I know these questions have been asked in the main forum a few times, but I wanted to hear what my fellow Houstonians have to say. I'm looking at buying an MY05 Silverstone pretty soon.

1. Have you ever had problems with traction in the rain to the point of it being dangerous? I have heard a few people talk about losing their rear ends for "unknown reasons" and just don't know how much truth is in that.

2. How long are your tires lasting?

Thanks in advance.

 

"Unknown reasons" as in "Gee, it was slippery and I was driving too fast"???

Adjust your speed to teh appropriate level and you'll be okay. Having said that, I have been in a downpour where there was so much rain on the road that it just did not feel save at all to continue driving. My tire tread (or lack thereof) probably did not help, though.

My fronts have seen 21,000 miles so far and are now in dire need to be changed. My first set of rears lasted about 10,000 miles, and the current ones about 11,000 miles. Oddly enough this time it looks like I'll get another 1,000 miles or so out of the rears, though. Not sure if my driving style has changed.

 

The rain issue all depends on how you drive, there are many times when it rains really hard where if i'm on the highway i will flip my hazards on and drive 20mph under the limit because that is the only way I feel safe, you just can't go flying down the road in a downpour. I have only got about 6,000 or so out of my s02's in the rear because I drive pretty hard and autox once a month. so you will need to be prepared to buy tires alittle more frequently than a normal car.

 

with the '05 rear tires, I think wet traction is better than the pre-04 S02's. They were horrible in the rain, since there was no place for the water to channel away from the tire.

I have my wheels cambered out a bit, and I run a harder compound of Kuhmo 712's and got about 10K on the rears this last time. I was a tard and didn't flop them though, so I'm sure I could have gotten more of i had dome some flopping of tires. I go through 2 rears sets per front set.

 

Yeah, the "unknown reason" I was refering to was the "I was only doing 60 through a underpass u-turn in the rain and don't know why the tires broke loose" plea. I drive a V8 truck right now and before I had the tires replaced the back-end was everywhere. I guess an S couldn't be any worse.

I was a little concerned about the frequency of tire replacement since my truck will typically get 30k-50k on a set of tires. For the distance I typically drive each year I would have to replace the rears once a year and the fronts once every other year on an S. That's not too bad when you think about it. I just worry about stuff like this too much I guess.

 

oh, yeah...I have 18" wheels so the treat on the tires is very low b/c of the loweer profile of the tire. If you were on the stock 17's you shuld get more life time?

 

Having just met Ulrich I cant say "he's crazy" for driving on the tires that are on his car right now, but OMG I cant believe he is driving around on those!!! (he had em off at Coops house)

Now as to your question, My 05 s2k is entirely reasonable and predictable in the rain. If you want a car that you cant just stomp on the gas in any weather and the car's computer will make sure nothing bad happens, then you want a bmw z4 or 3 series. The Compu-Nanny is in full effect there and will make sure you never have an "Oh $hit"... Having said that, the reason I got the s2000 is that I wanted to be in control of my own destiny and not have super nanny under the hood....

 

just don't accel into a turn... err *ahem* when changing lanes on wet asphault...

 

Ya I typically get about 10k out of the rears and I only got 5k out of the fronts last time because of an alignment problem.

 

you can get that type of mileage out of tires on an S2000, but they will be hard tires and the grip will suck.

I do not use S02, I use tires that are better in the rain and give up some dry tractions. I also use tires that cost a lot less than S02 or original equipment tires, because I replace rears about every 4 months.