Brought a new (to me) 996 turbo home after practicing a couple of years porsche life with a 996 carrera 2. What a machine the turbo is! My first post here...

I need new rear tires soon. The owners manual says not to use different make of tires in the front and in the back. My question is why? Have you done it?

I have Michelin Pilot Sports under my car now and a pair for the rear costs over 1.000 euros here in Finland. Bridgestone Potenza would be half the price.

What is your advice and / or experience on this?

 

Congrats on the new ride, details when you can share please.

Depends what you want the car for, street/trackautoX... The other thing to watch for is tire size-diameter. Our cars are all wheel drive and we need to keep the tire speed the same.

I had PS2 on front and rear then replaced rears with Sumitomos and loved the ride/grip. But for tracking it wasn't ideal as my fronts were quite old (see the manufacture date on each tire). I recently went with MPS Cups all around through the TireRack and got a great deal.

Good luck and enjoy!

 

I've run and raced with different brands front-to-rear. No problem. There's no
spooky combinatory alchemism that will make for any horror, so you can relax.
As long as you have good quality tires, you'll be OK. The number of chassis
adjustments, alignment settings and pressure changes that could be made that
would cause differences in how the front or back handles can easily outweigh,
mask or cooperate with tire differences.

 

Only real concern in my opinion is tire diameter for the AWD diff. That can easily be found on tirerack.com - just be sure the new rears you get are within +/- 10-15% (I think that was stated as the tolerance). The tires I have looked at all seemed to be pretty close. I would go for a tire that has slightly more diameter in the rear since they wear faster, but still be in tolerance.

Some people will say no to running mismatched tires front/rear because of different tire compounds/tread, etc. As long as you aren't racing, I really don't see a huge concern. If you have nearly bald tires on the rear and good ones on the front (which happens to all of us), what's the difference? The same dynamic takes place then...

Fronts will have more tread and be a little more pliant while the nearly worn out rears will not be and will have different grip than with full tread. So the proclamation of sure death from some people seems to be overstated in my opinion! :-)

I ran P-Zeros on the rear and Sumitomos on the front at the track once and they did just fine. It is all about knowing the dynamic of your car and how it reacts under corning, etc. I think that is more important then having no experience and matching tires...

 

Good, very good info. Thanks.

Sadly our tracks are very very short and curvy. I never track the car in Finland.

Based on what I just learned, I will go with the cheaper options on rear. Fronts that I have are fine.

 

That would be 1.0% - 1.5%...

 

But what about the N-ratings??



OP- Spot on advice above. There are many posts on 'matching tires' and 'what size tires should I use'...

For street use there is no issue with mixing brands and 'stickiness'...just make sure you understand how they effect handling. You may find it is all right, or you may decide you need to change the fronts sooner rather than later.

GL

A

 

I have been doing different brands front and rear for a year and half. People already talked about the diameter so that is one thing to keep in mind. The other important thing is keep them in similar compounds. I have run PS2 front and Bridgestone OEM rear with no problem. When I switched to Falken 615 rear, the car felt different in not a good way.

 

Same brand and type is the best so I think you should stay with the PS2. Do you have 18" or 19" wheels ?

 

Good catch! I didn't even do the math and it would obviously be wrong at 10-15%! Thx!!!

 

I have brand new Korean Kumho Ecsta in the back and Bridgestone Potenza in front ! What a great mix!!!! In the rain or on dry it is simply impressive. Nothing to complain about....

 

Is it normal for 996 turbo to wear tires out from inside edge??????

 

Hella yah. It's the negative camber and toe in.

 

This car is never going to handle horribly, but there is some degree of
tradeoff: to get optimal handling you will need to give up optimal tire
wear. If you are going to be doing long trips touring the country and
don't want to find yourself needing a fancy tire in rural Alabama, you
might consider getting a straighter alignment. You will get even wear
and long tire life and will probably never have a complaint, even driving
sportily as you like. But if you do track work or only drive when you can
hunt for maximum lateral Gs, then you should accept some *relatively*
slow inside wear (and even sacrificing some braking!) for maximum stick
in corners, avoiding *rapid* outside edge wear. A tour-aligned car can
destroy tires in 20 minutes of hard track driving, wearing the outside
edge to the cord.

 

18"" original rims