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Cincur on issue being tires. Tire rubber contains essential oils. On the surface of the tire, these oils are constantly refreshed during use, as centripetal force forces the oils to the surface.
Don't drive for extended periods, and these oils dry out on the surface. That leads to loss of pliability, and eventually dry rot and cracking.
Combine that with the flat spots from sitting in one spot for years, and you get out of round tires that are slow to return to shape.
Its possible continued driving could refresh them somewhat. But they'll probably never be as good as they were when parked. Plus they're inappropriate tires for the car. Just change them.
Well, I ordered the Firestone Firehawk Indy 500's yesterday. They will come in sometime next week. $501 with tax installed with $40 rebate so $461 all in, pretty good price!
I'll report back once I've put a few miles on them.
I'm going to also have it aligned just to be safe. My car is a MY2000 AP1 all stock. Should I just tell the alignment center to do whatever the book says or is there a preferred setting?
I didn't see this note in time to recommend tires from your list but those would be the tires. Note these are all 3d tier tires ranking below Extreme and Max Performance Summer Tires. The Firestones are actually highly regarded Bridgestone RE003 tires with Firestone molded rubber on the side walls. The Potenza Adrenalin RE003 tires are not available in North America.
Not sure an alignment is necessary and there are dozens of alignment specs favored by different folks so anything other than the OEM specs are a guess.
Tires much older than 5 or 6 years can be dangerous and tires degrade based on exposure to the atmosphere as well as road use.
I would say just get the alignment within oem specs and it will be fine. Be aware these cars use up rear tires at about twice the rate as fronts, so you need to keep an eye on the rear tread. I'm doing good if I get about 10 or 12 K miles on a set of rear tires.
One thing I do on my alignments (for fun street driving) is to set the rear toe at the low end of the oem spec on the theory that it might help tire wear. You will find all sorts of different alignment specs recommended around here.
Well, I ordered the Firestone Firehawk Indy 500's yesterday. They will come in sometime next week. $501 with tax installed with $40 rebate so $461 all in, pretty good price!
I'll report back once I've put a few miles on them.
I'm going to also have it aligned just to be safe. My car is a MY2000 AP1 all stock. Should I just tell the alignment center to do whatever the book says or is there a preferred setting?
Well,
My new Firehawk's came in a couple of weeks ago, but due to being busy at work and bad weather here I just got them installed today. Good and bad! The good: Firestone is now offering a $60 rebate so I'm getting another $60 off the tires. Another good. The new tires fixed the highway vibration of the 12 year old tires! Yes!!! Solved my problem. And, I do like the Indy 500's even though I only had 1 drive on them so far. Steering seems a bit lighter and the handling feels a bit more precise. They feel a bit firmer, but yet somehow smoother than the 12 year old Bridgestone's that we took off. All good news? No
The tire tech told me that 1 of my rear AP1 wheels is actually a narrow front wheel (I bought the staggered set of tires with 2 narrow in front and 2 wider in back). So technically I now have 3 narrow wheels and only 1 wide rear wheel. Impossible for me to tell with the naked eye when I bought it. And yes, they mounted both of the wider rear tires on the back...meaning one of my wider rear tires is mounted on a narrow rear wheel. He also said that the other rear wheel, the only true wide one has a slight dent in it on the inside, but he said he was still able to balance out the wheels.
New expense: I now need to find 2, like new condition AP1 rear wheels. Looks like I'll keep an eye open on the classifieds on this site. If anyone knows of someone or has 2 excellent condition AP1 rear wheels let me know and thanks!
04-19-2019, 11:26 AM
