New Nittos on the Bullitt

I recently bought tires for the Bullitt. The wheels are custom Bullitt 5-spokes in 17x9 (front) and 17x10.5 (rear). The tire sizes required are 275/40/ZR17 (front) and 315/35ZR17 (rear). The Dunlop Star-Specs that I bought for the '66, and really like, don't come in these sizes.

The tires that were on the Bullitt were BFGoodrich T/A G-Force KD, issued in 2007 for this car's final One Lap of America race. The BFG's are great tires, particularly back then, and generally run wider than other brands.

This marking on the old BFGs denotes "2007 One Lap Of America".

Today, this 315 tire size with a 17" diameter is considered very unusual. Most performance cars today run at least 19- or 20-inch wheels. Even economy cars are running 17-inch wheels today, and definitely not this wide. Nitto makes tires in this size, in their popular NT-05 among others. Nittos are also known to be a little narrow, which worked out well for me.

The Nitto 315/35/ZR17 is a bit narrower than the BFG, but this isn't a bad thing.

The BFGs stuck out a bit.

The Nittos fit the wheels better, and fit the car better too.

The performance of the Nitto is just great—very quiet, responsive, and sticky compared to the BFG. I've used them in the rain already too, and they perform fine in normal driving. The tread is not particularly deep, Nitto claims 7/32" tread depth on this tire (6/32" on the race version NT-05R), while other tires seem to be in the 9-10/32" category. But drivers aren't buying the NT-05 for long life, but rather maximum performance. The price is fantastic too, if that weren't enough.

But wait, there's more. :-) Reducing unsprung weight at the corners of a car is a good thing, and the NT-05 delivered for me here too.

Here are the weights, compared to the used, but not used up, BFGs:
Nitto: 275/40zr17 98w
27.5# vs. BFG 29.2#
Nitto: 315/35zr17 102w
29.9# vs. BFG 31.6#


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New Shoes!

I bought a set of new tires the other day. Previously I was using 225/50/ZR16 (front) and 245/45/ZR16 (rear) Dunlop Sport 8000s on the Vintage Wheel Works V45 wheels. These tires were old and frankly with tire performance technology at an all-time high today, I figured I should splurge for some new tires.

I ended up with a set of Dunlop Direzza Sport Z1 Star Spec tires in 225/50/R16. They ride way better and grip way better, which I expected since they are highly rated on Tire Rack. I am using 36/36 for air pressure, and will adjust over the next couple hundred miles as they wear in. Since they are the same size and not staggered, I can rotate them around the car too.

One item to note is that these Vintage Wheel Works wheels are lug-centric (the lug nuts are tapered and center the wheel on the axle through tapered holes in the wheel), which is uncommon enough today that four local shops I visited to get the tires mounted and balanced had no idea what lug-centric even was. Most shops expect hub-centric wheels (the wheels are machined to center the wheel on the axle through the hole in the middle of the wheel -- no tapered lug nuts or lug holes) and attach the wheel/tire to be balanced with a hub attachment through the middle of the wheel.

These wheels couldn't be balanced properly that way (although each shop said they could until I explained the difference) and required the attachment that connected the wheel to the balancer through the five lug holes. The fifth shop had the attachment in the back room and literally figured out how to use it on my wheels. They balanced one wheel with the hub attachment and then the lug attachment for practice, and sure enough got two different balances. But they are all perfectly balanced now. Woo hoo!