MF Review: Kumho ECSTA SPT

I have the same set thanks to you, Gabe. It’s been a little more than 1000 miles on mine and I like them very much. Good grip, better handling, affordable.

Great review. Thanks Gabe. I have also had excellent results with the Kumo MX as a street/ track day tire. Not as good in the wet as the SPT but better in the dry.

Thanks for the review Gabe I’ll be interested to hear about the mileage.

I had the Dunlop SP Sport 9000 DSST Run Flats and thought they were a nice intermediate tire. They had 28,000 on them so I thought it was time to change. I went to Tire Rack and read the reviews on the options for my MCS. I bought the Dunlop Sport Maxx. Half the price of the RF’s at $140 ea. ALL reviewers said the tire was superb so I thought I Had a winner replacement for the RF. NOPE! DON’T BUY!

On quick corners it is great, very sticky. Here’s the rub… on long sweepers it feels like you have a flat! Even during full acceleration in a straight line it feels like Jello Car. Also there is a lot of tramming on Freeways with water grooving or whatever it’s called.

Anyone with a diff experience with these? I reviewed them at my site.

I’ve also made the switch to the SPTs. I was very happy with them on my Integra before the MINI and have been relatively happy with them over the past 2000 miles or so on the MINI. The one element of them that I find dissappointing is the steering response. The all season good year’s that it came with apparently have tremendous steering response (rated better than Potenzas on tire rack) and so the switch to the kumhos caused me to loose some of the go-cart-fast steering response that I love about the car.

In terms of price and grip though, they are tough to beat. But I won’t be buying them again for this car. I should note that I’m running them on 17″s, so I wonder if having less sidewall on the 18″s would result in better steering response.

Since the Kumho’s are not run-flats, what do all you all recommend to carry in the car in case of a puncture (besides my AAA card and associated towing service?) Does anyone have experience with the “fix-a-flat-in-a-can” stuff?

lasersailor,

Up here in Canada, many of us MINI owners have gotten our hands on the Airman Tire Repair Station, which is a all-in-one tire air compressor/repair sealant unit:

http://www.canadiandriver.com/articles/pw/airman.htm

The manufacturer also makes a variety of air inflation products – http://www.activeproducts.com

Great looking product, it looks very OEM designwise, like something that MINI themselves would have designed. The fact that the sealant is made by Dunlop doesn’t hurt credibility-wise.

Don’t know if you can get it in the US though, I believe that the Airman is exclusive to Canadian Tire stores up here.

The fix-a-flat stuff works well enough to get you to the tire repair shop – make sure you tell them you put the FAF in your tire, otherwise it can be a nasty surprise for them.

I have never tried the SPT’s, but I love the MX’s and swear by them in the wet and dry.

As you wear your tires (especially the aggressive drivers) you may wear out the shoulders first. This will contribute to the wandering and additional road noise. It is important to rotate your tires.

Note – safety standards say that the best tires should be on the rear of the car, as it is safer to understeer than oversteer. This is why cars are typically set up from the factory with understeer.

If you are especially frugal, you can swap your tires on the rims. If you do that, beware that running the tires counter-direction works fine on dry, but could actually channel water to the center of the tire in the wet and be somewhat hazardous. Due to that reason, I cannot recommend doing this. However, I have been known to do it on my track-only tires to get more life from them.

Happy and Safe Motoring. :)

Haven’t had a chance to use the Kumhos, but I’ll toss in my two cents for one of their listed competitors. Those Eagle F1 GS’s are great. Wet and dry I give ‘em 5 out of 5. Traction for days and very predictable when it comes to slip. Decent tread wear so far. Reasonably light weight. And also under $100 if you look in the right places. They are the first tire that ever got me compliments while parked.

Thanks for the review Gabe, I’ve been considering these for some time to replace my factory summer Dunlops. Sure can’t beat the price!

Don’t know if you can get it in the US though, I believe that the Airman is exclusive to Canadian Tire stores up here.

Looks like the $50 CAD Airman is the same as Continental Tire’s ContiComfortKit available from the Rack.

http://www.tirerack.com/accessories/conticomfortkit/index.jsp

I’ve had Kumho Ecsta SPTs on my ’05 MCSc for about 13,000 miles, including a DE event at Laguna Seca, and “lunch laps” at Las Vegas Speedway (very abrasive track surface). Most of the miles were recreational in nature, with plenty of “spirited” driving on twisties. I’m running 205/50WR16′s on 16×7 Konig “holes” with a 42 mm offset. I never rotated front to rear, and while my fronts are in desperate need of replacement – very little tread depth left, and uneven wear at that – the rears look almost new. I’m running the stock Cabrio “sport” suspension, and keep the tires inflated to somewhere around 37 psi front / 35 psi rear when cold.

The SPTs were recommended to me by Phil Wicks as having good grip that would last, and since I had owned and been happy with a set of Kumho Ecsta Supra 712′s on my previous car (Subaru 2.5 RS) I decided to go with them.

In general, I found the SPTs to be fairly sticky and predictable for the first 7 or 8 thousand miles, but the extra durability that has been engineered into them was dissappointing. After the outer layer wears down, the predictable stickiness started feeling occasionally “greasy” during dry cornering, with a few instances of “hey it never did that before” when the grip gave ‘way without the usual warning. Also very odd: I started noticing that the SPTs were making sounds like sneakers on a a basketball court when passing over rubber lane markings during cornering. (No apparent change in grip – just the unusual noises.)

Turn-in crispness was never as sharp as with the Original Equipment 17″ Dunlop SP9000 performance runflats, but I expected that to be the case, as I switched to 16″ rims and tires in order to gain some extra sidewall height – to absorb some of the very harsh expansion joints on California’s freeways.

I expect that if I had managed to swap the tires front to rear before the fronts really started wearing, that I could have extended the “good” performance substantially.

The SPT’s were better in the wet than the old SUPRA ECSTA 712′s, which basically “went away” on wet pavement.

Overall, a decent tire for the price, but you’ll need to rotate end to end to really get extended life from them. I wasn’t thrilled with the look in the size I got, so I will probably not replace them with another set of SPTs. I’m currently looking at Goodyear Eagle F1 GS D3′s (if I decide to go with the same size tire: 205/50-16), and Falken Azenis 615′s, which come in my ideal size of 215/45-16.

Just thought some relatively long-term perspective might be useful.

Dave

Does anyone out there have any experience with the All Season version of this tire – the ASX ?

I recently took a pair of Kumho Ecsta SPT on a road trip. They were my front drivers on a 2003 Porsche Boxster. We went round trip nearly 2000 miles from Phoenix, AZ through Yellowstone, to San Francisco, south on Highway 1 to LA and back to Phoenix.

These tires were flawless in rain, ice, hairpin turns on Yellowstone, tight turns on Highway 1 and usually at 50+ MPH. These are awesome tires! I had a pair of Kumho Ecsta ASX on the back – equally impressive tires.