What brand of tyres are on your R36?

[Lance B]

I was wondering if everyone who has an R36 could advise as to what brand of tyres they are shod with.

Mine are Dunlop.

[bennobee]

Dunlop's on mine as well.

[Rocket36]

Dunlops here too...

[Caddyman]

dunlops here too, haven't seen any R36's with anything else from new.

Matthew

[gead]

dunlops....although the demo i drove at barloworld had michelins...

[Steve]

Dunlop here, too.

[Avo]

Dunlop as well...

[VASR36]

Yep Dunlop aswell....

[Cro]

Mine came with Dunlop SP01's, which are now sitting in my shed waiting to be torn up exclusivly by track days.

They are the most PATHETIC tyres I have ever driven on, and every R36 with them should be considered as an uncontrollable missile. Keeping in mind that we do have extremely fast cars, and all the traction/stability controls implemented still couldn't help you in any emergencies when utilising the car for which it was designed.
They have very little mechanical grip in both wet and dry conditions, and are noisy as hell when cornering with ESP off, and bring the car to a standstill with ESP on through endless throttle cuts and ESP induced brake applications. Braking distances are also greatly affected, with ABS cutting in way too soon, launching the car off the line also suffers with the AWD system struggling to find the axel with the best amount of grip. I've even had the car oversteering comming out of a corner on full throttle (ESP off) with these tyres.
I've also been previously spoilt with quiet, these on the other hand had so much ROAR that resonated through the cabin especially at highway speeds it wasn't funny.

Straight after taking delivery the car I ordered some Michelin Pilot Sport PS2's, and the transformation was mind blowing. Mechanical grip through cornering is simply amazing, you can throw the car into a corner any way you want and you can come out on full throttle pointed in the direction you want.
I have always been scared to turn ESP off with these tyres, because the way I was pushing the car was very extreme in wet, dry and snow conditions and I still very rarely induced ESP.

Unfortunately due to a shoddy wheel alignment from factory which caused the inside egdes to wear out, I had to replace two of the PS2's. With great regret I went away from the PS2's because Michelin were out of stock, and got some Goodyear Eagle F1's based on the rave reviews they were getting. Unfortunately I didn't read the fine print of all the reviews, they were all done on tracks rather than on road.
Whilst the Goodyears are 100 times better than the Dunlops (to be honest most tyres are), they are no Michelin PS2 on the road. I find my ESP light going on so much when cornering I turn it off and deal with the slight initial plough on understeer, before the Michelin PS2's on the rear kick in and push me through a corner. The most annoying part of these tyres are the fact that after staying parked for a few hours they develop a flat spot that goes go away after 5 or so minutes of driving.

If you're after a decent tyre that is better than the Dunlops, choose a Pirelli P Zero, Michelin Pilot Preceda 2, Bridgestone RE050A, Goodyear Eagle F1, Yokohama V103, Continental CSC3, Dunlop Sport Maxx whatever your budget would allow. I have driven on all these tyres, mostly on VW R32/36 GTI and some on HSV/FPV.
If you're after a tyre that is better than any other road tyre, choose the Michelin Pilot Sport PS2. It has more mechanical grip, it will help you corner harder, brake harder and launch faster than any other tyre mentioned here. Michelin's are also the quietest performance tyre you can buy, and last a decent amount of time. I have got 30,000km's out of the two that weren't affected by the shoddy alignment.

I'm not the only one here running the PS2's, and they are well worth the massive cost (especially now the Aussie dollar isn't as strong). The cheapest price I have got is $715 a corner for 235/40/18 95Y last week.
One big problem though, Michelin are still out of stock and won't have any for at least another 3 - 4 months. So if you want to buy these tyres now you will have to get them from Tirerack in the US. I'm currently in the process of going down this path, and am looking at around AUD$2000 for all four tyres with a 5 day delivery timeframe.

[Rocket36]

Sorry - completely disagree... The Dunlops are fine, a bit noisey but have plenty of grip. My car was delivered to me Friday afternoon and it didn't stop raining until Monday afternoon.

Handling in the wet was great! Mechanical grip in corners wasn't as good as some other tyres but it doesn't have to be. The value for money factor is great! They're certainly acceptable from an OEM tyre point of view and for average daily street driving are a good performance tyre.

Why waste $2000 on tyres for street driving? Spend money on a good set of semi-comps and use them at a track instead.