Continental Extreme Contact Sport - Sidewall strength

I need to get a couple of new tyres on my Mazda 3 (205/50 R17), my local place has some Continental Extreme Contact Sports in stock on offer,  the choice I have is these or Maxxis MAZ3 or MAZ4S as fitted to the other end of the 3.  Obviously the Continental is a much better tyre in most ways, and I've liked all the Continentals I had in the UK, however here my worry is strength, specifically the tyre eating potholes they have here.

Has anyone any experience with the Extreme Contact Sports? The Maxxis' on the car at the moment, and fitted to the red 3 I had previously, have been extremely resilient to damage...

Thanks...

No idea on damage resistance, but they're fantastic tires with superb grip in the wet.

I'd just match what's currently on the car. For street driving it's not a huge deal, I just personally don't like mismatching tires.

My set of the ECS have held up just fine so far to our horrible potholed roads.  They ride decently too on rough roads.  They don't have the stiffest sidewalls out there cornering wise, but they're not mushy.  

They did great on the accord on One Lap. Multiple times we couldn't see potholes at night and we came out fine on the other side. And these potholes claimed wheels on other cars..

spacecadet said:

They did great on the accord on One Lap. Multiple times we couldn't see potholes at night and we came out fine on the other side. And these potholes claimed wheels on other cars..

That's exactly what I wanted to hear, thanks (well, not folk damaging wheels, but, y'know what I mean). Not sure how I didn't compute that they were the tyres on the Accord

Nearly all my life I've mismatched front and rear tyres (on my cars, not on cars other folk drive), although mostly on FWD stuff, never on 4x4, and only occasionally on RWD (mostly competition use), I always want the 'better' pair on the front, so I know what it will do, and something cheap and round on the back.

I’ll chime in here, in case you go look at the thread again... and note ECS’ are fine as long as you don’t beat up the sidewall on track, pick up a nail, then drive on it flat for a mile-ish.  Of course, that’d be the end of pretty much every non-Runflat tire.

The ECS side wall has a fair amount of “give”... which is bad on track for stock geometries that lack camber, which is how they pick up sidewall wear.  But that ‘give’ also damps the impacts you’re concerned about.

Thanks, yep I'm still looking   It's unlikely they'll see track use (I'm in Peru, there is one track about an hour away which does Autox once a month, but I've not made it there to compete in 6 years living here), so I'm not worried about that, cheers

Ah, right, I forgot about that aspect.

That's the thing I've wondered about idly.  Not that Peru is as bad as, say Kyrgyzstan, but whenever "safari cars" are brought up, and the rally/rallyx crew comes in... there's not much discussion about "what's the best DOT street tire for a place where there frequently are potholes that are the size of a manhole cover and through 3 layers of the roadway, that you could hit at 60mph?

sleepyhead the buffalo said:

Ah, right, I forgot about that aspect.

That's the thing I've wondered about idly.  Not that Peru is as bad as, say Kyrgyzstan, but whenever "safari cars" are brought up, and the rally/rallyx crew comes in... there's not much discussion about "what's the best DOT street tire for a place where there frequently are potholes that are the size of a manhole cover and through 3 layers of the roadway, that you could hit at 60mph?

Something with plenty of sidewall to avoid bending wheels.  

In reply to rslifkin :

right, but it also needs strong enough construction that you don't bubble the sidewall from the impact, yes?

Correct, and it is pretty bad in places here.  I'd like to change to a 16" and go for a 205/60 A/T, like the Contintental Cross Contact, but rims are expensive, normally about 1 -2 weeks wages for a 2nd hand set of 4, which with 4 new tyres (being equally expensive) is a steep bill to stomach.

The last few days I've been having to take an alternate route to the company warehouse, I wish I'd taken a pic, it would have been better in the Landy, I got through in the Mazda, but only just, and it's caked in mud now.  I should mention my 3 is lifted, although only slightly, it's jsut enough to get around...

Aw, man... I don't want to threadjack, but it's so close to on-topic.

As we speak I've got a set of ECS in my virtual cart at Tire Rack and an inquiry in with my local shop who said they're unavailable right now and are looking up alternatives.

Can I get some calibration about what "a fair amount of give" and "don't have the stiffest sidewalls" are relative to? I'm basically looking for something slightly more general purpose than a set of 200TW tires for a car that's not going to be up to using all of a pointy-end tire immediately, and which is likely to see some rain. But it will see autocross and track days, so I really don't want something wiggly, squidgy, flobbery, or otherwise sloppy.

This is for the MGB GT, so its light weight may make up for some amount of sidewall stiffness, but I imagine they're built proportionally, and most cars running around on 205/50-15s are not heavy.

In terms of stiffness, they're nothing like a 200TW tire.  Not nearly that level of harsh nor that level of sharp / responsive.  But even under my 4100 lb BMW, they don't feel mushy or floppy.  In terms of ride quality, they're barely any harsher than my Blizzaks for winter (but steering response is much better, of course).  

I've now done 4 autocross events on my ECS and the car is also my daily and I've had them on since late March.  One one course, at night, with very similar cars I was about a second or 2 behind, on another, during the day, the gap was more like 3-4 seconds.  For daily tires they are awesome and they take a lot of autocross abuse from my Civic before protesting.  Sidewall wear seems on par with 200TW at mid 30's pressures.  The softer sidewall is ideal for a daily tire but not as good as an RE1 or Rival for autocross.  I keep hoping for a rainy event to really see the difference.

In reply to Ransom :

spacecade is probably the better source here, since he's driven most of the 200TW tires of late, and just drove a bunch on the ECS at OneLap.

The ECS is the only tire I've driven on on-track for the last two-ish years... on cars that have relatively sedate spring/damper setups.  My TL has doubel wishbone, stock camber, and rode on 40/45-series ECS'.  The traccord had 45-series ECS' on essentially the same double wishbones, with higher rates, and 2.5deg of camber.  That 2.5deg in camber was the difference in getting them "happy" and not rolling over onto the sidewall and wearing up to an inch below the sidewall marker as you get up over .8g lateral.  I've got pictures of a CTR doing the same thing this year on TireRack's dry skid pad with 30(?) series tires.

The ECS is a 340TW tire.  It's not a Michelin P4S in the wet, but it's whole lot more confident than the Star Spec ZII's in the wet, and don't hydroplane nearly as much.  That said, they still have generated between 0.9 and .097-ish G's on the dry skid pad in the last couple of years at OneLap.

How responsive they are, is not really my driving style... so, I'm not the one to say.  But, if you're going to run them hard somewhere, make sure you've got the camber/camber-gain to keep them off the sidewalls.  Otherwise you'll chunk them... probably in 3-ish HPDE's?  (ymmv, caveat emptor, I'll defer to greater tire aficionados, etc etc)

So, this just happened in my lunchbreak, so 2 ECSs have been ordered, hopefully arriving tomorrow morning, currently on the space saver spare.  3 punctures in the same tyre, 2 nails and a lump of scrap steel.  Thanks for the help folks, I'll post feedback in a while as to how they survive...

In reply to sleepyhead the buffalo :

The big thing I've found with the ECS is they like pressure (which might be an issue in terms of wear on a light car).  Running 38F / 41R in the BMW is enough to keep them off the sidewalls with margin to spare when pushed with about -1.3* camber at both ends and a solidly mediocre mcstrut amount of camber gain up front. 

The affinity for higher inflation pressures is directly related to the more compliant carcass construction. The tire is relying more on the pneumatic stiffness from the air since the tire itself is less stiff.

Just as a follow up on this - so far the ECS are proving to be plenty strong enough - have taken some pretty big hits so far with no issues, although I am heeding the recommendation to run higher pressures.  Good traction under braking and good lateral grip in damp conditions.  Pushing them hard in the dry and you can see that I could do with a bit more negative camber up front, but not too bad.  Cheers folks.

Thanks for the follow up, very thoughtful of you.

Cheers, I do hate finding what could be a useful thread on a forum but then finding there was no conclusion