Hey Convertible Owners,

I've been running one of Yokahama's new tire lines for ~2 months now on the stock convertible BBS rims and have a little review for you. These run ~$72/ea at tirerack.com

I bought the Yokohama AVS dB S2 which replaced my Yokohama AVS Intermediate's. The old Yokahama AVS's had good grip, decent "damp" traction, lousy "heavy water" traction, and were a bit noisy.

The old ones never hydroplaned, but kept "moving around" in wet weather and felt very "un-nerving" when in heavy water.

The new AVS db S2's are a vast improvement. These are directional tires and have an ultra-sticky center section, dual "aqua channels" for much improved wet traction, and good "ribbed" sides for strong cornering.

The "db" in the name means low decibel / low noise. While they're definitely not a "luxury tire", the NVH (noise, vibration, harshness) is much improved. I've combined these with the Convertible specific Racing Beat springs & Tokico non-adjustable shocks. At the handling limits the cars fairly neutral.

I've tried these tires in, wet, dry, flooding, and icey condtions. Best all-weather tires I've owned to date.

Here's some of their literature:



On a side note with the Racing Beat Suspension, the Racing Beat setup is a vast improvement over stock but I still haven't corrected allot of "minor issues" like:
- I still haven't correct my Caster issue in the rear. Tires wear normally though.
- Caster is 1.7 degrees off on both sides, and the Racing Beat adjustable caster link only provide 0.7 degrees correction
- Racing Beat says to fix the rear caster you have to move the upper sublink mounting position upwards (ie cut & grind) and buy their adjustable caster/sublink)
- Hitting a bump at the tire's handling limits my car gets out of balance with the off caster. Also the off caster adds to the "convertible cowl shake" a bit.
- The Tokico shocks aren't 100% compatible with the new Racing Beat Convertible specific springs. I'm still getting a very loud "pop/knock" on both sides everytime I hit a pothole or drive-up a steep driveway. Can't tell if the springs or shocks are rubbing on the tires OR.. since I didn't cut the "bump stops" the front shocks are pre-maturely bottoming out and knocking. I see no wear on the inner sidewalls and no obvious marks when I dis-assemble the

 

That's a nice looking tire! And not a bad price either.

 

when I had 15's I ran nitto 450s and loved them all around. I now have 17 inch kumhos and they seem grippier. Might me the 2 inch difference in wheel size tho. Do yourself a favor and ditch the 15's and uprade those with your shocks and springs and the car feels like its a new one

 

I had the dB S2 on my old 91 N/A in the stock 205/60-15 size. I liked them a lot. Decent performance and they were extremely quiet. They lasted around 20K miles before I had to put on a new set.

And caster isn't adjustable in the rear. You meant to say camber.

 

Have you tried any Kumho tires? I'd be interested to see how these compare to the Kumhos I have on my 'vert right now :O

 

Yeah those AVS dB S2 are just a rip off/copy of the old Falken ST-115 design

 

Rotary owners love cheaper knockoffs if they're good quality.

 

I doubt this is a high grip tire, the shoulder block is pretty small.