The current setup on my car is 19 inch rear c6 wheels with the 285/35/19 run flat tires that came factory on the vette. the car is around 450 horse with a m6, 4.11. I have all the rear suspension goodies on the car and setup properly. The run flats are fun in that you can power slide the car all over and its extremely predictable, you can also boil them off and they don't really wear out that fast however long story short I can not get the car to hook well on the street at all.

Should I look at some dot approved slicks? if so which ones? Would I be wasting my money being with the 19 inch wheels it may not hook anyways?

The car is not a daily driver, If I put 75 miles a week on it that would be a lot. I do enjoy the handling characteristics however I am not out carving the thing through turns aggressively all the Time.

Can anyone recommend me a good tire to get more power to the ground.

 

Oh man, get rid of those run flats!

A good summer performance tire will do pretty decent for you. The quicker it wears the better it's going to work. But make sure the tire doesn't need a lot of heat to work or it will just be slippery on the street.

Drag radials aren't very easy to live with, and street driving ruins the tire. But they work really good when they work. I have to buy a set every 1000 miles, and they don't work well about half that life.

 

run flats have no sidewall flex, they suck for traction. ditch 'em for just about any other tire that fits....

 

Run a nitto 555r or a NTO1.
I run NTO1'S for autocross an 555r's on the rear of my street rims they seems to hook pretty good I mean it is the street not really gonna get perfect traction from a dig

 

I had great success with my mickey et street radial 2’s in a 305/35, but thats more drag oriented. There will be a handling sacrifice and its a tall tire. But they hook well depending what gear and speed you are at. But up to 700 whp they have done pretty good. I have probably 6-7 thousand miles on them by now and many many burnouts and they have been great

but a good low tread wear rating summer tire could work good too but not like a radial.

Nitto nt05r might also be a good choice in a 305/35. I had the 315/17” versions on my daily driver trans am. Worked awesome and got great mileage again. 8-10k. But they do seem soft around turns and are horrrrible in any wet condition

 

First question is: do you want tires that corner or tires that allow you to launch the car hard. There is some overlap but the tire design is different. On 19's you don't have alot of sidewall flex and that hinders hard launches, but can be quite nice when cornering. Personally I wouldn't choose a 19 for drag racing, I like a tall side wall for that application. As for Drag radials remember those are designed for track with an expectation that you are launching on a track surface.

My advice go to tirerack.com put in your tire size, narrow the category to the performance summer tires (there are like 5 names for it select it all) Then look for tires with 300 or lower thread ware. Then research the crap out of it. There is a few youtube channels (mostly in the UK for some reason) that test tires so search youtube for the tire you like. Something like Continental Extreme contact would be good for general driving, hard cornering, and decent at launches and safe to drive in the rain. That I think would would be the safe answer. Something like the goodyear Eagle F1 Supercar 3 or Bridgestone Potenza RE-71R would grip pretty good on launches and cornering but gives up wet handling. Anything with a 300 or lower wear rating I think you will like over the run flats.

Next question would be can your diff handle the traction? With a really built car and sticky tires this is the weak link.

After spending 3 weeks researching myself I just mounted Falken 510s (17's) on my car so far I really like them. I haven't driven it in the rain but it is night and day compared to the 60k mile cheap tires I had on it (that were hate to say it 16 years old, I mounted them in college and it was my daily for 3 years after college then it became a toy the tires still had 1/2 tread left). Its a pretty good balance tire and sticky enough for my purposes, and it doesn't cost alot, seems pretty good at air temps so far. I looked real close at the 612's but its slanted just a little too much for extreme dry driving. This was a real low bar for this car but I've had other cars with high dollar tires and I find the 510's a good balance for my "toy" car.

And one thing to note, your suspension and tire configuration is well behaved ... until its not. You have probably reached the point where when you exceed the car's handling limit you have already surpassed your reaction time to save it (even if you are a professional driver) and its going to go real squarely real fast... so go find a parking lot to rent and find that limit safely if you plan on driving to that edge. Some tracks have a slick pad that allows you to loose control at lower speeds to see how everything works on your car at that limit.

 

Just picked up a set of Falken 510's myself (275/35/19) and will be mounting them up this weekend on my C6's. Happy to hear that so far you're please with them, Aviator. They were well reviewed/tested and a great price as I couldn't justify going all out on a tire for a car that doesn't see the track and is just a street toy.

 

Check out M&H

 

I'm not sure M&H has enough sidewall protection to be safe on the street. Cuts & blowouts are much more likely. Most drag radials are just track tires with some tread to meet rules for a DOT sort of tire class. Having tread doesn't make it a street tire though.

As far as I know, the Mickey Thompson ET Street S/S is the only real drag radial that is reasonably tough for the street.

The import drag radials are a joke so I'm not counting those. They aren't bad tires given proper expectations, just kind of silly to call those a drag radial.

I have a co-worker with an expensive Porsche turbo that decided to drive DOT road race tires on the street. Crashed his car on the highway when the tire was cut by a little bit of glass on the road. It's always the standard response "works fine for me, I never had problems" until something happens!

 

 

The M&H work better than the Mickey's (SS) believe it or not but as far as the side wall I cant say, as far as the import radial comment and silly for calling them a drag radial they're made in the US and perform just as intended

 

No doubt. I wanted to try a pair for street driving until I spoke to M&H and they talked me out of it.

I've had a nitto nt05r. Those spun like 14 inch pizza cutters. Horrible tire for me! I'll give it credit for turning corners pretty well though.

I do believe there is a good chance the Mickey's would dead hook if I had an automatic transmission.

Everybody has a different car though. I've seen supercharged guys at 700 rear horse happy with the Nittos. I made way less than that and those tires were a disaster. Go figure!