Bayman48

I have falkens, been on them for about 2k miles, no complaints thus far, came from michelin pilots when i upgraded my wheels, those were great tires as well. For the price, the falkens are worth it...at least for the time i have had them.

BMWBig6

I have 31,000 miles on my original Dunlop SportMaxx GT tires, and they are still quiet (not quite to 4/32 though). They appear to have around 7,500-10,000 more miles left in them. If you want to talk about tires getting louder with wear, the Continentals on my TT were atrocious at 20,000 miles. So far the Dunlops have been fine in this regard. In fact, I have been so pleased with them, I plan to replace them with the same tire.

MrStuff

Decent cheap tire. I would not put it on my Audi though. I have installed them on Hondas and Toyotas. Not trying to brand discriminate, but I don't think those tires would be able to keep up with the Audi. They have very weak sidewalls, cornering response was "meh". Let me put it this way, I learned that sidewall stiffness and tires had a lot to do with cornering response (this was way back when)!

I only have ever tried sizes such as 195\55R15 with Falken's.
Also, I have a friend who did use them in R17s, tread wear and grip were again "meh". This was about 5 years back.

Slight thread highjack... I was told by my Audi dealer that Audi's ride really well on Continentals. I was actually surprised... I run a winter\summer setup... should I be looking into Continental summers? (i'm thinking they meant all seasons)

~pino~

31K?! Man, you must be doing something right!
Like I mentioned, we switch between these and winters, and at 18K they are HOWLING!
Good for you. I can understand why you'd go with them again.

Does anyone besides me notice that Michelin tires seem to show "weather cracking" or "weather checking" frequently and early in the tires' life? This has happened to a couple of sets I've had in the past, and was wondering if this is still a "characteristic" of the brand.

av_audi

I haven't seen it in the three sets I have used. But I am in Southern Cal where the wheather is pretty mild.

For those who haven't thought about it, make sure they tires you get are relatively new (check the build date on the sidewall).

ernestolopez

Ive had pure Continental Extremes on previous A4's and then the new Extremes DSW on my A6.I guess Iam partial to German cars with German tires.

QUA77R0

Our car came with the Pirelli P-Zero Rosso 255/35/19's. They are excellent tires that come standard on any number of ultra high end sport cars. They do suffer from being fairly quick wearing and flat-spotting as do all of the P-Zero variants. But if you want high performance tires, you have to be willing to accept the wear issue. That said, they held up beautifully on the street and track (12 track days) and about 13,000 miles. But now they are on the wear bars and I plan to replace them before Audifest at Infineon raceway.

As my 28th car, 16 of which have been sports cars, I have had the opportunity to try a number of performance street and track tires over the years. The flat-spotting issue is unacceptable to me. I have had great luck with Michelin PS2's. They do ride a bit harsher than the Pirelli P-Zero's due mainly, I believe, to a stiffer sidewall. They have more precise turn in than the Pirelli's and do much better at staving off flat-spotting. A number of my friends in the AMG crowd have made the switch to the Continental ContiSportContact 5P due to flat-spotting that can occur on our AMG's when left sitting for extended periods (weeks, not overnight). Mercedes has been upgrading the tires on our AMG's for free due to complaints about overnight flat-spotting on other brands of tires

So now that I'm in the market for replacement street tires on the Audi, I'm going to try the Continental ContiSportContact 5P's and see how they compare. As an aside, we found that lowering pressures on the tires from OE spec actually produced faster lap times and more even heat dispersion. I believe that this is how the Pirelli's lasted so long with a number of track days thrown at them. I do use nitrogen but I don't think that it should make any difference. I just do it to avoid the water buildup.

av_audi

I also think that with weak sidewalls, any non-uniformity in sidewall strength could make a heavier car more likely to pull to one side or the other. I made the mistake of getting the new highly praised Sumitomo P01s, but I ended up with horrible lateral pull. The shop that put them on noted that they were occasionally having such problems with some cars, but not with Camcords. They are quiet(for now) and grip well, but steering feel sucks and obviously quality control sucks too. I bet Sumitomo played some shady games to increase the load rating from the previous generation of this tire.

I brought this up because Smitomo makes the Falkens too, and if you search around, you will find a higher incidence of reported problems with these tires, mostly with lateral pull, high degree of out-of-roundness, and faster than usual performance degradation with wear. Some shops claim that cars riding on bushings, like Audis, are more sensitive to such problems, other simply claim these tires cannot handle these heavier cars, and yet others claim it is simply a case of bad quality control. I believe the latter to be true, and perhaps the others are factors too.

QUA77R0

After 14,500 miles, replaced the Pirelli P-Zero Rosso's with a set of Continental ContiSportContact 3's a couple weeks ago. Immediately noticed improved turn-in response and a noisier ride. The noise faded away over the next few days.

Took the Avant to AudiFest last weekend. Conti's were great. On Saturday, at Infineon; it was raining pretty good. Plenty of good fun in the rain. Other than turn 2 which was really slick, I was progressively pushing the limit on each successive lap. I found the Conti's to be a great match for the newer Quattro system. Any understeer was easily managed.

Sunday, the track was dry and the Conti's were put through their paces. Found them to have excellent grip in the first 5-6 laps of a run session and then they felt a little greasy at the edge. I think that this may have been a tread squirm issue on the full treads. I noted that at the end of the day, while wear was excellent, the outer tread blocks and the inner rib had fused. Not sure what effect this will have on the tires but they felt better on track towards the end of the day.

Compared to the Pirelli P-Zero Rosso, the ContiSportContact3's are quieter at cruise and approaching the cornering limit. At the same pressure, the Pirelli's were a smoother ride but less responsive to turn in than the Conti's.

markcincinnati

We put these DSW's on our '08 Bimmer -- I thought, however, that they were UHP A/S not HP A/S.

It may seem a nit, but, by graduating to UHP, the handling improves noticably.

On my sport pkg equipped '09 A4 2.0T Prestige (19") I went to Yoko Advan S.4's -- been very happy so far.