thanks again for the advice. i was actually looking at the tire rack website, and deciding whether or not to order from them. i'm on a budget so my choices were narrowed down to dunlop and sumitomo. i had sumitomo's before- good grip, but not much lateral support. the steering response was spongy. but these tires are in my price range at $91. looking at dunlops... i had these before also and by far was a much better tire. love the responsiveness and quietness. lateral support was great. but the tire is not all that attractive looking. i have BFG KDM's on my sc right now and those have phenomenal dry pavement handling, but they are the most noisy tire i ever had. they also scallop very easily- a terrible ride. don't last long either- only got 8000 miles or so on them and they are close to being fully worn out.
installed new tie rod ends and adjusted to compensate (about 2 turns each side) to correct the toe out condition which showed on the front tires (inner tread severely worn). it also needs upper control arms with new ball joints, which probably created the condition in the first place (held off on this due to money). amazingly, the car now has sharper steering (holds very straight) and awesome cornering/handling in my opinion (not jumpy and darting anymore), and hopefully that corrected some of the irregular tire wear. hopefully the next set will last longer, will probably not get a full life out of them though- the adjustments are probably leaning more towards negative camber i know. still need new tires though. if i took this to a tire shop for alignment, this would not even be on their radar- they would just tell me what i already know and try to scare me into spending the money to have a bunch of front end work done. yeah, i know it still needs to be done, but what i did will (hopefully) hold off for a while. ahh, the strategies we use to save money.