How Are RE-71Rs In The Wet?

[C4RBON]

In my experience the RE-71R is fine for normal wet roads and puddles. I have not tried driving in standing water with them (such as minor street flooding, shallow stream fords, autox in torrential downpours, etc) but I used them as my daily tire for most of the summer and during plenty of rainstorms. And I've autocrossed with them in the rain, and found them to be predictable and grippy. This is on a tire with plenty of tread remaining, though.

[Brzerker]

Originally Posted by slyphen

With conventional tires, you usually judge how much life it has left by looking at the treads. The Bridgestone RE71Rs is a special compound tire, where it not only depend on the tread life, but also the amount of heat cycles. usually the tire loses its peak performance after a certain amount of heat cycles, this is the case with many high performance tires, including MPSS(but you may not notice unless you put the car into a competition environment).

Heat cycle is when the tire warm up to the design temperature and cool back down to ambient. The rubber compound loses its "stickiness" as it pass the optimal amount of heat cycles and become hard. RE71R is notorious for that, which is why right before the SCCA Solo National Championship, veterans are getting rid of their "older" RE71Rs even when they only raced 2-3 events with them. So if you daily them, you are putting it thru the cycles, and by the time you get to the track, its not as effective.

At least this is how i understood it by talking to the pros. hope it made sense.

Sorry to digress from the topic. But I have always wondered, can this "stickiness" of the compound be quantified? Perhaps by using a tire durometer?

I am currently using the RE71R as a daily as well, have ran them through torrential storms on the highway (no standing puddles) and they hold up pretty well. Not at very high speeds of course.

[G_Ride]

Originally Posted by GirlRepellent

So true but wouldn't that be the case with any tire choice?

Pretty much. As long as you have some tread and you're not stupid you should be fine.

[Prmspen]

Thanks for all the responses, folks. Based on what I'm hearing, I'm going to go ahead and daily drive them. I have a short commute on city/surface streets (after 10 months, my car has less than 4,000 miles on it), so it should be fine. If I do hit the freeway in the rain for any reason, I'll take it easy.

[mitch t]

Originally Posted by Brzerker

Sorry to digress from the topic. But I have always wondered, can this "stickiness" of the compound be quantified? Perhaps by using a tire durometer?

I am currently using the RE71R as a daily as well, have ran them through torrential storms on the highway (no standing puddles) and they hold up pretty well. Not at very high speeds of course.

We all wish that it could.

Tire durometers can tell you how soft the compound is, and that is often used to evaluate "stickyness" but that only gets you in the ballpark.

If there was a tool that could accurately measure potential grip, we wouldn't all have to go out and test tires every spring, we woud just go to the tire store and measure them.

[Brzerker]

Originally Posted by mitch t

We all wish that it could.

Tire durometers can tell you how soft the compound is, and that is often used to evaluate "stickyness" but that only gets you in the ballpark.

If there was a tool that could accurately measure potential grip, we wouldn't all have to go out and test tires every spring, we woud just go to the tire store and measure them.

Was pondering over what slyphen said regarding the tyres hardening over heat cycles and whether a durometer can "measure" that. Not so much over how much potential grip the tyre has. Apologies if it was interpreted differently