-in speed limits. My 2001 Toyota Sequoia appears to have a 100mph limit.

I didn't spend a whole lot of time looking at it, but it looks like your 2001 Toyota Sequoia ships with S rated tires. That is, your tires are "rated" for use up to 112 mph.

I can think of a bunch of reasons why Toyota wouldn't set your max speed to the full 112 though. (To allow for imperfections in the tire, to protect folks that overload their SUV's, etc...)

Your Toyota could probably go faster, but they'd have to strap on some more expensive tires for you to do it safely.
More on Tire Ratings here: tire rack.

I work on The Tire Rack website and can fill you in on our policy. We do reject a few reviews and there are two primary reasons.

1. Profanity. We don't edit it, we delete the entire review.

2. Being irrational. Demands for a recall because of a flat, complaints blamed on the tires caused by negligence, like driving on flat tires, alignment issues, etc. Unrealistic expectations fall into this category, complaining you only got 25K on the rear tires of your 911 Turbo for instance, when that's probably a record for treadwear on the car.

I'm guessing you may have falled one of those checks, but in general any negative comments that are rational and well thought out go up.

If you check a few tires and see the number of negative reviews, you'll probably agree we don't hold back on them. We really don't have a reason to, we want you to make the best informed decision and buy from us. Which product you purchase really isn't the issue.

The initial discussions with the tire companies when we put this up was interesting. When they complained about the negative reviews on a specific tire, the general manager pointed out their tire wasn't very good compared to comparable tires from other companies and offered to do a tire test on our track for them that day to back it up!

If you doubt our honesty at all, here's a few you should look at.

http://www.tirerack.com/survey/SurveyComments.jsp? additionalComments=y&commentStatus=P&tireMake=Brid gestone&tireModel=Potenza+RE92

http://www.tirerack.com/survey/SurveyComments.jsp? additionalComments=y&commentStatus=P&tireMake=Good year&tireModel=Eagle+GA

http://www.tirerack.com/survey/SurveyComments.jsp? additionalComments=y&commentStatus=P&tireMake=Cont inental&tireModel=ContiTouringContact+CH95

I work on The Tire Rack website and can fill you in on our policy. We do reject a few reviews and there are two primary reasons.

1. Profanity. We don't edit it, we delete the entire review.

2. Being irrational. Demands for a recall because of a flat, complaints blamed on the tires caused by negligence, like driving on flat tires, alignment issues, etc. Unrealistic expectations fall into this category, complaining you only got 25K on the rear tires of your 911 Turbo for instance, when that's probably a record for treadwear on the car.

I'm guessing you may have falled one of those checks, but in general any negative comments that are rational and well thought out go up.

If you check a few tires and see the number of negative reviews, you'll probably agree we don't hold back on them. We really don't have a reason to, we want you to make the best informed decision and buy from us. Which product you purchase really isn't the issue.

The initial discussions with the tire companies when we put this up was interesting. When they complained about the negative reviews on a specific tire, the general manager pointed out their tire wasn't very good compared to comparable tires from other companies and offered to do a tire test on our track for them that day to back it up!

If you doubt our honesty at all, here's a few you should look at.

http://www.tirerack.com/survey/SurveyComments.jsp? additionalComments=y&commentStatus=P&tireMake=Brid gestone&tireModel=Potenza+RE92

http://www.tirerack.com/survey/SurveyComments.jsp? additionalComments=y&commentStatus=P&tireMake=Good year&tireModel=Eagle+GA

http://www.tirerack.com/survey/SurveyComments.jsp? additionalComments=y&commentStatus=P&tireMake=Cont inental&tireModel=ContiTouringContact+CH95

I work on The Tire Rack website and can fill you in on our policy. We do reject a few reviews and there are two primary reasons.

1. Profanity. We don't edit it, we delete the entire review.

2. Being irrational. Demands for a recall because of a flat, complaints blamed on the tires caused by negligence, like driving on flat tires, alignment issues, etc. Unrealistic expectations fall into this category, complaining you only got 25K on the rear tires of your 911 Turbo for instance, when that's probably a record for treadwear on the car.

I'm guessing you may have falled one of those checks, but in general any negative comments that are rational and well thought out go up.

If you check a few tires and see the number of negative reviews, you'll probably agree we don't hold back on them. We really don't have a reason to, we want you to make the best informed decision and buy from us. Which product you purchase really isn't the issue.

The initial discussions with the tire companies when we put this up was interesting. When they complained about the negative reviews on a specific tire, the general manager pointed out their tire wasn't very good compared to comparable tires from other companies and offered to do a tire test on our track for them that day to back it up!

If you doubt our honesty at all, here's a few you should look at.

http://www.tirerack.com/survey/SurveyComments.jsp? additionalComments=y&commentStatus=P&tireMake=Brid gestone&tireModel=Potenza+RE92

http://www.tirerack.com/survey/SurveyComments.jsp? additionalComments=y&commentStatus=P&tireMake=Good year&tireModel=Eagle+GA

http://www.tirerack.com/survey/SurveyComments.jsp? additionalComments=y&commentStatus=P&tireMake=Cont inental&tireModel=ContiTouringContact+CH95

It looks very similar to the patterns used on many conventional wheels, I don't think that's going to be a big problem.

I believe they used a hollow, rubber toroid that was inserted into the tire before it was seated to the rim, with a small filling tube prodruding through the rim to allow it to be filled with air. This was useful because it was extremely difficult to make a tire that was both strong enough to support the vehicle and had a good enough seal on the rim to hold the air. (I think it's called an "inner tube")

I think a better example would be the "Run Flat" tire which appeared a few years ago.
=Smidge=

I've already settled on H-rated (130MPH or better) tires for my next new-tire purchase. My vehicle is aerodynamically limited to a speed slightly lower than this, and I have never found myself exceeding 110MPH. Ever. But you are quite correct about the fact that many drivers don't consider their tires part of the safety system of their car, or even something that has limits and that requires maintenance.

So, I encourage anyone who reads this comment to look at the following page, which explains how to determine your tires' maximum rated speed. Don't exceed that speed or even approach it unless you are in danger of injury or death, or in imminent danger of inflicting same upon others.

Find out how fast your car is physically capable of traveling and buy tires which are rated for that speed or higher. (You can find this info in reviews -- car magazine testers will push cars to their actual limits, which may not always be published in the owners' manual for liability reasons.) There may be an aerodynamic limit separate from the limit imposed by a governor -- if the aerodynamic limit is higher than the governed limit, use that as your baseline in case you ever modify the car to remove the governor or in case it fails, however remotely unlikely that is.

Here is the link:

Tire Tech - Tire Size Information

Not every tire produced is a commercial tire for use on the highway.

If this technology can be used to create stickier rubber, it would probably first be applied to r-compound tires, i.e. racing slicks. For example, these Hoosier R3S03 tires that we run on our race car.

The behavior that you describe, your climbing shoes picking up sand/dirt is already typical behavior of existing track rubber - it also picks up small rocks, bits of rubber, small children or pets, etc...

If this technology pans out for tire use, you will probably see it in Formula One followed by trickle down in to less-advanced racing series followed by eventual trickle down to consumer r-compound tires.

Another site to check would be TireRack They've always been great for tires for me.

Ok, if you're going to get technical...

Z06 = ~$45000 USD
WRX = ~$23000 USD

Now let's spend the $22K difference to make it even...

Well for <$5K we could take it up to 368HP with this stage 4 kit. Lets say it takes 15 hours for a professional installation at $100/hour then that takes us up another $1500 bringing us to a total of $29500.

Now let's smack on a Stage 3 short block for more reliability. That's another $6700 including labor. That takes us up to $36200.

Even though the AWD will easily make up the difference of HP vs. RWD (unless we're driving on a nice hot track) lets spend $2k more on a nitrous kit just to make sure we can embarass the Z06.
That only takes us up to $38200.

$4000 for a stage 3 suspension kit. Taking us to $42000.

Wheels: 4 17x7.5 Prodrive GC-06D $1,900
Tires: 4 225/45YR17 BFGoodrich g-Force T/A KD $780

That will take us up to ~$45000. For a machine that will embarass pretty much anything else in that price range. You could argue the reliability of the WRX, but when you're comparing it with an American car is that really relevant?

Personally I'd rather just spend $12K on a Hayabusa (yes it is a motorcycle, yes it ONLY has a 4cyl engine) and embarass them both.

I should've gone and looked for specific models... like the Michelin X-1 which is rated for 80,000 miles, the Firestone Affinity Touring also rated for 80K, and the Goodyear Regatta2. Yokohama, Bridgestone, and pretty much all the other big tire companies also have 70-80k rated tires.

Whether or not they're available for your car is another question (doubtful if you have a car that likes Z rated tiers), and they're all "touring" tires, which basically means general usage in moderate climates. They're all designed to work well in the rain as well as dry roads, but probably aren't top-notch in snow/ice (but work fine with snow chains if legal wherever you live).

I'd also question the long-term usability. I suspect that they were originally designed for use by high-mileage vehicles, but they're certainly being marketed toward the general public. On the upside, they've come down in price since I last looked at tires. About 2 years ago they were in the $100-150 range each, now they're in the $50-75 range.

I should've gone and looked for specific models... like the Michelin X-1 which is rated for 80,000 miles, the Firestone Affinity Touring also rated for 80K, and the Goodyear Regatta2. Yokohama, Bridgestone, and pretty much all the other big tire companies also have 70-80k rated tires.

Whether or not they're available for your car is another question (doubtful if you have a car that likes Z rated tiers), and they're all "touring" tires, which basically means general usage in moderate climates. They're all designed to work well in the rain as well as dry roads, but probably aren't top-notch in snow/ice (but work fine with snow chains if legal wherever you live).

I'd also question the long-term usability. I suspect that they were originally designed for use by high-mileage vehicles, but they're certainly being marketed toward the general public. On the upside, they've come down in price since I last looked at tires. About 2 years ago they were in the $100-150 range each, now they're in the $50-75 range.

I should've gone and looked for specific models... like the Michelin X-1 which is rated for 80,000 miles, the Firestone Affinity Touring also rated for 80K, and the Goodyear Regatta2. Yokohama, Bridgestone, and pretty much all the other big tire companies also have 70-80k rated tires.

Whether or not they're available for your car is another question (doubtful if you have a car that likes Z rated tiers), and they're all "touring" tires, which basically means general usage in moderate climates. They're all designed to work well in the rain as well as dry roads, but probably aren't top-notch in snow/ice (but work fine with snow chains if legal wherever you live).

I'd also question the long-term usability. I suspect that they were originally designed for use by high-mileage vehicles, but they're certainly being marketed toward the general public. On the upside, they've come down in price since I last looked at tires. About 2 years ago they were in the $100-150 range each, now they're in the $50-75 range.

I think you should go and look at some newer tires. Maybe here.

There are numerous brands of tires for standard passanger vehicles with rated lifetimes of 70,000 miles. No, they're not sporty tires. They don't have the grip that S and up brands have because they're made of harder rubber. If you start looking at the really sporty tires (V-Z ratings) you'll notice that few, if any, have mileage ratings. The few that do will be 18000 miles or less. Most Z rated tires will only last a few thousand miles. Why? Because the rubber on them is very soft in order to grip the road better. It also means it wears down faster.

There are tradeoffs in tires, just as with anything else, but if you're not going to drive like a race car driver then a 70,000 mile rated tire may very well be cost effective. The one big advantage to buying a more sporty tire (S or T rating) is that you'll have the additional grip in instances you NEED it. I know, for sure, that new tires have saved me from more than one accident.