When to flip RE71R

[Jake Stumph]

My RE71R having been wearing out the center rib, crowning towards the outside/wear edge, which I've been told is normal. However, at what point should I have these tires flipped? These have about 50 AX runs on them + ~500-700 street miles. Track day at Buttonwillow in two weeks, wondering if I should flip them now for better wear on track.

[Tom Tanquary]

These tires feel good right till the end. From the looks I'd flip them right now so they'd be pretty even by the time they finish. I flipped mine a while back and now have almost no tread left....and over a 100 runs.... and they still feel pretty good. Not like new, and wouldn't use them if I were in a trophy run, but they still give a good grip for a respectable time.

[Craig Naylor]

Hmm...

What kind of car are they on?
If you have 50 run's on those.... your not driving hard enough!

That said...
I'm wondering if your running them over inflated.
Front or rear on my Miata (which generically speaking are easy on tires), my outside edges were nearly worn off well before I touched the wear-bars in the center groove.

As a general practice, I flip my tires, JUST BEFORE I feel a tire shop will refuse to flip them due to wear. Whether that be due to wear bars, or outer edge wear. For me it's typically the latter.

[Jake Stumph]

These are on my H-Street Civic Si (the silver one). Mystery alignment (bought it used), stock shocks, no camber bolts, etc. As far as pressures, the car seems to feel best around 34-35psi hot up front and about 30-32psi hot in the rear.

[Craig Naylor]

While slightly higher pressures than I run on the Miata (28-30psi square, lot dependent)... your pressures sound very reasonable...

HS... that's why your getting better wear than we get in STS.
- lack of camber keeps you inside edges from wearing
- lower speeds in corners keeping the outside edges from wearing.

As I eluded to, and Tom actually posted above, I think you're in the ballpark of flipping now.

[Tom Tanquary]

All of us in stock classes can't go beyond the factory limits on front end negative camber. So in cornering, most of what we do, we're going to grind off that outer third of our tires. This was my argument for allowing camber plates in stock class. Which was shot down. Still not sure why. Some cars in stock trim can get a lot more negative camber than others (not fair!) Not having a camber adjustment costs us performance and money. Of course it takes skill to corner with only about 2" of your front tire on the ground, so I guess that's a good learning thing that I'm not doing a good enough job doing, but I'd rather not spend money filliping or even tossing tires that are only partially used.

[Craig Naylor]

Hi Jake,

I've been intending to do the math for months now on my tire wear (195/50/15 Re71R's). Finally sitting down & doing it.

I ran 31 runs & 2922 miles before I flipped them. At that point the tire company who installed them was already pushing back... because I was just brushing the outer most wear bars, as mounted.

Following this last weekend in San Diego I'm at 92 runs w/ 6,564 miles on them now.

Their not bald, but definitely in comb-over territory at this point. As currently mounted (flipped once) the outer most tread block has visually measurable tread... but a digital micrometer would be hard pressed to actually measure any. Centers are well into the wear-bars at this point. Inner's (original outer's before flipping) ... half way between outer's & center's so far a wear goes.

Had I not flipped them, I would have probably corded the outer block at 60-ish runs.

I've gotten more wear out of them than I thought I had...

Net result... a half season & 10k street miles less than the Dunlop Star Spec's, but ~2 sec faster in a 60 sec course.