Hi all. My S is in need of an alignment as evidenced by the wear on the inside edges of the front tires. What type of shops are competent on these cars besides the dealer? Is there anything special about these cars? Options would be a specialized alignment shop, a tire shop or some type of specialty tuner shop. Secondly can tires be swapped left to right to preserve some life. I have S-02 on there now, just put new rears on and since these are very hard to find in Canada now I'd like to finish off the matched set before mounting 4 new tires. Thanks.

 

The only 16" Bridgestone S-02 tires I can find are "Porsche N3" spec, whatever that means. Wear rating of 140 and still only "Max" performance summer tires. Summer is long gone in Canada. (The parts of Florida that have a preponderance of Ontario license plates don't count.)

As far as exchanging them side to side all the "performance" Bridgestone tires I've used all have either a Rotation arrow on them meaning they'll have to be remounted on the wheel the other side out, or they have an Outside designation which will still be outside on the other side of the car. Easy to tell: look at the tire. "Outside" may not show if the tires were mounted wrong.

If remaining with 16" wheels I'd have fitted the RE-11 tires for summer use. For 17" wheels S-04 tires for summer use.

-- Chuck

 

Re: alignment shops -- any shop with good ratings will do. The proof is in the pudding -- get a printout of the final alignment (should be Honda OEM or Honda UK specs if you want a more stable car at the expense of additional tire wear) -- everything on that receipt should be green and consistent, not red/all over the place.

Re: tires side to side, I don't think so -- front sizes and different from rears, and rears are directional (someone correct me if I'm wrong). I have not found a need to do so -- my rears tend to consistently wear out in pairs 2x or 3x as fast as my fronts.

+1 for the future on SO2s no longer being the BEST for our cars (or in other words, there are newer, better tires).

I don't know how much driving you do (or if you require snow/cold weather tires), but if you're sticking to temperatures over 55F, I'm extremely happy with Continental DW (not DWS, where the S denotes snow) for 16" for next time around.

If you upgrade to 17" OEM wheels, you'll have even more selection of rubber.

 

You can swap tires side to side, but you have to unmount them (so they stay directional) and remount them, may not be worth the cost to you.

If you are going for stock alignment specs, any decently rated alignment/tire shop will be fine. Just make sure you keep an eye on them when they are performing the alignment, I've had issues where they didn't know that caster, camber, and toe can be adjusted on our cars (most vehicles they see have limited adjustment points for alignment). If you are looking for something more agressive (for track/autox/etc) then I would recommend a shop that specifically knows how to setup your alignment for your those environments.

 

Some tires are directional, but not all. If yours are, there will be an arrow of sorts on the sidewall, along with text, saying Rotation.

In this case, as was mentioned, you'd have to dismount them from the wheels to rotate them. By the time you pay for mounting and balancing, the savings start to disappear.

But if your tires are not directional, then yes, you can rotate them left to right. Jack up one end, remove wheels, swap side to side. Repeat other end.