Question, Will bald *** Falken Rt-615's work better at the track than Zexius tires with good tred?

 

I've no idea what a Zexius tire is, but tracking a car with bald tires is dangerous and simply should not be done.

 

Hold on there, partner. Track use is different from street use! At the track, you drive your car in 15-30 minute sessions, and you have the opportunity to check your tires (and oil and brake pads and rotors) after each session, so you can keep a close eye on the condition of your tires as they wear. So while I agree with your statement if it were applicable to driving on the street, I disagree with it for track use only.

It's very common to drive on tires on the track until the belts show (which happens after they are bald and you keep driving on them). My standard procedure with my track tires is to keep driving on them until you can see belts, either (a) in any spot as big as a quarter (25 cent coin), or (b) in a strip along the edge of the tread that goes all the way around the tire, or (c) in a strip along the edge of the tread that's at least 1/4" wide. I can do this because I don't drive home on my track tires, and I typically bring 6-7 track tires with me; that means that my day doesn't end when one of the tires starts showing belts like that, I just take it off and put another tire on. If you only have one set of tires and you need to drive them home, you wouldn't want to wait that long, since your day would end when you reach that point and also you might not be able to make a long drive home.

To answer the original question... are you referring to the Falken Ziex ZE-512 or ZE-912, their crappy all-season tires? If so, bald Falken Azenis RT-615 tires will give you MUCH more traction than a Ziex with full tread... like night and day.

 

Yes they will.

RT-615s, run them until you can no longer see even a ghost imprint of the original tread, or metal belts start showing (depending on if they wear evenly).

Of course, by the time they're bald, and if they weren't shaved new, they could very well have been heat cycled out / age hardened anyway.

Track use one, its illegal to run on the street with less than 2/32" of tread, be safe, standard disclaimer, etc...

 

nsxtasy for the record when someone says bald i interpret that as past the wear indicators which usually means steel belts will be popping out shortly in my experience.

edit: just read your whole post, wow i didn't know thats how you guys roll but ok.

 

"Bald", when dealing with a street tire, means 2/32" of tread, which is flush to the wear indicators, and the legal minimum to use on public roads. Anything less, and they're past "bald" and into "dangerous and illegal".

For auto-x, many guys drive RT-615 Azenis until steel shows. It just makes that "last lap" really interesting. Legality isn't an issue (closed course, not a public road), and we're cheap.

 

I was thinking more about safety But to each his own, i know good tires aint cheap

 

Again, with track use you can keep a close eye on your tires after each session, so you can wear them down to whatever point you want, with reasonable safety. They don't suddenly go from tons of tread depth to belts showing in one 20-minute session (unless there is some kind of incident). I've found that the rules I noted above allow me to run them just up to, but not including, the point when I would start feeling the lack of traction due to belts showing.

You can debate what "bald" means; I assume it means that there is no tread pattern left, with a smooth surface. TunerN00b uses it to mean that the tires have 2/32" of tread depth or less, so they are no longer street legal. Either way, the RT-615 will have much more traction than the all-seasons. Just don't run them past the point I indicated above, so you would have major areas of belts showing. And make sure you have tires with tread for your trip home!

 

oh my that could have been bad if that part was over looked. Good info here!!

 

I was totally going to throw in the heat-cycled thing, but you beat me to it.

Another thing to consider is that Azenis tires start out their life as having no tread whatsoever in the manufacturing process. They cut in the tread pattern into the tire at the factory.