Dunlop Direzza ZII - Experience? Reviews?

fzgood

I haven't seen a wealth of information on this tire on this forum. I picked these up and I'll come back here to describe my experience with them once I do a couple spirited drives post-break in.


For the record, my first choice was RE-11's, but I was having trouble finding them in 275/35/19 for my stock rears.


In the meantime, I figured it'd be nice to have a thread for people to share detailed experience with this tire, maybe color my expectations a bit.


From the reviews on tirerack.com I'm expecting turn-in to be more responsive than with RE-050's, a grippier handling experience, and I'm praying that the road noise will be bearable. Oh, and I suppose I expect to get more miles out of these... I got about 13,500k out of the stock tires... no track days... call me undisciplined...

I don't explore the limits of grip, or autox/track, but I do drive exuberantly on twisty roads quite frequently. Hopefully the ZII's were a good choice.


Update @ 100 miles:
I've definitely noticed more pronounced road noise than was on OEM. I'm not sure that I find the road noise itself annoying more so than the fact that it's there. It makes me rev harder to drown it out which might be a bad thing. There's also more sensitivity toward the road surface—for example, I can feel through the steering wheel when my tires run onto the strip of paint indicating a bike lane. I like it. Even before trying to explore some of the grip and response qualities you can feel the sidewall is firm compared to the OEM tires.

So far the, balance of qualities and civility are trades I'd happily make when presented with the OEM alternative. If the grip is as much of an improvement as other people have posted about and online reviews indicate, I think I'll be quite happy.

Zed-Hed

I am running the Z2's. I've had them for two weeks and they are unreal. I had re-11's prior. The reason I switched was I blew a rear tire and wanted to replace them but they were not available. I ran 285 in the rear. The Dunlops are 275 in the rear. These tires do everything better than the re-11. Steering is much sharper and tracks better. Much stiffer side wall. Grip is outstanding. The only negative is noise. They growl.

fzgood

I was worried about the noise. I guess that just means I'll have to go play in the twisties enough to make it all worthwhile. hehehehe

wstar

There was another thread on the same topic a while back, and DR_ reviewed the Z2's there: Dunlop Direzza Z2 or RE11

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fzgood

Thanks. I was looking primarily for the tire's "civility" characteristics. At the same time I didn't want to restrict any replies I would get.


I did see that thread, but people seemed to mostly provide feedback on track wear & handling which is great info, but not particularly relevant to my uses.


That thread also only had a couple posts (albeit great ones) that really addressed characteristics of the tire.