sbc-yyc wrote

Will let you know the first impressions next Sunday, if all goes well with the weather. We have a long drive planned towards the end of April, all the way to Vancouver Island, and that should allow for some long distance highway driving feedback as well. Stay tuned!

Stuabroad wrote

Nice, i'm likely going to pull the pin on these next week. Wouldn't mind a drive to Vancouver Island, need to wait until June for that!

sbc-yyc wrote

The seasonal swap is done and the brand new summer tires are finally installed. Good riddance to those god-awful Continentals, and hello Michelin Pilot Sport 4 SUV ZPs ! Drove around for about an hour after picking up the X5, running errands, over a mix of highways and inner city roads and covered about 50 kms to form a first impression of sorts and in direct comparison with the Continental Premium Contact 6 SSRs. Please note: this is a first impression summary and totally subjective, so YMMV. Plus, I'm heavily biased towards Michelin as a brand Always found their tires to be more to my liking than any other brand.

Steering feel - much more precise and direct than the Continentals.
Ride - Not overly harsh, but much, much better than the Continentals. On smooth tarmac, I could tell that they're RFTs but not by much.
Handling - The X5 feels more taut and agile compared to how it felt with the Continentals.
Braking - didn't get to test hard braking in an urban environment so no comment at this time.
Subjective Comfort - significantly better than the Continentals, that's for sure, but not as comfortable as Non-RFTs as well.
Noise - definitely more noisy than the winter Pilot Alpin's I was running for the past 6 months. But not as noisy as the Continentals. They had this weird thrum at about 100 kmph on the highways that used to drive me mad. No such noise so far from the Michelins.

More pictures on this thread

Stuabroad wrote

I don't seem to get notifications lol. Great review, they look great. Glad to hear the road noise is minimal with the run flats as that was my biggest concern. Mine go on 1st May

sbc-yyc wrote

While road noise is low for an RFT, it's definitely noticeable and higher than non-RFTs. Especially over broken and bad roads. Most roads in Calgary have become quite shit over the last few years and maintenance is glacially slow, mostly patchworks wherever there's a pothole, and especially now right after winter. And when I drive on such roads, I can absolutely feel, and more importantly hear, the RFT-ness So I'd absolutely recommend tempering expectations about road noise.

Stuabroad wrote

Needing new tires, anyone run these and got feedback?

Stuabroad wrote

Understood, all shall be revealed in two weeks time...

sbc-yyc wrote

So did you get the tires installed? If so, what do you think of them?

A few weeks ago, we drove from Calgary all the way to Vancouver, hopped on the ferry to Vancouver Island, drove to Tofino, spent a week there, then drove from Tofino to Victoria, spent another week there, then hopped back on to the ferry to Vancouver and finally arrived back in Calgary after about 2.5 weeks of travel. 3,300 ish kms of driving on these tires and my perspective remains the same. Really good RFTs. Absolutely silent when the tarmac is nice, much quieter than the Continentals that's for damn sure. But they do tend to get a bit noisy when the surface isn't smooth. Ludicrous grip and stability, in dry and in wet conditions.

But, as mentioned in the specifications, these tires have ridiculously high wear. The initial tread depth was 9/32 when new, but today it seems to be at 6 . I went in to get the brake fluid replaced as the notification had popped up in the app, and the multi point inspection report from the service center shows the tread depth at 6. At this rate, i'll be shocked if these last beyond 20k kms.

Stuabroad wrote

Hello I apologize for the late reply, I don't have notifications enabled. I turned them on about a month ago, just before you went to Tofino (I love that place - lucky you). I was out of the country for a few weeks on business travel. I managed to do a couple of Alberta road trips and I'm quite frustrated. I'm experiencing a lot of uncertainty in the driving experience at high speeds (100 km/h+). They seem to lack direction, so much that I wonder if I need to check my wheel alignment. The tire pressure is perfect. But my winter tires (Michelins) are much more stable. I have to constantly adjust in a straight line on the smooth highway. I know they're run flats, but the previous factory set of run flats it came with were much more stable. I even doubt if the staggered setup was installed correctly (I trust my wheel dealer completely, he's been selling me hardware for ten years and he services Lambos and McLarens lol). How is your steering wheel feedback on your set? - I assume you would have mentioned if you were dissatisfied. It's puzzling for sure.

sbc-yyc wrote

No worries! Sorry to hear you're having issues with the tires. Steering feedback is pretty good for me and I haven't experienced anything similar to what you've described. They track straight and true and the steering wheel rarely ever needs correction. Not sure if your set was aligned properly. I have only two areas of concern, one's noise and the other's tire wear, both of which are higher than normal. Otherwise, I'm pretty satisfied with these.