is anyone running these tires, they won the car and driver tire shoot out, and have recieved nothing but good reviews from tire rack. any z'ers with these, if so how do you like them?

 

I'm running 2nd sets of those tires (actually full 2sets + 1 extra front, 1 extra rear because of potholes....).
Since I racked my old '93 300ZX in rainny day, I have somewhat fear of wet road and stock RE040s made me more scary but after I replaced those to F1 GS-D3, it holds up very well in dry/wet conditions. Also it has very aggresive tread pattern and it goes very well with Z.

I ran these tires last winter (and this winter also), its NOT working well under snow (of course, hehe) but so far, I have no complain at all.

But if you're getting all 4 tires, please get it from Tirerack and make sure you purchased Road Hazzard program. All high end tires are pretty easy to blow up from bad road conditions and its NOT fun replacing it when its still like new condition except nasty one hole from the bad road or construction nails.

I love this tires and highly recommended.

 

great, thanks for that info. I have been looking at getting a set of these.

 

I have them too and really like them.

 

I'm running 255/275 40's on 18'' 8.5/9.5. They are great street tires, poor for the track. They are quiet, stable, but have a little more sidewall flex than expected but nothing major. Price is only detractor.

 

have any of you ever run the t1s? and how do they compare. i think the toyos are pretty soft and for the most part suck for corners... keep the input coming!

 

I have these tyres on my 17" wheels. Compared to RE040's:

Dry Grip - GY's much better. My car is stock and the rear end holds together much better under power in sharp turns. That is, the GY's do not oversteer as much as the RE040's. Also, the GY's grip the road more for faster turns, ie 50mph.

Wet Grip - there is no comparison here. The RE040's were poor in the wet and I had to be very concious of not loosing the rear end of the car when driving in the rain. The GY's are lightyears ahead and allow me to drive the car almost as if it was not wet.

Noise - the RE040's were noisy with 9-10,000 miles. They became so excessively noisy by 17,000km that I replaced all 4 tyres, when I still had 3000km of tread left on the rears and twice that on the fronts. The GY's by comparison have been silent. I have had these for 8000 miles now and I have just this week started to notice just a hint of tyre noise when travelling at 45mph. I expect that they will get noisier as they wear more, but how noisy remains to be seen.

Ride Comfort - the first thing I noticed after replacing the RE040's with the GY's (aside from tyre noise) was an improvement in ride comfort. Now the ride is still slightly harsh due to the OEM springs, but I noticed that the GY knocked a tiny bit of harshness off Z's ride while travelling over small road irregularities. This is due to Gy's use of a softer sidewall on their tyres. Also, the GY do not tramline like the RE040's did, so I don't find myself correcting the steering wheel for small bumps and road groves.

Steering Response - the RE040's had stiff sidewalls and subsequently offered surpurb steering response. This is one area that the GY's cannot match the Bridgestones. The GY take an extra few milliseconds to turn incompared to the BS, but when they do, they hold the line and take you exactly where you were aiming.

Treadwear - Still a little too early to tell, but I'm expecting to see at least 20,000km out of the GY. I need to wear through a whole set of GY to get an accurate treadwear mileage comparison.

Track use - I used the RE040's once on a dry track and they were as decent as I would expect from a street tyre. I have not used the GY on the racetrack as I have read that they will lose strip of tread as opposed to tread blocks. Get some dedicated track tyres if you want to do some track work.

Overall, I believe that the GY's are a great all around max performance tyre. It does everything exepcted of it on the street very well. While you will find a better performing dry grip street tyre, you will sacrafice serverely in other areas

 

I agree 100% with everything that's been said. I just want to add that when racing on these tires (autox, in my case) you have to turn in about 50%, then wait a split second for the car to settle on the tires (because the sidewalls are so soft), then you can turn in more agressively than you could with the RE040. And like they said before, nothing can match the wet handling. Excellent street tire, but a poor choice if you are going to do any autocross on them, and definitely a poor choice for the track!

 

I'll agree with Mr. Jadkowski

I switched to these from the T1S Toyos. 255/275 setup .... same now with the G3s

I love the way these tires ultimately hold the road .. they are very grippy and can launch very well. The have great straigtline and cornering grip .. but the turn in is a bit shaky. I guess it is bad to say you will get used to it ... but you do .. and then these tires are great. They just feel a bit unstable for one short millisecond and then the are on.

 

would you say that they are worse than the t1s's for sidewall flex. i dont plan to race competitively, but i do go canyon carving now and then..

 

Nice writeup KY350,

I wish we had that type of analysis on all tires.

 

wow i must have missed that the first time around, great review!

 

No problems - just trying to help out my fellow members.

 

I am looking at these very same tires since the stock's suck and are already going bald in the rear.

I have an 04 track and according to the recommend size, I should be aiming for 225/45/18 and 245/45/18 for front and back respectively. However, these tires don't come in in 225/45 at all.

Can someone tell me what size I should go for the fronts to still match the 245/45/18 as much as possible? I don't want to change the diameter/sidewall width dramatically - love the size of how it looks now. Thanks.

 

getting the kdw-2's , myself...(cheaper, college student)

 

GS were the tires I was hoping to get (from Nissan dealer at time of car's delivery...they are cheaper there than at TireRack for some reason) but due to my "always fantastic" luck, they don't come in 285 width.

 

But their not cheap.