It's BAAACCCKKKK.....
Sounds like the G-Force may suffer from some of the same problems as, well,
any competition tire: short life in some situations. That's probably
mostly a pressure problem, in this case probably too *high* a pressure may
be as bad as too low. Ah yes, progress. I'm now over 100 runs on the
front tires on the MR2, and they are about half gone. Yeah, the car is
light in the front and has ABS, so they've probably got a pretty easy life.
And I've been going pretty slow on them at times, which may help too.
Then again, the reason I've been slow is often due to going to fast.
Whatever. The rears won't match the fronts, but it sure looks like they'll
go well over 100 runs. That'll be just great as long as the stick doesn't
go away. So far they seem to be hanging in there just fine.
The idea of requiring a Z rating is interesting. Not useful, but
interesting. Apparently, the current tire situation is bad, so we need to
require something we've already got (except for the Hoosier bias tire,
isn't everthing we're using Z rated now???) I don't get it. Aren't we all
using the same tires now for solo, IT, and road racing (with the exception
of some of the Hoosiers)?
Granted, the reason the old super-soft BFG 226 didn't have the Z rating was
that the tread compound would melt. But I don't think that's why they went
away; I found that even on a stock 2000-pound CRX, the 230 (AKA "road race
tire", yes, with a Z rating) was faster in almost any condition. The soft
compound was just too soft, and a lack of adhesion was the result. Going
softer isn't likely to help that situation.... Even with those, I got
60-70 runs minimum out of a set. I wouldn't say that's "adequate" or that
more life wouldn't be better, but that's a far cry from a 1-event tire. I
ended up using 230s for almost everything from then on (including a
somewhat-successful experiment at Salina, despite first-group dirt and cold
temps). The 226 was mostly lamented by SP guys, who were overtired to the
point where they needed the soft compound. Some of us experimented with
226s later on, and except for wet conditions, found the 230s to be
superior. Sort of a win-win situation when the longer-lasting tire is also
faster.
Someone has again mentioned using a durometer. I have yet to see one that
is capable of giving repeatable readings. I'm talking within a 100%
margin! I got one intending to use it to track the heat-cycle lifetime of
230s. After taking a series of readings on a set of tires and seeing no
pattern, I found that I could do the same thing on one tire. It's a random
number generator. There is probably some sort of expensive lab equipment
that's capable (if used right, which probably includes taking 10,000
readings and then feeding that through a statistical analysis) but it's not
hand-held and portable. If there's a series using it "successfully" they
probably have just defined it as a success and never bother taking the
durometer out of its case.... And they've gone to some other method such
as a spec tire (excellent solution in some situations, obviously not
workable in Solo) or an exclusion list (not necessarily a hopeless solution
as long as the competitors and tire companies don't care enough to try to
find an advantage).
We've hashed this question out over and over and over and over and over and
over and over and over and over again. We generally keep getting the same
suggestions:
1) seems like it's obvious and perfect - tread wear rating. Problems:
you can't really compare the testing they do with autocrossing. The number
is relatively arbitrary. It doesn't take into consideration things like
tread pattern and carcass. My own anecdotal experience had by far the
highest treadwear tires I've ever autocrossed on lasting the shortest time.
And having seen other "real" street tires with lots of tread after someone
has autocrossed on them, it wasn't a fluke. Another problem is that there
are plenty of tires out there with "acceptable" treadwear ratings that
perform nearly as well as our current "R" tires, but with a real street
tread on them aren't going to last very well autocrossing. The real killer
is that these tires are absurdly expensive.
2) So add them to the exclusion list. OK, just how far do we go? Some
of
these tires are OEM on cars like Miatas - someone shows up with a new Miata
and we tell him he can't run in Stock since he's got his OEM Pilots on his
car??? Yeah, that's a great solution. Who is going to maintain this list?
What sort of agenda are they going to have? How often are updates
allowed? Ultimately I think this would just lead to us having to run
shorter-lived but more expensive tires. Yes, the tire companies might just
support this one....
3) an "allowable" list. Sort of a spec-tire list. Problem here is that
that's going to be a big list, but if you start by allowing any OEM tire
you've just defeated the purpose.
Seems to me what we want is something that is fair, and "affordable". What
we've got is certainly fair (though I personally liked the days when there
was just one tire at the top; at least you know you weren't losing due to
tires! Now with at least three choices, who knows? I can't afford to buy
sets of all of them and do the testing....) At least I can go out and buy
whatever tire I want. Affordable is a touchy question. I haven't learned
the trick of how to sh*t money, so buying tires hurts. I'd love to buy
fewer of them. I'd be happy to support rules that promoted that. I've
found that less adhesion doesn't hurt the fun factor; heck, in some ways
it helps! But I'm also not willing to compromise my competitiveness if I
can help it. Given that I haven't found that "R" tires wear faster than
high-end street tires and that they certainly seem to cost lots less, I'm
not sure that we can do much better than what we've got now. Especially
with 3 companies out there with competitive rubber, there are choices. And
I'm sure the tire companies are aware of tire life issues. As much as
they'd like to be able to sell us 1-event tires, they realize that's not
going to work. And I don't think a tread compound that soft would be
likely to make most of us go fast anyway (based on my 226 experiences). It
seems to me that the market will force the tire companies to work towards
longer-lasting, faster tires. Look at Kumho's reputation for durability
and low cost, yet they seem to be quite competitive. That's a rep that the
others would love to have. I'm not all that sure that they aren't all
somewhat comparable, but Kumho's recent success has got to have gotten the
attention of the others. My first set of G-Forces has surprised me a bit
with their durability. If they can improve on this....
So I'll ask a question: what are you trying to accomplish with a rules
change? Or to rephrase it, just what is the problem with the current
situation? Don't tell me "street tires are cheaper to run" cause I really
don't think they are, at least not in a competitive situation. Local
street tire classes are great. It would be interesting to look at tire
life there. But I don't think that scales up to the national level.
Forcing us to buy Pilots (or whatever the best legal "real" street tire
ended up being) would be a significant step in the wrong direction. Be
careful what you wish for....
Paul and Meredith Brown
MR2: "Not the easiest car in the world to work on"
|