Where do you live?
Well, you already ordered the 4's but where do you live? I don't think anyone bothered to ask you. That's important due to your choice. I had the Proxes 4's (205/50) for 41,000 wonderful miles in the Chicago area (several autocross weekends and daily agressive driving cut down on their tread life). I have the 512's now since last November. Thus I can give you a short review:
Proxes 4
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Spring/Summer/Fall: Soft sidewalls. Comfortable for daily driving but if you run hard expect to keep them at about 38 psi. Awesome tire in dry. No sudden break away the limit so easy to catch and drive hard. They don't squeal. If you happen to have an emergency stop expect smoke but good control. I rotated every 4-7000 miles and wore them down to nearly slicks. They were great to the very end and held up fine to spring potholes (but I had higher psi). In the wet they are great even if you hit a puddle at speed. They thump and then get right back down on the pavement without the typical skating a few feet like common all seasons.
Winter: Just fine on cold dry roads. Even wet roads when above freezing. But if it's snowy or icy you'll be frustrated as when in those conditions expect poor launch traction (I have an automatic). Our short driveway had a slight rise (less than 10%) and I needed a running start to get up it. Often I had to put down salt/sand. Once under way when it's slippery they didn't scare me and I had control but I had to be aware of stopping distances and try not to get stopped on any grade.
Falken 512
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Spring/Summer/Fall: This tire is also excellent value. I judge it at about 80-90% as good as the Proxes in the dry and wet. Stiffer sidewall also. I haven't raced on this tire yet but it also communicates at its limits and can be controlled.
Winter: In the winter the 512 is simply superior to the Proxes when it's slick out. I had put them on in early November and granted they were new, we had an early blizzard. We had gone out to a movie and the snow plows weren't keeping up. In fact we were breaking trail in 6 inches with the snow plow behind us. Had to drive gently anyway but starting and stopping were easy to control. Had we been on brand new Proxes 4's we would have never gotten home that night.
So while I very much miss the Proxes, the 512 is a much better tire overall because of it's winter performance. My Protege goes to my son in the fall when he turns 16 and I plan on getting real snow tires on the stock rims. Then when the 512's wear out I would happily get Proxes 4's again as summer tires because I love their wet performance.
grunt_99 said:
Well, FFS they can't get the Exclaim's for me. They're backorderd for at least 6 weeks, probably longer. I can't wait that long. So I ordered the Toyo Proxes 4's, in stock size. I hope the dunlops last till they arrive, 9-12 days (shrug) .
