Sumitomo Tires?

Guys,

Anyone have any experience with larger Sumitomo tires. Am interested in running either 315/35 x 17 or 335/35 x 17" tires.

Some of the comments on the Cobra boards are that Pilots are not that great and that the Pirellis are good in the dry but skittish in the rain.

Any place as good to look for prices as TireRack (who has the 315/35 x 17" but not the 335's.

Thankss,

Hi Mike,

You may want to consider Goodyear Eagle F1 GS-D3 315-34-YR-17. Most car magazine tire tests list these with a group of 10 or 12 other performance tires as # 2 for performance and # 1 for low road noise. "tirerack.com" gives a good comparison chart of all the tires in the maximum summer performance category. The Tire Rack standardized roadholding performance and road noise scores on its tires seems to be in line with the published car magazine tests. I have these tires on my GT40 and on a Corvette and they are very sticky.

Bob

Well actually I meant 315/35 x 17 (a 34 profile is probably very hard to find (especially in my spell checker).

One of the guys local to me runs sumitomo 315/35/17 on the rear of his GT40. They are now worn out and up for replacing. He is going to buy them again. He recommended them to me. His GT40 is used regulary(all the time) in competition events as well as plenty of road driving. He also runs Sumitomo on the front, I think 225.

As far as I know Sumitomo don't make anything wider than 315. I don't think there are any cheap brands with 335 tyre sizes. I have been looking. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif

I'm not sure what tyre I will be running yet. But I tell you what, those Sumitomo tyres are just so, so cheap. Very tempting.

Don't expect for the price that they will perform or be as quiet as more expensive competitors. But for bang for buck, I don't think you can beat them in that size.

If you read the various tire reviews at www.tirerack.com you won't find many glowing reviews of Sumitomos. Noisy and short lifespan seem to be the most common complaints.

For what it is worth, my RF has ben used mainly for circuit sprints and hill climbs along with some road use and I have been using the Sumitomo HTRZ II for the last year and have found them to be very good.
The sizes I selected are 225/45x17 Front and 255/45x17 rear which give a comparable rolling diameter to the 16" set up RF recommend

Overall grip is quite good and road noise is not high. (Remember you have a lot of engine noise which will overpower the road noise in any case!) The Sumitomos are great value for money and hard to go past.

Having said that though my next set of tyres will be Dunlop D01J DOT approved race tyres but only because of the minimal milage I am doing on the street and the increased level of grip a race tyre will give for motorsport events.

Cheers,
RV