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My Tire Odyssey

2K views 0 replies 1 participant last post by  JohnWR 
#1 ·
One of the few down-sides of owning more than one Sky is that each of them has four tires, and those tires eventually have to be replaced. Sometimes they all have to be replaced at the same time.

The '07 NA got new Michelin MXV4s in the spring of 2012 in anticipation of the Annual Meet in Asheville. Great tires for that car, I really liked them and was quite disappointed to learn that they were no longer available. Now into 2020 those tires are 9 years old so they are ready to be replaced.

The '08 RL got new Michelin Pilot Sport AS3s in the spring of 2016. Unfortunately the alignment that was done on it during the rebuild omitted the rear caster, and two of those tires lasted just about a year before i found the problem, so it got two more new AS3s in the spring of 2017. Those tires were doing great until last month when one of the original pair picked up two nails and was determined to be non-repairable with about 2/3 of its tread remaining.

So, what to do? I don't want to replace one four-year-old tire since the RL is fairly picky about its tires and even on "regular" cars I have had problems after replacing one tire in that condition. That means that I need two for the RL, but to further complicate things the AS3 has been replaced with the AS3+ and is no longer available. Are the new tires close enough to the old tires to mix them on the car? I don't know. Michelin's replacement for the MXV4 is the Premier, but they actually cost 25% more than PS AS3+, so I won't be buying them since they are a lower performance tire and I will not put enough miles on them to benefit from the longer tread life of 65k vs 45k miles.

My solution was to move the newer set of AS3 to the front of the NA, put two new AS3+ on the back, and then put four new AS3+ with new TPMS sensors on the RL. I also bought a TPMS sensor reader that is worth twice what I paid for it, even if I never use it again, because it made teaching the sensors to the car take just about one minute. Amazing.

Buying six new tires was a bit painful, but driving two cars with newer, and in one case better, tires is really nice.
 

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