Wider front tires on 17s (215 or 225)?

Time for summer tires. I�m tempted to go wider than the stock 205 at the fronts, hoping it will reduce understeer and make the car (a 996.2) more nimble/throttle steerable � and also because there are no good tires available in the stock sizes. Has anyone else tried 215/45s or 225/45s? And if so, how did it work out?

Mine have 225/45's on them... seems fine to me. :shrug:

Under steer where and when? With what tires? What tire pressures? Perhaps you are driving the entrance to the turn too fast. In a very tight turn try some trail braking to rotate the car. When you say there are no good tires in the stock 17s...good in what way? I'm very happy with my Contis. If you stick with only N3 tires the selection might get smaller but I'll bet there are a lot of tires that would be standard size and sticky enough for track or street. Bigger tires often require more horsepower to overcome the additional grip and drag...the opposite of tossable.

I have 17" wheels. Just ordered 225/45 and 255/40 ZII Star Spec. I also have a bigger bar on the rear that is adjustable and PSS10s. I am hoping to have a good balance that I would enjoy with this setup.

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All good questions. I�m concerned about turn-in (especially in the wet), understeer, and throttle adjustability. This is partly based on experience, mainly on understansing that the 996.1 is worse in these areas than similar cars (996.1 (all three areas), 996 C4S (first two?), and 997.1 (just the first?)) and that they are more fun as a result. I�d like my car to handle more like them, especially the first two. As for my experience, I haven�t had the car that long, it came with bad summer tires, I�ve mainly driven on (very good Pirelli Sottozero III) winter tires with narrower rears than stock (245) and this a lower rear-to-front width ratios. I�m still looking forward to my first day on track with the car, which will reveal a lot more of the handing. From this limited experience, I definitely don�t want the poor wet turn-in I had with the old summer tires. And I�d like more neutrality in the sort of long, sweeping bends that I like to drive aggressively. These are too fast and too long for trail braking to be a solution for me (on tree-lined country roads). Likewise trying to drift it. I guess therefore that understeer on dry roads has bothered my most mid-corner. Corner exit on the other hand is pretty good. I'd also like the front end to feel more tied down and precise. Not to give more feedback - that's fine - but to enable me to more easily point it precisely where I want it. And I�d like the car to be less sensitive to cross winds. That's my experience. In addition, when reading threads about track wheel and tire sizes, I noticed many people prefer to widen the front more than the rear saying it helps with understeer and is more fun. Plus one or two who went narrower in the rear for more fun on the street (with 18s). So while I know there any many other things that can tilt the handling the way I want it, like tire pressure, toe, camber, roll bar stiffness, etc., I�d still like to choose the optimal tire sizes.

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P.S. Based on reviews, my short list includes Conti SC5s, Michelin Pilot Sport 3s, and Goodyear Eagle F1 Asymmetric 2s. (Based on experience, it does not include P Zeros, as they dissapointed on local roads on another car.) I could not find these in 205s with a Y speed rating. Which Contis do you have? True about bigger tires, but 225s didn't seem to be a problem for the 996.1 (I'm assuming the journalists all drove it on 18s).

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Thanks! Are you using them with the standard 255s in the back? When you went up from 205s, how did it affect the handling balance? And with such wide tires on our narrow 7" front wheels, did you notice any loss of precision or feedback? Thanks again!

As I am sure you know, the 911 has very unique weight dynamics. This creates a whole bunch of drivingt techniques that are related to the rear weight mass and how to handle it. Porsche has made the tires at the rear wider and wider compared to the front. They have been building these cars for several decades now and they have not been making the front tire wider in relation to the rears. Trying to get the car to handle like a front engine/rear drive car is wasting time and money. I would suggest adjusting your driving style to the car's design. Mario Andretti once said that most people take the slow turns too fast and the fast turns too slow. Perhaps entering the turn slower will allow you to accelerate out of it faster. Before you start changing the dynamics of the car, perfect your driving technique as the car is designed. A wet skid pad will really get you in harmony with the balance of your car and get you very comfortable with throttle steering at the limit. For alternate tires look at Bridgestone and Yokohamas.

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All true, but more true for some Porsches than others. Both the car that came before and the car that came after had proportionally less extra width at the rear. It seems Porsche has been trying to tame the rear for decades, and in so doing, with the 996.2, they may have gone too far. As EVO wrote when they first tested the 996.2, "they've thrown the baby out with the bathwater". No matter how hard he tried or how aggressively he drove it, David Vivian could not find the nimbleness of its predecessor. Then with the 997, if nothing else, Porsche at least found a way to improve the turn in. I've been using both techniques mentioned (trail braking and slower in, faster out) since I bought the car. Am I hopelessly bad at them? Probably not. My trail braking could be a lot better, but I've been working on it for years, including with instructors, so even if perfecting it would solve all my problems, if it isn't perfect yet, it won't be perfect 6 months from now either. And anyway, trail braking enough to free the rear is not something I going to do at 90 mph on a tree-lined country road. Do I want a car that handles like a front-engine, rear-drive car? No. Do I want a car that, in some ways, handles more like some other 911s (like the 996.1 and the 997.1)? Yes I do.