I've put about 10,000 miles on the used 225/45/17 Bridgestone Potenza RE050A tires I got last year. Really sticky tires but being runflats they are heavy and the ride is pretty rough over crappy roads and have some tire roar. The front tires were almost on the wear bars and gettiing pretty loud. The back tires still have a good 8-10k miles left in them so I only replaced the front two. I ended up getting the Bridgestone RE760 sports. I stayed with the 45 series since my speedometer is more accurate with them. 225/50s have my speedometer reading 2 mph slow at 70, 225/45s have me reading 1 mph fast at 70 and the odometer error is only 0.3 miles under per 100 miles, while the 225/50s had me reading 4 miles more per 100 miles.

Anyway, the RE760 sports have a wider footprint than the RE050As do, nearly 1" wider. I moved the RE050s up front so it is hard to tell how much the improved quietness is due to having tread on the front tires and how much quieter the RE760 sports are supposed to be. I guess I will know for sure when it comes time to replace the 050s. Grip in turns seems similar to when I had 050s all around (which is to say "superb") and with a treadwear rating of 340 vs 140, they should last longer. Seeing as I will probably end up putting 18-20k miles on the other two 050s total (plus the few thousand they already had on them), I'm hoping the 340 rating means I can get 35,000 or so miles out of them.

Obviously, this tread design isn't meant for snow so I hope this past year's 17" (nearly a record for the Dallas area) doesn't happen again any time soon. RE050s aren't exactly snow tires either and I didn't have any problems when we had that 12" snow storm this past February. Normally we get 1 or 2 snow events per year with minimal accumulation.

 

meaty!!!

 

Nice choice and good rating.

 

Still real happy with the 760 sports, 4500 miles on them now and they still look new. The 050s in the front hanging on too, looks like I can get another 3000-4000 out of them.

Really good in the rain too.

 

Tires look good and the threads look nice expensive or good price!!