KYB struts, Yoko tires: reviews and lessons learned...

[bartonmd]

KYB GR-2 struts: Awesome! Strike a very good medium between hard and comfortable... they're hard without being harsh... no complaints on ride and help the handling out tremendously!

 

Yokohama Avid H4S tires: Alittle soft on the side wall, but will do more in the wet than my other tires would in the dry. They're traction AA, temperature A, treadwear 500 (for comparison, the Eagle RS-A is Traction A, temp A, treadwear 260), so these grip better and last almost twice as long as the RS-A. I'll let you know how they wear later on when I have more than a meger 2000 miles on them. Like I said, the sidewall's alittle soft, but that can largely be taken care of by running a bit higher pressure in them... I am running 38 cold in them right now and that's a pretty good mix of ride quality and handling. They say they're a 44psi max tire, but I will need to experiment as to whether that's cold or hot at 44. When we used to do SCCA Club-Rally, the gravel tires said "36psi max" on them, but that meant 36 HOT, because after 36psi, they start losing contact patch... so I'll have to play with these and see... thinking I'll try 42 front, 38 rear as the rears don't look like they've rolled much under hard cornering as it is. I'll let you know though.

 

Lesson learned... I ordered the struts and tires from Tirerack.com so didn't know to replace the upper strut mounts in the rear when I replaced the struts... they looked OK anyway... Last week, I had the driver side rear upper strut mount come apart on me, so I milked it home, paid the @#$%ing $40 each for good ones and put them on. I scribed the struts against the bolts before I took them off, so when I put it back together, I didn't need an alignment in the rear (although I took it in to have it checked, and it was OK). So save yourself the headache and go ahead and replace the upper strut mounts when you do the struts!

 

Done:

 

Mike

[terryk2003]

i also have the AVID H4s tires on my cutty... ...I too am running 38psi...i started with 35 in em when i mounted em, but they had more roll then i liked, so i pumped em up to 38 and that seems pretty good...i have been thinkin about changing the struts for the past few days and the KYB's were my choice...i had kyb's on my '86 cutlass and they seemed to be good!...and, i was planning on changing the upper strut mounts on the rear because i've seen this problem way to many times

[Canada]

What size tires do you guys have?

 

The stock pressure is 30 psi for all W bodies with either 225/60/16 or 205/70/15s. I'm not sure on 245/50/16s....I have 33 in the 245/50 on my Grand Prix. These are cold pressures of course....which equals about 33-35 hot.

 

This of course is for daily driving.......only for "sport" driving would I jump the pressure up to 3-4 psi over stock. You start getting into weird tire wear issues (mainly, the center of the tread) beyond that.

 

Now for autocrossing...thats another story.....you might want to go something quite near max pressure up front.....and whatever you feel like out back.

 

 

 

I've got GR-2 struts on the front of the Beretta (Gas-A-Just in the rear).......I'm pretty happy with them.....cheap and stiff. I've put over 20k on them and they dampen the same as they did when they where new. Previously, I had a set of Monroe Sensatracs......the GR2 is MUCH stiffer.

[terryk2003]

i've got 215/60.16's...although i wish i woulda went with 225's ...and the max is like 44psi for the tires...and as for the "MAX IN A W-BODY" WHO CARES!?...look @ the pressures ford recommended in the explorers and look what happend...i rotate & balance my tires every 3k miles when i change the oil..no odd treadwear pattern yet...

[93CutlassSupreme]

i've got 215/60.16's...although i wish i woulda went with 225's ...and the max is like 44psi for the tires...and as for the "MAX IN A W-BODY" WHO CARES!?...look @ the pressures ford recommended in the explorers and look what happend...i rotate & balance my tires every 3k miles when i change the oil..no odd treadwear pattern yet...

 

you're right. the max pressure listed on the door jam is for the original tires on the car from the factory. go by the tire sidewall with replacement tires.

[mihela816]

My Falkens are at 42, cold.

[Brian P]

Thanks for the review on the KYB GR2's. As much as I liked the Monroe Reflex, the problem with them is they wear out FAST. The characteristics that make them so good can just as easily disappear after 10000 miles. Still have the stock struts at all 4 on my '95, soon I'd like to replace them. I figure the GR2's at all 4 would be a nice upgrade.

 

Regarding the RSA's being a 260 treadwear, I've had mine on for about 10k miles. I had an average of 7/32 when mounted (measured- these were used tires) I just happened to check them last night (just found my tread depth gage) I have 6/32 up front, 7/32 in the rear. 260 would equate to approx 26,000 tread life, I think these tires are good for more than that.

[bartonmd]

Tire pressure: When a car company says something low for a 'reccomended' tire pressure, it's usually because the car has kindof hard suspension, so they say to soften up the tire pressure so it still rides OK. The tire deformation you speak of is related to the max tire pressure on the side of the tire. That is the pressure where you start losing contact patch. On the other side of that coin, I'd usually run more pressure in the front than the rear because of the added weight on the front end.

 

Eagle RS-A's: A friend of mine had those on his Avenger for about 60k miles... he went through 3 sets of them. He was in the process of getting alittle better mileage out of the Yoko ES100's he put on it when the car got totalled (the ES-100's are a 280 treadwear BTW). The ES-100's handled better in the wet than the RS-A's did in the dry... they were utterly amazing! The other bad part was that the RS-A's turned to hardened ass when they're about halfway gone and wet traction became nill. The ES-100's are a summer only tire though, so you need snow tires if you get snow in the winter, but you really need snow tires with the RS-A's also, and the Eagle LS's (my wife's Neon), etc.

 

THe yokos on my lumina are also utterly amazing... they handle as well in the wet as my other tires did in the dry, and they stop in the wet better than any other tire I have experienced (except the ES100)... I've NEVER gotten the ABS to kick on with the new tires, even in a wet pannic stop situation, and they stop better in a wet pannic stop than other new tires I've had did in the dry. Plus a 500 mile treadwear rating means they should be around for awhile... but we'll see how they hold up over time... I'm optimistic though.

 

Mike

[Brian P]

I heard mixed reviews about certain RSA's. If that Avenger had the 17's, I've heard bad things about RSA's with the short sidewalls (ask Shawn) The tires I put on are literally cop car tires, V rated. But I paid so little for them, I can't lose even if they were to fail by springtime.

[bartonmd]

Brian, yeah, it was an ES with the 17's... what would make the tires worse with short sidewalls?

[Brian P]

The 18" RSA's low profile are notorious for sidewall cracking, to say the least. I don't know why it happens, but it never happens on any average-profile tire (usually under 17") The VW people complain about that tire ALL the time of being rough/harsh (it was standard on one of VW's models, not sure which) I haven't had any of those issues.

[bartonmd]

oh, I gotcha... he never had any of those problems... they just wore out WAY too fast for how sticky they are (or aren't as the case may be). It was kindof odd because the lower they would get, the faster they would wear and at the same time, the worse they could grip.

 

Mike