Deal!
They're pretty good for the price ($845 total with certs for free replacement and lifetime balance). I do like how quiet they are. Lateral grip is very good too and the thread pattern looks badass! They do pretty good in the rain considering the width of these rear monsters. I had to special order the 315's at Discount Tire, the 275's were in stock. One of the reasons I went with 17's is if I get stuck on the road with a flat or blowout one of the rear tires, I can just put on my spare and not have to worry about the tire diameter difference (25.54" vs 25.67") killing my limited slip diff.
They do not rub anywhere! I did roll my rear fenders and the fronts were already rolled (don't know if all Mach 1's came this way). I was gonna flip the new Gabriel replacement quad shocks for clearance, but quickly found out that it wasn't necessary. I had plenty of clearance (about 1.5"). The Gabriel's are a little thinner than the OEM ones so that helped too.
BTW, the Gabriel quad shocks are available at Autozone for $24.99 each and are found under steering damper under miscellaneous suspension and the part number is 14039. Much cheaper than the alternatives from Ford, Bilstein, Koni etc. To anyone planning on getting these, they will not be able to find them looking under shocks/struts so tell them where to look and take your part number with you for verification of correct part.
I can't really compare handling to the tires it replaced since I did most of the suspension work at the same time as the tires/AFS wheels. If Nitto had made R's in the new G2 style I would've gotten them instead for the rears (I really do need a DR with decent tread life...read paragraph below). My OCD would've killed me if I had gotten the regular 555R's and the G2's for the front. They look nothing alike. And buying the old NT555's for the front was not a option due to them being more expensive than the new G2's when I bought them. I thought about getting the NT05's, but I needed something quiet and good in the rain since almost every time I take the Mach out of town I seem to get caught in a rainstorm. Oh the irony!
I did a few launches a few weeks ago and anything more than 2K rpms and slipping out the clutch resulted in the tires just spinning for all of 1st gear. The 1/2 shift = just a slight screech. The 2/3 and 3/4 dead hook. I have the rears set to 28lbs and the fronts to 32. I have maybe 2K miles on them (mostly highway) and they still look brand new.
When new, they left VERY dark black thread stains on the concrete floor. I don't know what to make of that, but the stains are alot lighter now that the tires have some miles on them. They seem pretty sticky for a street tire so maybe that's why. They're alot better than the Kumho Ecsta SPT's that were on before. I will never buy Kumhos again. With those (in 245 width), all of 1st and half of 2nd = no traction, followed by going sideways on the 2/3 and a screech on the 3/4 (yes on the 3/4 shift!).
Unfortunately, those tires were on the car when I bought it. There's no way in hell I would've bought those cheap *** tires if not for a shitty situation. You see, I got a ball on a rear tire twice while travelling out of town. I had to stop at a Discount Tire (that's who the P.O. bought them from) mid-trip and get 2 rear tires on 2 separate occasions, effectively giving me a new set of these POS tires. Had I known I was gonna get another ball just 5k miles later, I probably would've gotten different tires. Also, had this happened while I was at home, I would've just put tires on my new AFS wheels that I was waiting to put new tires on. Instead, I had to wait to wear out these tires first.