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More evidence the P Zero's suck..

NoVaGT

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GTRacerX.

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Agreed ...

They suck for anything outside the track (road course) or 90+ ambient temps. They need to be hot to work on the street as well as (but not better than) a huge amount of its competitors. Even the UHP summers like the Indy 500 and BFG Comp 2 are better street tires, particularly on the subjective measures. The P-zeros are terrible in cool weather, pretty poor in the rain, and a bit scary in the cool and wet, in addition to the piss poor tire wear.

They were on the PP cars because they were decent for a street tire on the track, and Ford gets a crazy good deal from Pirelli.
After having them on my 2005 Mustang GT I can attest to the fact they are crap in cold / wet weather. Of course any tire depending on - how much tread is still on the tire, the road conditions and how hard we push our cars would fair about the same way. ;)
 

DickR

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I really didn't have any complaint on the road performance, but I also didn't push them real hard. I tend to not take a lot of chances on a public road, more so for the safety of others than for my own. They break loose like nothing when it's cool but I knew that ahead of time so it wasn't like it was a huge disappointment. I really felt like the uneven wear on the back was my fault, which if why I asked him about it. I was hoping to not repeat the mistake.

The front tires still weren't in too bad of shape and they had 27k miles on them. I got 18k on the first set of rears but they were SLICK by the time I put the next set on. I got the next set at about 80% life remaining and they were terribly uneven and going concave in the middle just like the first set. The inside of the tire had significantly more tread than the outside as well.

Regardless, I thought the sidewall thing was pretty significant. The guy freely admitted the device is strong so puncturing a sidewall isn't far-fetched, but he and the other guy (both of which came off as pretty intelligent) agreed the sidewall was really thin, but did also both say they wouldn't have considered it dangerous to drive on but rather is just not what they would consider quality design.

One of them said Pirelli isn't even manufacturing some of these OEM tires and they're not the same compound on the OEM models as what you would get if you specifically bought the same model tire off the shelf. I have no idea if that's accurate or not (maybe that's a widely known fact and of no surprise to some of you), but if Ford gets them super cheap it would make sense if they're outsourcing production and going cheap on the compound and utilizing other corner-cutting. A tire on a mass produced vehicle (being not specialized and not intended for solely for racing) who people regularly say they get less than 10k miles on seems ridiculous so I would suspect it's being produced very much on the cheap, although not necessarily unsafe. I also have no idea why my fronts lasted 27k miles other than most of my 1600 miles a month are a very straight stretch of interstate.
Regarding short rear tire life: Do you get wheelspin very often? :D
 

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People want to gripe about .1 second on instrumented tests and then they wanna gripe about tires that aren't ideal for their daily commute.
 

DickR

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For anyone who doesn't already know this keep in mind:

As the outright abilities of Max Performance Summer tires continually advance, we have to remind ourselves that these are street tires, and while they are capable of producing some remarkably fast times, extensive lapping at a driver's school or HPDE event isn't in their mission statement.
https://www.tirerack.com/tires/tests/testDisplay.jsp?ttid=223

For that kind of use and/or autocross a https://www.tirerack.com/tires/types/perfCat.jsp?perf=EP is typically a better choice and will suffer "less" from the outside edge abuse from a heavy street car and its limited front camber. My oem P Zeros are in great shape at 31K miles ON THE CAR but MUCH less on the P Zeros of course. Ditto for the oem wheels. We won't talk about how many sets of RE-71Rs I've gone through and how many cone marks I have on my Forgestar wheels. :-)
 

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NoVaGT

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For anyone who doesn't already know this keep in mind:

https://www.tirerack.com/tires/tests/testDisplay.jsp?ttid=223

For that kind of use and/or autocross a https://www.tirerack.com/tires/types/perfCat.jsp?perf=EP is typically a better choice and will suffer "less" from the outside edge abuse from a heavy street car and its limited front camber. My oem P Zeros are in great shape at 31K miles ON THE CAR but MUCH less on the P Zeros of course. Ditto for the oem wheels. We won't talk about how many sets of RE-71Rs I've gone through and how many cone marks I have on my Forgestar wheels. :-)
Weird....

There's no extreme performance summer tires in OE sizes for the PP cars.
 

NoVaGT

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The new MP4Ss are available in 2015-2017 PP sizes now.
 

thehunterooo

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People want to gripe about .1 second on instrumented tests and then they wanna gripe about tires that aren't ideal for their daily commute.
Anything for the magazine times :cheers:
 

DickR

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Weird....

There's no extreme performance summer tires in OE sizes for the PP cars.
Autocrossers normally go to 35 series tires. Typically 275 or 285/35x19 either square or 275 F and 285 R. I use 275/35x19 F&R or 275 F and 285 R RE-71R's. A few people tried the new Nexen with good success but I think at Nationals all the top Camaros, BMW's, and Mustangs were on RE-71R's. Other classes like BFG's. RE-71R's "generally" have the best wet performance especially when somewhat worn.

To be even more track oriented it TW200 min isn't a requirement

https://www.tirerack.com/tires/types/perfCat.jsp?perf=STRT

https://www.tirerack.com/tires/types/perfCat.jsp?perf=DRY
 

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ricardocabesa

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Why all this negative talk about cold performance?
The GT Performance Package includes:
• 19" X 9" (F) 19” X 9.5” (R) Ebony Black-Painted Aluminum Wheels
• 255/40R19 (F) 275/40R (R) SUMMER ONLY Tires
 

DickR

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Why all this negative talk about cold performance?
The GT Performance Package includes:
• 19" X 9" (F) 19” X 9.5” (R) Ebony Black-Painted Aluminum Wheels
• 255/40R19 (F) 275/40R (R) SUMMER ONLY Tires
Apparently the concern is that even in milder temperatures (i.e. 50 F to maybe 60 F) the tires aren't as good as some other competitive tires such as the MPSS. Personally I'm impressed that real street tires can deal with 435 HP at any temperature. :)

Note that one of the auto racing forums I follow has some highly skilled test engineers who post. The "cold performance" sucks problem is not unique to Mustangs or Pirelli tires. One engineer indicated that the ABS and stability control software in at least one high end US performance car monitors tire temperature. He also noted that summer tires have gotten more and more cold sensitive in the effort to improve warm/hot grip and durability. One term that the experts mention is "glass transition temperature". Apparently the rubber compounds which work best at warm/hot temps literally become brittle at cold temps and their grip falls off rapidly in the range in between the extremes. I suspect that since OEMs ship cars from northern factories to northern dealers in the middle of winter that brand new tires are less susceptible to the damage mentioned in the Tire Rack info or in the owner manuals than ones which have a lot of use and aging of the rubber compounds.

The trade-off for those of us who live in places like Raleigh and drive cars like Mustangs is that most of the "winter" here isn't cold enough to hurt the summer tires and the temps are such that even though they don't have warm weather grip they aren't any worse that all season tire grip. This is further complicated by the fact that even good all season tires aren't good enough to deal with the ice and "snow" that we typically get since most of the side roads are not cleared/salted/sanded like the roads up north. Plus we have lots of hills and lots of "less than skilled driving in the snow" drivers on bald all season tires. Do we buy snows & all seasons & summer tires with 19 inch wheels for each type? NOPE;)

Finally congrats to Michelin chemists and engineers for apparently stretching (pun intended) the temperature window while also improving dry and wet grip.
 

BmacIL

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Why all this negative talk about cold performance?
The GT Performance Package includes:
• 19" X 9" (F) 19” X 9.5” (R) Ebony Black-Painted Aluminum Wheels
• 255/40R19 (F) 275/40R (R) SUMMER ONLY Tires
So I know you're in your hot and humid bubble in FL, but in much of the rest of the country, Summer tires are still perfectly good to have on in the spring and fall, where the afternoon highs can be in the 70's and even 80's F, but where it's 50 in the morning. The P-zeros don't even do slow to moderate pace driving well in the cool mornings, particularly if there's any moisture. Its competitors do not suffer this severely. Sure, you don't want to be pushing a max or uhp summer when it's 50 out, but the slope of the dropoff shouldn't be as severe as it is with these.
 

ricardocabesa

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I guess SUMMER ONLY applies to 1 season,summer. Folks just don't get it. They're telling you 1 season. Believe them.
If you want a 4 or a 2.5 season tire,buy all season tires. Or snows in you live on a frozen tundra.
I've visited 48 states and driven in the winter in quite a few,so I get it. But it clearly states 1 season. So I believe them. Trying to stretch them to early Fall or late Spring is a no go. I'm not comparing them to any other tire which may work into either of those seasons. Obviously there are 2.5 season tires,as mentioned,but this thread isn't about them.
 
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hiccup

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Ive had my original pirellis on my gtpp for 2 1/2 yrs now..about 10,200 mi...been a decent tire but backs are gettin very low on tread..have continued to drive during the cold seasons when temps were 30°-45°...was extra careful on the wet roads so cant relate to those who lost it in the rain but the cold dry roadway even curves never got uncontrollable. Cant wait to get my Continental extreme sports mounted since they get better treatment on here. Might feel like a better dd than it has been...
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