Continental extremecontact dws

brado

i have mine i just havnt put them on yet. the treadwear is 540 i believe so in theory they should last 5 times as long as the oem ones cause their treadwear is 140. we'll see haha

kenchan

now that i look at it, you guys were talking about DWS... mine are just DW's.... so completely different tire... (?)

brado

the dws stands for dry wet snow whereas the dw is just dry wet

brado

its a ultra high performance all season i think

kenchan

oh ok... yah, mines a summer set so just Dry and Wet. thanks.

tsolin01

Problem is the tread wear rating across different brands can't really be compared directly. But even twice as long is fine with me lol

Incidentally I drove through some light rain yesterday with a few standing water areas on the highway and the car felt a lot more stable than what I remember the stock bridgestones felt like.

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kenchan

sounds good. im pretty happy with bridgestone's Uni-T tread pattern. it works very well even on their cheezo line up Fusion. i have a set on my dd and they stick like glue even in rain... given that it's above 50F...

brado

im getting mine put on next week. i hope they are decent tires

jginnane

This is actually one of the reasons I just bought a set of ExtremeContact DWSes. (245/45-18 and 275/40-18).

The tires are asymmetrical, but the tread pattern is bidirectional. That mean you can swap left-to-right every 5-6K.

tsolin01

Does swapping side to side really do anything though? if your alignment's good I don't see it being any benefit.

Also I just drove through some heavy rain and I didn't feel any instability what so ever. I have about 3k miles on these tires so maybe it's the new tread but felt much better than the stocks in heavy rain.

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SOLD 12/30/2011 2010 370Z Coupe Monterey Blue 6MT/Touring/Sport/Nav
F.I. CBE CF w/ 12" Res | V1 | SecondSkin | Stillen G3 | EVO-R CF B-Pillars | Volk GT-S Ti Gunmetal 19x9.5 +30 F, 19x10.5 +8 R | Swift Spec-R Springs

jginnane

"If your alignment's good"... is the telling line. You don't know until you get the alignment checked, and to do that, you pay for a 4-wheel alignment. Probably a good idea at intervals, but most people won't spend for it untiul they really feel something's wrong.

I just went through the OEM Advans on this car, 18.5K on the original alignment. The wear was even; the car didn't pull. The right rear wore out faster than the rest, which is typical for an open-differentialed rear-wheel drive car. But I'm paying for an alignment when I put the new tires on -- why?

Well, I'm plus-sizing (245/45-18 front and 275/40-18 rear) in order to get this particular brand tire. So the contact geometry is changing a little. Second, I believe the treadwear rating of 540, and don't want the tires to wear prematurely. Third, obviously, you have to do this for the warranty coverage.

But there's also an anecdotal piece of car knowledge I rely on, namely, my neighbor (who used to both race and own a car service station). His job now puts about 100K on the road every year. So every other weekend, he out there rotating his tires. He wears them down to slicks -- he says the handling is actually better -- and the fronts have modest negative camber for his driving preference.

I don't expect to set the Z up with anything other than pure-spec stock alignment, maybe zero out the toe-in if there is one. But I appreciate my neighbor's explanation that there's a lot you can do to keep your tires alive just by rotating them. The increased wear on the right rear, for example, is completely normal, but you can extend that tire's life by using the left rear as well. Most cars used as daily drivers in urban settings get more damage accruing to the right rather than left, from curbs, loose stuff on the roadway, and potholes.

Hope this helps. If you're running synthetic oil you might be getting around 5K between oil changes, so that's an easy time to rotate. If you change oil at 3K, then do the swap every other time.

cossie1600

god damn, this tire should never wear out with that treadwear

wstar

I'll chime in here and say I've been running the DW's (not snow) for several months now. Mine are 275/35R18 up front and 295/35R18 rear (on 18x10 + 18x11 Forgestar F14's). They've been excellent for me so far in street conditions in the Houston, TX area (snow is so rare here it's not worth considering. If it snows once a decade, I'll drive super slow and/or just leave it in the garage).

I was a big fan of Michelin's PS2 line in my previous car (a '99 Pontiac Trans Am WS6), but these have similar tread pattern and characteristics, and given the longer treadlife and much lower cost (and probably -3.81523% performance difference ), the DW's just seemed like a much better deal for a decent grippy set of street tires.

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kenchan

i like my DW's functionally but cosmetically the sidewalls are ugly.

Forrest

I am on 5/32"s on my rear. I plan to get Continental DW also.

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