Triple-H

Exactly. Try a garage, don't try a place that makes their business selling tires, they stand a great chance of NOT helping you. I think almost all of my tires have come mail order for the last decade and I have never had a problem getting them mounted.

Another thing to do is look for some specialty garages in your area that seem to cater to nice cars like Audi, BMW, Mercedes, Porsche. Feel free to call them up and ask them if they will do the mounting and balancing, and if you want to have some fun, let them know you are looking for a shop with a Hunter machine. Hunter is one of the very best! When my tires are mounted and balanced the Hunter machine that is used is able to determine the heavy side of the wheel and the light side of the tire, then the mechanic mounts the heavy wheel side to the light tire side, thus when weights are added fewer are needed, and boy do they feel smooth at 125 to 130mph.

http://www.hunter.com/

Kyras

That's an option I never considered. I figure they'll charge an arm and a leg to do it, especially since I'm not buying the tires from them. I will ask though. Thanks for the suggestion.l

raymo19

Best options for 17" per Jim@tirerack (in no particular order):

Bridgestone S-03
Kumho Ecsta MX
Michelin Pilot SP PS2
Yokohoma Advan Neova AD07

225/45/17 and 255/40/17

dlq04

Tire Rack maintains a list of installers in your area and there is continual feedback on them by the people who use them. In my area the closest was about 45 minutes away and came highly recommended on their site. My experience was good. Naturally it's best to know this BEFORE your order so the Tire Rack can send the tires direct to the installer.

dlq04

I would agree on that as well. When I was in CT getting a roll bar installed the shop owner & fellow S2000 owner was worried sick that I was driving on tires that were near the wear marks. His concern was rain. Of course I did encounter rain on the way back without any difficulties. When my sensor (butt) told me things were getting hairy my other sensor (head) told me to at least slow down to the speed limit.

dlq04

PS- on the above note. The installer installed tires on my wife's car. Since Tire Rack is only a few hours from me I drive there direct and they install using Hunter equipment. So I agree with Doug on equipment as well. Ideally I would look for their recommended installer who uses similar equipment if I lived a long distance away.

Legal Bill

Funny, I have had the same experience. The SO2 is my rain tire at the autocross events. The only time I beat the class-leading S2000 driver was in the rain. We both took off our Hoosiers and put on our rain tires. He had SO-3s. I beat him by over half a second. Maybe he is just not a good rain driver, but this experience really made me wonder about the bad reputation SO-2s have in the wet. I wonder if it has more to do with worn/hard/cold SO-2s versus fresh SO-2s.

Mike, when you crashed, how old or worn were your SO2s?

mikegarrison

OK, crash #1 was totally driver error, so I won't count that. (Tires were almost brand new, but so was my knowledge of rwd dynamics....)

The more significant incident was the one that happened on track. The tires were used, but not down to the wear bars. Probably only about halfway down. And this was probably about my 10-12th track day at that point. The tires were slipping in the corners a lot more than they do in the dry, but that's what you would expect. I was having fun.

But there was some standing water on the main straight, and the car was having hydroplaning problems. Finally I was going down the straight at about 80 and I beleive the car hydroplaned only on the left side. This immediately pulled the car into a counterclockwise spin, at a high yaw rate. Maybe Mario Andretti could have saved it, but I have my doubts. From almost the moment the car started spinning, all four tires lost grip. I bounced the car off of two concrete walls, rather like a pinball. (If the straight had really been straight I would have just spun harmlessly along, but unfortunately the "straight" actually has a kink in it, and I slammed into the kink wall, then bounced over to the other side of the track and hit that wall too.)

I drive in the rain a lot. The S03 is much less prone to hydroplaning, and it does seem to have a better Cf on the wet roads.

matrix

I absolutely agree that the S02 has a bad rep in the rain. The S02 is my rain tire for the track/autox. I have tracked it many times in the rain (including FC04) and the tire is great!

matrix

I don't totally agree with this...I had RA1s - they were better than the SO2s and wore just slightly quicker but had more grip...