Re-71 vs Falken RT660

[racingfool]

Originally Posted by dreamwonder

Datapoint, maxxis rc1 r2

Comparing R compound 100 tread wear tire to a 200 TW RE-71?
How does the VR-1 200 TW tire compare?

[dreamwonder]

There is no context, just sharing info.

[Icecreamtruk]

Originally Posted by NoHaveMSG

Out of curiosity, what size are you running and what are your alignment specs? Where did you settle on hot pressures?

255/40R17 Falkens on 17x9 wheels. Camber is -5 front, -3.5 rear, a smidge of toe-out front and toe-in rear. Hot pressures seem to be a bit finicky, sometimes they work best at around 34hot, some others at around 32, and some others at around 36. All of those 3 days were on different surfaces and weather, so it probably just means its pressure sensitive as a tire (more so than others).

[NoHaveMSG]

Originally Posted by Icecreamtruk

255/40R17 Falkens on 17x9 wheels. Camber is -5 front, -3.5 rear, a smidge of toe-out front and toe-in rear. Hot pressures seem to be a bit finicky, sometimes they work best at around 34hot, some others at around 32, and some others at around 36. All of those 3 days were on different surfaces and weather, so it probably just means its pressure sensitive as a tire (more so than others).

Sounds like you had very similar experience I did. My last two days I did where back to back 2 day event. Same track, pretty much same conditions. I was still chasing pressure to get them in the window. It is strange how sensitive they are to pressure.

[Icecreamtruk]

Originally Posted by NoHaveMSG

Sounds like you had very similar experience I did. My last two days I did where back to back 2 day event. Same track, pretty much same conditions. I was still chasing pressure to get them in the window. It is strange how sensitive they are to pressure.

It is, they are not a bad tire by any means, but still not a direct competitor to the yokos I feel like. I'll try the CR1s next, still on the search for cheap fast tires :P

[cmiovino]

This weekend, my buddy with an S2000 was at an event and I was checking out the wear on his RT660's. He's mainly used them for autocross as a dual driver car and some street use. He's done 5 events with our main region, then another one 3 hours away (which he drove them there on), and 3 at another local region. Double those figures due to it being dual driven. He has somewhere around 10 events, 2 drivers, virtually 18 events(subtracted two his co-driver didn't come) if it was a single driver car. This would be about 110 runs.



He drives them hard and is experienced. They're wearing really well. Gets solid times on pair with my DS setup BRZ... in fact he's been a hair ahead the last few events with me on Yoks.


In comparison, he was shocked when he saw my Yoks were toasted 14 events (single driven), 94 cumulative runs. I'm impressed with how they're holding up, yet netting him great times and are cheaper than the Yoks. I think he'll get the next 10 events out of them or another 100 runs... bringing them up to about 200 runs total. That's insane.


I've taken RE-71R's out to 200 runs... twice. They heat cycle out after 125 runs being competitive, and really drop off at 150 runs. We'll see if the RT660's do that being about the same weight as a BRZ and RWD in his S2000.


I'll likely go with the 660's next time or even later this season if my Yoks die off. I haven't been impressed with them. They're good in the early stages of the season when new and when it was cold... however for summer and nearly 100 runs only, they're getting noticeably slower IMO. It's hard to spend 25% more and get probably half the life and be compromised half of the season on hot event days. It was worth the experiment though.


The Yoks would be good for a -4 degree camber setup car and doing <15 autocross events per year.... if you if only want a tire on a second set for spring/fall cool events. The RT660 is right up there with the RE with all the general characteristics of them which will get you through a year of racing (20 events) without flipping them and be able to take a range of temperatures... and even a track day or two probably.

[steverife]

In STX trim, my first set of Yoks is at 160 runs, plus a few thousand street miles including Deals Gap runs. I don't know how many runs they have left, but I'm thinking 20-40. They fell off around half that number, but that is also the point where I left them outside all winter (thinking I could easily get a new set the start of this year).

I'm also of the opinion that pretty much every tire falls off somewhere around 80 runs/4 month time period. I probably got less competitive runs out of RE71R's than any other tire that I've owned, because it took a bunch of runs for them to come in.

[Icecreamtruk]

@cmiovino if you havent experienced the yokos in a high cambered car, I understand why you would be not impressed with them. They really need a lot of camber to work well, and boy do they work. But yeah, for the money, the RT660 are good stuff. I feel like they would work much better than the yokos on limited camber, similar to the RE71R but still not as good as rival S which is basically a tire for cars without camber, it has the mushiest of sidewalls and feels about as precise as a 20lbs hammer.

[cmiovino]

Originally Posted by Icecreamtruk

@cmiovino if you havent experienced the yokos in a high cambered car, I understand why you would be not impressed with them. They really need a lot of camber to work well, and boy do they work. But yeah, for the money, the RT660 are good stuff. I feel like they would work much better than the yokos on limited camber, similar to the RE71R but still not as good as rival S which is basically a tire for cars without camber, it has the mushiest of sidewalls and feels about as precise as a 20lbs hammer.

I believe you're right. My reasoning going with the Yoks was they're the grippiest and it doesn't make any rational sense that camber is going to make one tire better than another.


Kinda like, low camber Yoks in theory, should be better than low camber Falkens... if in fact the Yoks are a grippier compound. But that's not what the real world results are showing. In actual application, the Yoks are probably magical if you're running STX, -4 degrees up front, stiff suspension. I think the soft sidewall as something to do with it and Yok might deform enough under heavy loads without camber that you actually put less tire to the ground. Only a theory, but that would explain it.

[Icecreamtruk]

Originally Posted by cmiovino

I believe you're right. My reasoning going with the Yoks was they're the grippiest and it doesn't make any rational sense that camber is going to make one tire better than another.


Kinda like, low camber Yoks in theory, should be better than low camber Falkens... if in fact the Yoks are a grippier compound. But that's not what the real world results are showing. In actual application, the Yoks are probably magical if you're running STX, -4 degrees up front, stiff suspension. I think the soft sidewall as something to do with it and Yok might deform enough under heavy loads without camber that you actually put less tire to the ground. Only a theory, but that would explain it.

Its not a theory, its pretty much what it is. Each tire has a certain camber setting for each car at which it works best. Some have very little variation between good and bad camber, some have huge ones (like the yokos). Yokos on little camber will be slower than falken 660T or RE71R or rivals S. Its probably in the sidewall and tire construction overall. Its just a matter of either setting up the car for the tire you want to run, or running the tire that works best with the car setup you are allowed within the regulations you run.

[NoHaveMSG]

Drove the 660's in 70-75f ambient. Totally different tire. Steering feel still sucks but much more grip and much more consistent over more laps. Last session of the day ran 12 laps including outlap. 6 laps including my best of the day within +/-.3 sec. I think without traffic it would have been even more laps closer.