hello everyone and welcome in this video
i am going to be putting on some new
tires on my honda s2000 now as i've
often talked about tires are basically
the most important component of your car
um so you know it's important to not
kind of cheap out here and get some
quality stuff when you're getting new
tires
there's several reasons why i'm getting
new tires for my car the tread wear on
the tires that are on there currently is
fine but they're pretty cheap tires also
the rear tires are not the correct size
they're a little undersized so there's
205s on the back now that's the rear
width versus 225s which is going to be
going on it so about 20 more millimeters
of width there which is the proper size
that's the oem setup
this actually came with bridgestone
potenza so2s i believe was the stock
tire these are bridgestone potenza re
71r so this is a high performance summer
tire and hopefully we can see some
additional grip out of them
now because this is engineering
explained i'm not just going to talk
about my feelings when driving it i
bought this race logic v box sport which
has a 20 hertz gps engine in it so you
can get super accurate data from it so
i'm going to do some deceleration
testing some brake testing
and see what kind of distances stopping
distances and stopping times we get with
these tires versus once i put these
tires on and i'm going to do my best to
do it on days where the weather is very
similar
so that we get very similar data results
so temperatures will be relatively the
same when i test them
another thing that's messed up with the
rear tires is they have excessive
negative camber
i'm not positive what they are i did get
an alignment check uh and they said they
were exceeding at negative 1.7
i tried measuring it myself with a
digital inclinometer not you know the
greatest way to do it you really need to
get a nice tool for this but they seem
to be around negative 2 to negative 2.2
degrees of negative camber on the rear
which out is out of spec
and one of the things that i've noticed
driving it which is very unique to this
vehicle
is i've experienced breaking oversteer
and so i was coming into a corner pretty
hard
and i came in too fast so i gave it more
breaks
and most cars in that scenario like
literally every car i've ever driven
will just push forward an understeer and
this car the rear kicked out and so i
had to counter steer fix it get back uh
on the road um i didn't go off the road
but you know what i'm saying like you
got to get it back the right direction
and so that can kind of be a unique
experience because most cars you drive
will understeer uh when you're at the
braking limit coming into a corner and
this did not and part of it has to do
with the rear suspension setup but
another part of it is that it has these
cheap tires in the rear that are smaller
than they should be they're not as wide
as they should be and they have
excessive negative camber so both of
those will lead to less grip
and so i'm thinking
that putting these on wider tires and
then getting an alignment for the rear i
should be you know
kind of minimize that braking oversteer
at least reduce it from what it is
currently so it behaves a bit more
neutrally rather than over steering
while braking i am going to weigh all of
the tires just to see if there is any
difference between the fusion hris and
the bridgestone re71rs these for the
front the 205s weigh 22 pounds these in
the rear 23.2 pounds so just a little
bit over a pound heavier
for that 20 millimeter wider tire and so
we'll once we get those off i'll weigh
them and see what those weigh so my only
challenge now is figuring out how to get
these tires in this car to get them to
the tire center
[Music]
all right tie that down and i think
that's how it's gonna have to be all
right so i've got the bridgestone tires
on and the fusion tires are off and the
braking results as cliche as it sounds
are pretty unreal it's pretty hard to
believe how big of a difference between
these two tires one of the things i also
noticed when i got these swapped the
front tires are fusion vri's the rear
tires are fusion hri so the tires didn't
even match uh the v and the h standing
for the speed rating so the rear tires
actually had a lower speed rating than
the front tires previously there's a
whole lot of mess going on
so these were some pretty poor tires and
now we've got some more legitimate tires
on there so i did some data testing with
this vbox sport
i'll include a link to this in the video
description but anyways starting with
the fusion tires the first test i did
was at
136 feet stopping from 60 miles per hour
to zero in 3.4 seconds with a peak
deceleration g-force of negative 0.999
so just under 1 g
of deceleration
136 feet
stopping from 60 to 0 is not very good
and then i did two more tests after that
with the same tires the next test was at
140 feet
peak deceleration g of 0.936
and that was in 3.55 seconds
and then i did one final test after that
and it stopped in 143.9 so almost 144
feet from 60 miles per hour in 3.58
seconds with a peak deceleration g of
0.926
so you can see as that tire is heating
up as it's breaking more and more its
deceleration is getting worse and worse
and so i also did get an alignment for
these
as i had mentioned previously my little
handheld digital inclinometer sketchy
way of measuring the rear negative
camber was actually pretty much spot on
they were both at negative 2.0 negative
camber
the stock spec is somewhere between
negative 1.3 and negative 1.7 so the
s2000 actually has pretty aggressive
rear negative camber from the factory
but they went ahead and took that down
to negative 1.4 and they also fixed the
front right tire which had slightly too
much negative camber fixed the toe
everything's evened out on there so
perfect alignment now
and so then i did the same brake testing
with the bridgestones the only
difference is really it was five degrees
warmer outside
so 60 degrees fahrenheit when i tested
the bridgestones 55 with the fusions the
fusions are all seasons the bridgestones
are summer tires
but not a huge difference five degree
fahrenheit difference uh exact same
location no wind similar tire pressures
so i tried to account for all the
variables
and here is where it gets kind of nuts
so the first test i did uh with the re
71's
112.3 feet stopping from 60 miles per
hour in 2.84 seconds with a peak
deceleration of 1.165
gs
uh
so
huge difference versus the first test
.165 g versus negative 1g
so a .166 g difference for that first
test the second test i did with these
tires
111.4 feet stopped in 2.72 seconds and a
peak deceleration of negative
1.216 gs
1.2 gs with these tires and this was
actually slightly downhill the location
i'm doing from the stop to the start of
the deceleration is about a 5 to 10 foot
drop
not huge but it is going slightly
downhill so at a slight disadvantage uh
but you can see it's consistent 112 to
111
versus the other tire went from 136 up
to 140.
now the final test and this is crazy
stopped in 107.9
feet in 2.63 seconds with a peak
deceleration of negative
1.193 g's so it was able to consistently
hold a higher g-force even though the
second run had a higher peak g-force the
third one was more consistent with it
and so this is crazy 108 feet stopping
distance
with these cars versus best case 136
feet with these tires right here worst
case this is a difference of 36 feet
of 0.95 seconds between the two a whole
another second of time and so i'm going
to put up the video side by side of me
doing this testing so you can see on the
top
this is me
with the fusions and then on the bottom
with the bridgestone re71rs and i'll put
a green light
green dot to the side of the video once
it's come to a complete stop so both of
these cars are stopping from about 65
miles per hour the bridgestones are
actually starting one mile per hour
faster but kind of negligible difference
there
for the video the testing is all
measured from 60 exact so in the video
you can see how much time difference
there is
between stopping coming to a complete
stop and one versus the other
and so you know i was looking at
some prices online these fusion tires
these vris and hris are no longer sold
but they range from 65 bucks to 125 for
the hris 95 to 120 for the vris i did
the math uh basically let's say you got
these as cheap as possible that was
about 320 bucks i looked these tires up
on tire rack uh today's pricing
536 for the set for both the front and
the rear and remember those rears are
slightly wider
so 536 216 difference between those
tires and these tires and yet they can
stop 36 feet
faster i mean imagine what you can do
with an extra 36 feet with an extra
almost a second to react so you know in
emergency situations think about this
you've got an additional 36 feet you've
got an additional uh a duration of time
to react to whatever emergency situation
you need to and stop with these so is it
worth saving 200 bucks
uh to to lose that safety net which you
have with these tires now i'm not saying
you have to get all out summer tires
they're certainly going to be better you
know all seasons and regular summer
tires that can handle the rain uh
perhaps a bit better than these will
but there are definitely better tires
out there than the cheapest thing you
find on the shelf and i think that's the
important lesson to learn with this
video you know actually invest some
money in your tires because that's your
safety and if it's for performance
reasons if it's a track car obviously
the benefits here are huge this is 0.29
g's maximum difference in deceleration
between these two a third of a g so
clearly those are going to have better
lateral accel or lateral grip
and they obviously as the data proves
have much better deceleration
longitudinal grip
so very cool to see this data
basically what happened with this
comparison to give you kind of another
idea
with these tires on this car it was
stopping worse than a cadillac escalade
it was literally behaving worse
significantly worse than a cadillac
escalade and now with these bridgestone
re71rs on it it is stopping faster than
an alfa romeo 4c so it's it's gone
across the entire spectrum as far as the
performance and the braking purely from
changing the tires the brakes are
absolutely no different
nothing else has changed on the vehicle
it's just got new tires and it's able to
stop significantly quicker so very cool
to see the data and see that lesson uh
in in real numbers of course i'll
include links to the products used in
the video description if you guys have
any questions or comments feel free to
leave them below thanks for watching
you