Which Tires?
 

I own a 2001 Boxster S. I don't race but do push my baby hard and take corners faster than I should. I bought her used and she has Pirelli P Zero Rosso up front and Fuzion for rear. Its about time for new threads and would apprecaite your sugeestions. :dance:

I'm really happy with Michelin Pilot Sport PS2 tires. I have them on my 987 and my c230 sedan. While I only have 3500 miles on the 987, the c230 has 20k miles on it and the tires still have over 60% tread left on them. They are expensive, but they have great grip, are pretty quiet and seem to last. I drive the canyons everyday to work and while I don't push the mercedes to the limits, I don't drive like a granny either. So I am quiet pleased with the tread wear. Only time will tell with the 987. These are summer tires so the wet weather traction is only moderate at best. Definatly not for snow, but I don't expect many people will driving thier Boxsters in the snow and if you do you should have a set of winter tires. Anyhow, thats my opinion. I look forward to seeing what other people have to say.

:cheers:

Bridgestone Potenza S-03 Pole Positions,hand down they were the best tires I had driven on,maybe it was just me. I have Pirelli PZero Rossos on now,they are great tires but something about those Pole Positions had the edge.

I second Blinkwatt....Ive gone through pretty much every premium brand of tires and always come back to the S-03s...

I have S0-3's on my Talon and they are the best tires I have used bar none. The talon has momentus amounts of grip with AWD and adding those tires made the car just unbelivable. I swear the road would wrinkle before it let go. I really ran out of balls before the car lost grip.

The second I get to change tires on my Box it's gonna have S0-3's on it. Super quiet and seriously excellent.

Just for some technical info. The S0-3 is developed from Bridgestones F1 rain tire. All that technology is used to make the S0-3. If you watch or have heard of F2000 it;s a smaller cheaper version of F1 for normal people they run the entire league on S0-3 tires because they are so good. The S0-3 is hands down bar none the best rain tire out there. Lap times tested on many hi-po cars were almost as fast in the wet as the dry were normally there is a 5-8 second difference in lap times the S0-3 shaved it to 1.5 seconds dry vs. wet on one track in Europe, meaning they grip as well in the wet vs. dry and they are awesome in the dry.

During the bulding process of the Talon it was in many Magazines as tech build up editorial and Bridgestone gave me a set of S0-3's for it for free as they wanted editorial in the magazine I was working. They shipped them over to me, I had never heard of them prior to that. They gave me books, literature, stickers, a hat and a bunch of other F1 stuff so I knew all about them. What Bridgestone has done to develop that tire from F1 technology is simply amazing. Really for all intensive purposes it is an F1 tire for your street car.

I have them too...my car stays on the road and they seem to grip well. As you can tell, I'm not a expert.

Thanks guys.... I'm down to S0-3's or Mich PS2's.

Ive had both....The S-03 is 100times better than the PS2s

After ToolPants bought cheap Sumitomos I decided to try them. $340 for a whole set. I figured that if these are good enough for our resident Boxster Guru, they're good enough for me.

I love them so far. I have about 700 miles on them and they grip far better than the Kumhos I had on the car. They are not as noisy, and the Kumhos were out of round or thicker in places and I had lots of vibration from them.

If anyone reading this thread needs new rubber and just can't afford the excellent tires recommended in this thread, try a set of Sumitomo HRTZ II's. I would love to put far more expensive tires on the car, but hey, the wallet is skinny these days!

Had a set of those on my 930. Pretty good road tires up until about 7500 miles then they start to roar like you've blown out BOTH rear wheel bearings. YMMV :D

Here is tire comparison from TireRack. They compare the SO-3, F1 and Pilot Sport. It's from 2003 so I don't know how much the tires have changed since then, but it's still interesting.

http://www.tirerack.com/tires/tests/gy_f1_gs_d3.jsp

Randall -

glad the sumi's worked out. for all reading, i had a horrible experience with the HTRz (not HTRzII), so if going w/ sumitomo, i'd get the ones randall got.

as for tires i have tried, the S-03's are excellent. the re750's are also excellent; they last a bit longer and drive almost as well. the only tires that i have bought more than once, though, have been the BFG KDW2's. i love 'em.

If you are considering all tires then add these to your list

Bridgestone Potenza RE050A Pole Position
Yokohama ADVAN Neova AD07

I'm leaning toward the Yoko's the next time I need tires.

Sumitumo's suck, if your car sits more than a week it feels like it has wagon wheels on it for the first 10 miles on the next trip. The grip on them wasn't too bad but I prefer the Pilot sport hands down. The bridgestone's are now on the boxster and cayman S from the factory, I was at the dealer last week.

Another satisfied S03 guy here...

Conti Sport Contact II
 

My car came with these as OEM tires and I am quite pleased and suprised with them. With another car that I had in the past, I had the original Sport Contacts and they were terrible. They cupped/got out of round and were noisy. :(

The Sport Contact II do not suffer from any of the bad issues of the originals, but the rears are about 85% worn with 20,000 miles.

How many miles are you guys getting out of the S-03s??? And, anyone else please with the Contact IIs???

Boxzing in Chino Hills :cheers:

Porsche is also using the sport contacts from the factory, I didn't see the Michelins on any of the new cars I looked at. As far as tire wear goes, I'm convinced it is heavily dependant of the driver's habits. If you read the comments on Tirerack.com, you will notice on almost every brand someone has complained about tread wear.

The Kumhos Ecsta MX's I was using beforehand did the same thing. I'm used to it! And the $400+ savings (money I didn't have anyway) is a good trade with a little temporary flat-spotting on cold tires.

Thought I'd add my .02 worth to the mix. I put Michelin Sport Pilot N1 18"s on my '99. These tires are awesome in every way except price, but I think worth it. One very impressive thing about them... 3 out of the 4 tires required no (zero!) weights to balance. Seems they must be made with some real quality to accomplish that. despite the fact that they're made in France!

I have the Goodyear F1 GS D3 for about 500 miles now. I really like them. The Boxster is alot more surefooted nowadays. My only experience with tires is the worn out Pirellis that were on the car when I bought them.

I had Michelin..
 

MXXX's OE on a '99' that I replaced with Kumho MX tires. On the 06 we have PS2's.

In no particular order I rate them:

Noise---MXXX, PS2, Kumho
Dry Trac--tie both Michelins
Wet-----PS2, Kumho
Responsiveness--MXX, PS2
Wear--MXX, Ps2?, Kuhmo
Price--Kumho, MXXX, Ps2

The PS2 has a softer side wall then I expected and I've bumped tire pressure to 32 front to offset that. The MXXX had razor sharp reflexes, wore for 30K, were quiet but don't get caught in a downpour with them. Kumho was cheap, decent traction and would make a good track tire if shaved. The PS2 is a very good all around tire but expensive.

YMMV...

why cant i find S03's in 18" Boxster CLW wheel size.. I must be doing somethng wrong.

Well I don't have my Boxster yet, but I had Potenzas on my Prelude and they just fell apart after 2 years. Might have been heat/weather related, but I have Kumho Ecsta ASXs on it now and they are awsome tires for the price. Had them for awhile and they still have plenty of tread left. Anyway, my $0.02.

They are there... I have them in size 225/40/18 Front and 285/30/18 Rears...

Yokohama
 

I have Yokohama tires on my Boxster. Came with the car when I bought it. Took it on the track a couple months ago and the tires performed excellent. I was flying around the turns and those tires grabbed, never slipped.
Anyone else have experience with the Yokohama tires?
How many miles can I expect to get out of them? They are holding up well so far (even after doing the track).

Yokohama tires are great. Had dB S2 on my SLK and they performed well enough... very quite too and great price. Only thing is that there are gone in just about 15K miles but they are just over half the cost of the Mitchelin PS2.

Hi,

As mentioned Yokos are great Tires. I had a set on my Esprit - AVS Intermediates. The thing I noticed was that their wear was not linear. At 10k mi. they looked almost new and had at least 85% of their Tread Depth remaining, but by 15k mi., they were finished. Still, good performance at an attractive price. I would have replaced them with another set but in the interim, Yokohama discontinued them in the correct sizes...

Happy Motoring!... Jim'99

So then, Trigemk, or anyone else. How much did you pay for your Bridgestone s03s? Oh, and did you guys order them? or just buy them from a local shop?

My Yok's are just about toast at 11k miles. Lots of tread in some place, but bad wear in others.

They also cupped at like 5k. I ran OEM tire pressures, but I do all my tire pressure adjusting at temp next time.

One had a nail in it, so I am just using them up:) and deciding what to get.

Replaced the original Conti Sport Contacts on my 2000 w/the Goodyear F1 GS-D3 XL's. I am very happy with about 1K miles on them.