I love my SC430 and purchased it used. It's a 2005 with less than 20,000. The ride is not what I expected from Lexus and have read a lot about the RFT. Many of you have replaced them with non-RFT and I intend to do the same. I see the popular tire choices in the Bridgestone, Michelin and Continental lines.

I live in Rochester NY and my first issue was to find a local garage who could actually support the removal and mounting of RFT, especially 245-40-18. This narrowed down the choices. Tire Rack is an option but there are very few of their local network who can handle that tire. Then I went to one of the big local tire chains. They actually have a policy that says they will not mount a non-run flat tire in replacement of a run-flat. I talked to my local Lexus dealership who says most of their customers have converted to NRF and they do the conversion at the dealership. The local tire store says they are bounded by the tire manufacturers rules and will not budge. Has anyone heard of this? Is there a "permission slip" that can be provided since the manufacturer themselves has no problem with this?

I recently purchased my 2002 SC430, which had about 63k on the odometer when I bought it. It had a set of Kuhmo Runflat Tires on it that were terrible. (This coincided with my past experience of Kuhmo tires on a Miata--they were some of the worst handling tires I've ever owned.) The Kuhmos were not only stiff and harsh-riding, but with the wide grooves around the circumference of the tire, they would grab road surface imperfections and literally heave the car around. I had to be really vigilant on the highways in the Seattle area to keep from being tossed into the next lane--literally!

I replaced the Kuhmos with a set of Toyo Proxes4 tires. I've had great experience with Toyo Proxes tires in the past, and these seem to be living up to my expectations. The tire shop (Les Schwab) didn't hesitate in replacing the Kuhmo Runflats with the Proxes--that discussion never arose. What I did was to purchase a tire plug kit to supplement the air pump I already had. My TPMS sensors are dead, but I'm going to replace them fairly soon. I consider them to be cheap insurance to catch a deflating tire before it blows out and shreds on the highway--I should be able to salvage it in that case. The set of Toyos, with installation and siping came to about $1100 including tax.

The Proxes4 tires are high-performance all-season tires, and so far they do pretty well, but I don't have a lot of miles on them yet. I figure I'll know better in about a year, but at this point, they're head and shoulders above the Kuhmos!

I'm not sure how to compare experiences with RF vs non-RF. I've heard some good things about Kuhmo non-RF but no one seems to be thrilled about RF tires, including me. There are a lot of choices out there and I'm trying to narrow them down a bit. I'm not sure I want to spend the big dollars (>$200) given the propensity for inside tire wear due to the camber adjustment, but looking at reviews and what people have talked about on this forum, these are what seem to come up most:

Michelin Pilot Sport A/S (over $200)
Bridgestone Potenza RE960AS Pole Position (just under $200)
Goodyear Eagle GT (under $150)
Conti Extreme Contact (under $150)
Conti Pro Contact (just over $200)
Yokohama Avid W4S (under $150)

I don't intend to do winter driving with this car so the "all season" is not important although I am told that all season doesn't necessarily mean all season. As for the tire store, thanks for your feedback and I'm not surprised others do it as the Lexus dealer does. They are losing a fair amount of business with this policy.

I appreciate hearing how others analyze the choices and make decisions so will do the same here to put complete this tire saga. All the tires I mentioned on the list I think are strong contenders. At the last hour, I found one more tire - the General Exclaim UHP. It is not the caliber of some of the others like the Bridgestone Potenza, but for my summer only driving and I'm not as performance focused as some others, the General seemed just the right tire for me. It did quite well on the Tire Rack ratings - handling, ride, traction, durability. I also read quite a few reviews on them and they did quite well by most although occasionally a very performance oriented driver panned them. The set cost less than $500 and given they are my first non RFT tires and some questions about camber / alignment, K thought they would be a good place to start before moving up to the higher performance tires.

SC-Man, I too am looking to upgrade my 03 to NRF tires this summer. I stopped by my local Costco and they said without a spare, that they would not be able to sell me a set of new tires. They have good prices too! I would be very interested in hearing more from others who have made the change over to NRF's. Lets hear from you guys!

I must say it's surprising that these tire stores get so involved (over involved) in a driver's safety. Anyone could decide not to carry a spare. Once you move to NRF, I suspect there will be no questions even though you may not have a spare at that point either. With AAA/Road Service, flat kits and a portable compressor, there really isn't much risk. I'm guessing there must have been some law suits. I'm having the tires shipped to my local garage who specializes in high end cars and has not problem putting these on.

Interesting thing I discovered. When installing my Proxes 4 tires, my local Les Schwab told me my TPMS sensors were dead--they didn't register when they used their "reader" on them. I checked with my local Lexus of Bellevue (WA) dealership, and they told me that they have found that the Les Schwab "readers" don't do very well, so I made an appointment to have the sensors checked/replaced. (Important since I took off the run-flat tires.)

Being curious, today I decided to check the tires myself. I let pressure out of the tires and watched for the TPMS light on the dash--lo and behold, it came on at about 24 psi for each tire! I guess the sensors were indeed working, and the Lexus shop was right--the Les Schwab "reader" didn't to too well for these. (I canceled my appointment.)

The other thing I noticed is that Les Schwab had left one of my tires at about 45 psi after mounting it. The problem with that is that now that I have it back down to 33 psi (the factory rating), the TPMS sensor is on! Now I'm trying to contact my Lexus dealership to find out how to recalibrate the sensor for the proper pressure, since I don't plan to keep running one of the tires 12 psi above recommendations!

The only complaint I've heard from folks about the SC is the RFTs. Mine were loud and rough and I removed them ASAP! I had great luck with Tire Rack. I ended up with Goodyear Eagle GT allseasons......they have been great! Great wet and dry performance. Relatively quiet, smooth and handle very well at a great price. If you're going to have the TPMS hooked up the price of installation goes up and in my opinion the feature is worthless....I've disconnected it. Hope this helps.

SCMAN,

Please let me know how you like your General Exclaim UHP. I am considering the Generals along with the Continental Extreme DWS to replace my runflats. Did you have to realign your rear end tires?

I actually took the negative camber out of the rear end alignment since I don't race or beat my SC 430. Please inform.

Regards,
Blaise