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I was browsing locations where I might find the new cup2 connects in 17" sizes that some posted in another channel and saw that Costco had re71 rft. I know usually rft are looked past, but i had some good experiences with the re71r and was wondering if anyone heard about these or tried them out? admittedly they're more than a lot of new, probably better tires, but was curious
Havent tried them, but cannot imagine a run flat will be anywhere in the ballpark of the RE-71R in terms of performance and the price is re donk ulus .
If you liked the RE-71R, look at the Falken Azenis RT660's. They will be very close in performance and wear.
Or the Yokohama A052, which is grippier but wears even faster than the RE-71R and is mostly the choice for autox. I really do not recommend these unless trying to win your class at autox events. Maybe time attack but I think the RT660 may be better there even as I believe it falls off less as it gets hot. The A052 is pretty much aimed at autox in the way it performs (heats up fast, grips like hell but wears like crazy and falls off in grip once hot). And if you do run the A052 they hate low camber numbers. So you want to make sure you have plenty of camber dialed in (2 degrees or more is good). On an E Street MR-S for example, where they are camber limited by design and cannot rotate front to rear, some locals were getting 24 runs out of the fronts before they were toast. So yeah... keep wear in mind!
If you just daily drive and never go to the track but still want a summer performance tire you can also go with the Falken Azenis RT615K+. Not as grippy as the RT660 but wears a lot slower and still is plenty good for the street or even track day stuff if you are not going for your fastest lap. They are still extreme performance summers but are not on the level of the tires above.
I'm curious on this one... I ran RE71R's for about 5 years and loved them. On one highway drive, I did have a bad valve stem and dropped the tire below 10psi while driving. It was on my rear axle. It took until the low teens before I really started noticing weird behavior on/off throttle. It was still drivable but became really apparent that I was correcting left on throttle and right when I let off. That's just to say the old RE71R's had incredibly stiff sidewalls. I do not believe the other 200TW's are as stiff in that regard. I'm curious what the aim of this tire is. I don't see a lot of overlap between those desiring runflats and those needing extreme performance. It would actually be nice though to know that on long trips to an AX event, I had run flats instead of potentially needing to use my spare. Nice to have but if it's .5s off pace, I'm not interested.
Well there will be practically no data on how they really perform. I mean, for that you need a lot of pointy end drivers (super consistent and fast) using them in identical conditions. And you will not find any serious competitors running them I would guess. As far as I know, run flats typically wear faster as well. So less life, harsher ride, likely worse handling and a lot more expensive. Maybe someone else will try them to see, but again, if they are not an incredibly consistent driver and try both on the same day at the same site, you wont know a lot in terms of actual performance.
Also, mounting them is harder and they are harder to repair based upon all I have read about them. In some cases they are not even supposed to be repaired. So you run the risk of also having to replace a tire due to simple puncture if you drive on them very far flat. I guess if you started getting a flat driving through the worst possible neighborhood and you were afraid of being robbed/shot, it would be of some benefit. Just be cause they can run flat, does not mean it does not damage the structure if doing so. So even if repairable afterwards I would question if the sidewalls would still be nearly as structural and thus performance would drop at the minimum.
Yea, it just seems like a really weird offering if they discontinued the RE71R's to release a slower but run-flat version of the same thing. It appears to be 140TW as well? I'm really just trying to figure out WTH this thing is supposed to be. Initially, I thought it was still 200TW but appear to be wrong. That puts it off my radar but I'm intrigued. I did also check B-Stones site and the RE71R is still on there. I'm not sure that it was ever removed but I was trying to find their literature on it. No dice yet.
It is very odd. Most of the big names like TireRack did not show them. But yes, they say 140 TW (So cannot be used in autox per the 200 TW rule). I wonder if they just are selling out a bunch of them and calling them run flat because of the stiff sidewalls? :P
04-13-2021, 11:42 AM
re71 rft, has anyone tried them?
