I found a great deal on some rear tires locally and I'm trying to decide whether I should put them on with mismatched fronts. I've probably got 5-6 32nds left on the front tires, but my rears are approaching unsafe.

The fronts are hankook v12, the new rears are toyo r888s.

I've read and heard that I'll wreck the car doing this, it won't matter, it's fine as long as the rears grip better than the fronts, it'll understeer, it'll handle poorly at high speeds, etc. I frequently mismatched tires when I was younger before I heard any of this and never noticed any problems.

What do you guys think?

 

I have Hankooks on the front and Kumhos on the rear. Not a problem. I did road force balance on all four corners which I highly recommend. No problems at all. My reason to do this was to put all season high performance tires on the front where the weight and cornering wear happens, and soft summer autocross tires on the rear so my srt6 could get better grip. it works for me.

 

My last set of tires were mis-matched thanks to a blow out in New Mexico (where I had to replace both rear tires).
I had Hankooks in front, and Generals in back.
Had absolutely no handling problems wet or dry.

Back in the the early 70's "They" said you couldn't mix radials and belted tires. I heard all kinds of horror stories.
I picked up a beautiful 69 "Hemi" Super Bee that had L/60/15" belted tires in back, with "bald" F/70/14's on the front, all mounted on Crager S/S wheels.
Since I had a nice pair of F70/14" radials mounted on some Cragers , I through em on the front, and even with no power steering, it drove fantastic.
People use to say radials wouldn't work on cars with a torsion bar front suspension either. I used radial tires on every one of the 15 Mopars I owned over the years.

 

Thanks for the reply, your thinking sounds similar to what I had figured...

Do you know the road force balance results with regard to your rims? I'm hoping my stock crossfire rims are pretty evenly weighted, or is that unrealistic thinking?

 

I run 235 Kumo on front and 275 Gmax on the back, the Kumo has a stiffer sidewall on front and the softer sidewall Gmax on the back, I am real happy with this combo.

 

Great, thanks guys! Can anyone play devils advocate and tell me why I shouldn't do it?

I guess I'll mount them and see how it drives.

 

The OEM rims are designed and weighted with the TPMS sensor in place.
If you remove the sensor, a big pile of lead stick-ons is required to offset the loss.
So even if your batteries die, leave the sensors in.

 

Thanks man! Will keep that in mind.