Probably a stupid question, but if I do not ask I will not learn, so:

The rear Hankooks on my Turbo have worn very quickly on inside shoulder due to bad suspension settings. They only rolled 9500 miles and I have to replace them now. The front Hankooks still look good, anyway, the fronts wear less than rears.

The question is, what if I replace only rears with, say, Michelin PSS, while leaving front Hankooks on? I do not mix tyres on the same axle, but between axles, the sizes, loads and speed allowances are all good.

 

Everyone I spoke to told me to not do it because of the tire thread difference between manufacturers.

 

I did this once on a E30 BMW, bad idea, i ended up buying a full set wasting money and labor for two wheels.

 

What was bad, more precisely?

Here is from another Porsche forum:

"I have mixed tyres front to rear on the GT2 when Corsa's were sold out in Europe. Provided the tyre is not too different in terms of stiffness and compound (which for a road tyre i doubt) you may not even notice.
Even new tyres of the same type can feel different.

It depends whether you are emotionally driven to sleep well when the writing on the side of the tyres is different. I have found much bigger differences in used tyres vs new tyres than of different manufacturer.

On my road car, l mix them cos l take whatever the garage has.

On a track the balance of the car shifts anyway depending on a number of factors, tyres is just one.

FWIW - I have just put brand new PS2's on, all round on the GT2 and it has altered the balance of the car, compared to A048's all round.
There's alot more too it than manufacturer"

 

But why would this be a problem? OK, on wet surface the thread difference would have some effect, I suppose, but it is not like there is very much difference between modern high-performance tyres. Michelins have A mark for wet performance, Hankooks have B (these are German marks). That means the wet performance on new Michelins would be better than on 9500m old Hankooks, but that improved performance would be in the back, where it is needed the most anyway.

 

I guess one might have luck and manage to get a "good match" and maybe a 4wd Porsche can manage to deal with differences, but I guess it is the opposite and you prob void your warranty if the front diff dies.

The E30 behaved horrible at highway speeds, it became scary, and swapping tires between front and rear axles didnt help.

I think a 911 deserves a nice set of tires and even if one might "succeed" (ie not **** up) it seems easier to just get a set of nice N tires...

 

Just went though the same dilemma; replace just the rears and leave p-zeros on front or replace all four with PSS. Couldn't bring myself to mix tires on this car and hated thought of paying for the same crappy tires just to match. So went with full set of PSS's last month. Night and day difference! Should have made the switch a year ago. Do yourself a favor and swap all four...you'll be glad you did!

 

Thank you, everyone, for your thoughts.