RE-11's mounted, but WTF?
 

So I decided to replace just the rears on my sport package with the RE-11 285/35/r19's. My plan was to let the stock fronts (which still have 50% tread) wear a little more before dropping the rest of the cash to replace them in the next few months.

Unfortuantely my car now feels extremely twitchy and unsettled in corners (almost dangerous over 80). I mean I was expected some adverse handling with the new tires in back and old in the front, but I figured it would just push like crazy...no big deal.

Is this what should be expected with this setup? Seems like rear end of the car moves around way too much. This doesn't seem like it would be the case with so many guys running these tires on here...

Any input would be greatly appreciated...other than telling me to quit being a cheap a$$;)

here's some advice: get tires before you kill yourself.

I had to laugh at your name haha. If you think it is bad in the dry, just wait until you hit some rain. Get RE-11 tires on the front, it is not worth trying to save some money because new tires are a whole lot cheaper than thousands of dollars worth of damage when you have an accident.

Unless your rear RE-11s are out of balance, they're not to blame. If instability and twitchiness were characteristics of new tires due to release compounds, I'd have twice the problem you do since I changed all four of my tires. My car is on rails, baby, rails.

Do a couple of burn outs to clean them.... Then try again...

Like others have said, give them a few hundred miles to break-in.

I have the same issue you do...mine feels like its pushing in the turns and is super "twitchy" I think it has something to do with 285s out back and different tread patterns. Only reason I went with just the rears was because I had to replace one of my tires anyways. Once summer hits I'm going with RE11s up front.

I just mounted 4 of the same tires on the car. (Actually i am on my 5th to 8th RE-11) The new mould release is completely overrated. It doesn't take much to get rid of it. The new tires he has are very grippy, but they do tend to track left and right. If he doesn't have tires in the front to match it, of course the car is going to drift all over the place. Also if you have any screwed up alignment setting, everything is going to be magnify now as your tires have way more grip. Lastly, make sure they mounted the tires correctly with the right side out and at the right pressure.

Actually you shouldn't laugh too much at his "Theory" when he way more right than you are. Tires do have a break in period, but this is to achieve peak grip. Even brand new tires will not be sliding around and nervous like he is describing. You completely misread the OP post, what he is experiencing is the difference between brand new, full tread, wider stickier tires and worn out, crappy front tires. There's a big difference between the grip up front and the grip out back, the tread depth, the design of the tire structure and finally the fact that the rear alignment is probably a bit off so the moment he put the new tires on, that aren't worn unevenly, he is feeling the effects. That's going to give the rear a really sort of jittery feeling like it wants to go one way and then the other, almost tracking.

"Nice try tho"

The first sign of insecurity, brag about everything you haven't done. I don't know about everyone's Z, but I am sure it is impossible to have .09 degrees of camber on a normal working 370Z. Also 1 degree of caster seems to be nearly impossible. Heck it isn't even adjustable on the 370. 1 degree of caster will make your steering slow and lazy, no "race team" will use that.

Has it occurred to you that we have high post counts because we can surf the web at work?

OP: I don't know where you are, but you can have my old pair of RE11 for cheap. They are not really worth the money to ship since they have less than a few thousand miles left, so local pickup is recommended. I just pulled them off the car last week. I paxed 2nd out of 60 something cars with it last week. Just pay for the mounting and balancing on my new tires for it.

http://img689.imageshack.us/img689/135/dsc00421qo.jpg
Hey look, I have more RE11s than the mechanic!

ridiculous... different tires F/R do not make a car twitchy.

for a long time, i have had powerful cars with traction issues. i almost always have a completely different tire front and rear because i go through drive tires much faster and i always want to try something else to see if i can get it to hook up (straight line) better.

a few reasons his car feels twitchy to him after changing his rear tires:

1: new tires are slick, takes a day or two to get off that nasty coating
2: new tires are not worn in to your camber, so your riding on much less of the tire until it wears in which can take a week or so depending on your driving habits.
3: RE-11s track worse than stock, so hes feeling the rear end follow grooves in the road and hes not used to it yet. My RE-11s on my 370z instantly felt more "twitchy" when i put them on, its just tracking. Pretty typical of high performance tires, and definitely a noticeable different when coming from **** tires like our stock ones.

aside from that, there is NOTHING HAZARDOUS about running different front/rear tires, that is ridiculous to say. you can tune oversteer/understeer with tire make/model just as well as you can with tire sizing. the only thing that you may run into is a slight differences of how the different tires perform as they both heat up... but you will never notice that on the street, only someone on the track doing lap after lap is going to notice a variance like that.

I have four set of tires for my car, they definitely don't like to be mixed and match. I can cruise around town with it, but I wouldn't want to go on fast on it. Just this past weekend, my car drove like a different animal with just changing the front tire size by a few tenth of an inch. The RE11 loves to crown the road. How would you like having a rear end that crowns the road while the front tires don't do anything. Common sense

had the same problem. car felt twitchy cuz i was running bridgestones upfront (worn but still got a couple thousand miles left) and brand new hankooks in the rear. changed my front tires to match the rear and problem solved.

Z2nv, please go find the my350Z forum. People don't talk to each other here the way you are currently. Aggressive, rude posts are not welcome. State your opinions in a respectable, mature manner and you'll receive the same quality in reply from us.

WRT the RE-11s, I recently replaced all four tires with them. They do tramline given the wider widths I chose. However, my car has more grip than I've ever previously experienced. And this has been in 40F weather. It's only going to get better. To the OP, check your tire balance again. RE-11s are difficult to mount, and I've had more than one experience where local installers can't even correctly balance a tire.

spearfish, did you fix the cold vibration problem. my new sets dont shake in the cold, but the 285 crowns even more than the 265