I wondered how Pirelli managed to get away with such bad tires only for the Challengers

They are used on supercars all over the world, but the exact, specific sizes they made for the Challenger owners is a new nadir that is so low it is looking far up with the Hale telescope and managing to see the bottom of hell.

Then, I was cruising a Ferrari dealership, and lo and behold, a Ferrari with tires EXACTLY sized for the EXACT rims that normal and widebody Hellcats/SRTS's have, but they were on a Ferrari.

Ah, I found that the tires for the Ferrari were marked 275/35/20's. The rear ones were marked 315/35/20's Interesting how the front ones were marked 5 percent smaller on the height, and the rear ones were marked five percent larger. (stock rears are 315/30/20)

Notice how they have the "does not suck or we'd get our asses sued off" tires sized just a bit different than the ones for the Challengers? Aren't they just so STUPENDOUSLY CLEVERRRRRR?

I bet the tires are the EXACT SAME SIZE as the ones excreted on the Challengers, but with different size marked on the sidewalls as the secret Clever Code of Cleverness to let them know they are not the garbage tires.

Michelins in our sizes, however, come VERY highly recommended by people who escaped the Pirellis that came on the car from the showroom.

 

Completely agree on the quality of the Pirellis. After 30,000mi my factory Pirellis on my 2020 widebody were wearing unevenly and low (no burnouts ever) even though I rotated them every 5,000mi. I found that the only all season road tires available were the Pirellis ($330), Michelins ($450), and a new Cooper Zeon RS3-G1 ($250). The Michelins & Coopers both have a 45,000mi warrantee, but the Pirellis don't have any. I hate Cooper tires, but I went with them because of the warrantee. I figured if they suck, Cooper will just keep replacing them at a prorated cost. I'll take that over 2x the cost of the Michelins. And if they're worn out before 45,000mi I'll get them warranteed out and get a discount $$ on a replacement set in a few years. That's been my MO for all my vehicles for decades, works out pretty good.

I noticed the factory Pirellis had issues keeping tire pressure. I had to add air a couple times a month, no biggy. They also were pretty slick, as in I could easily break the tires from a dead stop under intense acceleration and at even highway speed. I had to be careful not to spin the tires when leaving a stop light in my unmodded scat shaker widebody. First thing I noticed about the Coopers is that I couldn't break the tires loose, they stick pretty good. They're also holding pressure after 3,000mi so far. Both tires have a 500 wear rating, with the Michelins slightly better at 540. So far the Coopers appear to be a good alternative to the expensive Michelins, time will tell.

 

Ignorance is Bliss, isn't it.
Not all Pirelli tires are the same there are different model lines, and what they put on the Challenger out the factory door are to appease the masses, Not, the individual!

Learn to shop by UTQG ratings, whether after traction or longevity, but most factory releases are after middle ground, then after you wear those out, put what works best for you.

 

Our Challengers are factory preset with negative camber, make sure it is as factory aligned as possible to get the best tire wear. If the tires are wearing bad on the inside your negative camber could be out past 2 degrees of negative camber. You can resolve that to a certain extent in the rear with SPC corrective bushings, but the front is a different story.

 

This is typical of the experience of people with the Pirelli tires. They seem to be working towards Ralph Nader's "unsafe at any speed" moniker.

The fact that they come without a warranty of any sort does not speaks of the lack of confidence Pirelli had in them, and/or it just proclaims that the tires were so low-ball priced by Dodge that Pirelli just threw up their hands and said, "Okay, here's our bid for this level of tire."

And, evidently, Pirelli won the lowest bidder/quality/warranty/safety/traction award. Strangely, I do not think they are priced down where they belong. They definitely seem to be coasting on their name. They could be an appropriate tires for 100 bucks.

People have said good things about the Atturos, also, but I saw just one video of the Atturo being dismounted from a rim and it had large, long about 3/4" wide or so chunks of the inner casing rubber that had broken off and, I'm guessing, threw off the balance.

This was just one video, however, and the results can be faked by just cutting stuff off of the inside of the tire and tossing it in there, but I did not get any sense of that happening. Those were Y-rated tires, so they could handle to 186mph/300km/h, by their designation.

But, yeah, I have never seen in years a single person rave about high quality the Pirellis were. The Michelins, yes. They are evidently very long-wearing, too, in addition to having good traction, and now the Coopers, too.

The Pirellis are priced far above what their quality and safety indicate. The cheapest insurance you can get is a great set of tires, especially as they can prevent some collisions or mishaps and thus prevent you even needing your insurance. Whatever the Pirellis boast about being on paper, they fail to deliver for all or almost all of the Challenger drivers who actually want maximum performance.

The Pirelli they discard on Dodge is specifically sized to be the cheap, high-profit, low-quality "sucker" tire, while other tires they size or just label as being somewhat different that cost a LOT more are the actual tires that behave like Pirellis used to before they went down the toilet of supplying bad tires to Dodge.

 

Funny, alignment was brought up. My dealer actually noticed the secondary rubber showing through my front tires at an oil change. I was just about to rotate them as it was 5,000mi since I last rotated them and there was no abnormal wear then. He told me to get new tires and he'd have his 'specialist' align my car. He said he had only 1 guy who knows how to align the widebodies to maximize performance. So, I replaced the tires and got an alignment a few days later at the dealer, and he was right. Alignment made a world of difference. The steering immediately felt easier to steer, better than the day I bought it new with 27 miles on it. It handled corners way better and braking was improved. Like was posted earlier, the fronts were out about 2 degrees and 1 rear was out by 1 degree. The total driving experience is way better now, it drives like it's on rails now. My dealer has been pretty good to me over the last decade and I was suspicious of his alignment 'specialist', but it turned out to be better than I could have ever expected.

 

You didn't specify what measurement was out.
Was it camber?
If so, was the camber too positive or too negative?
I had a hot rod neon I put extra negative camber on in the front and back. it cornered like IT was on rails, also. I had to sign the sheet indicating I was out of factory specifications.
When I had the alignment done, I piled around my bodyweight of weight plates in the driver's seat and footwell to make the car act like it did when I was driving it.
The results were stellar.
I also put 5 PSI over max in the front tires (front wheel drive) and max pressure in rear tires. As I said, it cornered like it was on rails and braked very well, also.

To you aspiring women/grandmothers: Don't bother braying and shrieking at me about having higher than normal pressure in tires/manufacturer recommended pressures, etc. You enjoy your tires at whatever pressure you have them at. Go boss around your own kids, not someone else's.

Tires go out of spec from winter to summer and when driving over the grapevine in California, too. They don't explode and kill everyone in a 100 yard radius with shrapnel.

My Hellcat I ran at exactly 50 PSI for a quite a while, also. The main problem I noticed was that the tires were not that fantastic at ANY inflation pressure if they were Nitto Motivos. (they went off after the first few months, harder rubber to gain warranty compliance and save Nitto money. I do NOT recommend the Motivos. They started dandy, then got greasy. In the same time frame, the Mickey Thompsons experienced NO change, and had more grip. Avoid Motivos. Even when I lowered them to 35PSI or so, they caused a FTBI (failure to be impressed.) The only race I ever lost was due to Motivos on the rear.

I kept monitoring my tire wear with a tread depth gauge, and having them at 50PSI caused the center of the unimpressively hard and low-grip Motivos to wear a bit faster over time (about a year) I will never buy Motivos again due to their "grippy rubber until about 1000 miles or so, then LOL carcass-grade rubber so you never make a claim on the 50,000 mile warranty (or however long it is.)"

The Hellcat has a bit of negative camber specified, stock. some of its settings are not adjustable, which was weird, to me, for such a car, but, hey, if you like suspension adjustment, you can get stuff on the aftermarket.



I do recommend the Mickey Thompsons, but not for maximum tread life.

 

Sorry about that, I'll clarify. The fronts were toed in and the rear was toed out. Caster & camber on all wheels was within spec & not adjusted. The front driver side was at 0.40 deg and was corrected to 0.09 deg. Front passenger was at 0.26 deg and was corrected to 0.11 deg. Rear driver was at -0.07 deg and was corrected to 0.10 deg.

 

My Hellcat liked the slight negative camber that was evidently the stock spec, according to the alignment rack guys. They just put everything at factory spec, showed me the measurement sheets. Tires wore nice and even, except for the middles, which wore a small but faster due to my having inflation right up at maximum 50PSI. Due to that medium-length experiment, I felt confident to lower the pressures to not have a faster wear pattern in the middles.

Interesting. The original toe settings were the cause of any wear and behavior anomalies?