Enno writes:
>Does anybody have experience driving to events
>on their race tires?
>I guess the Kumho/G-Force or whatever are street legal,
>so that's not an issue - but do they wear dramatically faster
>that way
Enno, you had to ask!
Boy, do I have experience. In the old days ( before DOT ratings) we
regularly drove pure race tires on the street a lot, not just to and from
events.
However, in a more serious vein, over the last 15 years, we've driven, to
most events on our DOT "race" tires, even to L.A. and Seattle (on full-tread
Yokahama A008Rs). During that period we've run Goodyear VR50S, Yokohama
A008R, RS & SII, original BFG 206 autocross radials, BFG 226, BFG 230,
Hoosier Autocrossers, Hoosier autocross radials and Kumhos. Except for both
design Hoosiers, these tires all had steel belts. Since the soft rubber on
all of these tires pick up a lot of stuff, the steel belt, although it does
little to avoid punctures from nails and screws, mitigates against a
puncture causing destruction of a tire.
These days the DOT "legal" autocross tires are, techniaclly, legal till they
hit the wear bars, after which time, they could generate a citation. In the
case of the current Hoosier radials, the wear bars come into ground contact
at about half the tread life. Some other brands, such as Kumhos have deeper
tread. But, the real issues are driving safety and potential tire damage.
Those who've spoken about rain are on-the-mark. Some, or most, "race" DOT
tires, particularly the wider sizes, even at full tread, are pretty "snakey"
at freeway speeds. The above mentioned Hoosiers are useless in any
significant rain fall. (I'm sure Katy can tell you about George Doganis and
the Nationals this year)
The issue of wear is another story. If the alignments you drive-on, to get
to the event, are not too agressive the wear from the trips will be pretty
small. However, if you street-drive with a combination of toe-out and
negative camber on either end of the car, straight line wear on the affected
tires, can be noticeable and, its wears the part of the tire, the inside,
that usually cords first on a properly balanced set-up. So, depending on
alignments you can have accelerated wear-out from street driving. Once drove
to Tahoe and back (400 miles) with a small amount of toe-out and two degrees
negative camber and killed a set of half-worn fronts. On the other hand,
moderate amounts of toe-in, even with significant(1 to 2 degrees) negative
camber, helps to minimize scrubbing off the inside of the tires.
The last issue is that some of the softer tread compounds really pick up and
retain significant amounts of small rock, glass and other debris. At the
least, this is a nuisance requiring diligent regular removal of the debris.
And, on tires without steel belts, puncture potential is increased because
the sharp small pieces can more easilly penetrate the casing.
Recently, for the above reasons, we've driven the Kumhos everywhere but,
even in the dry, have dis-continued driving the Hoosier radials to all but
really close (Oakland) events. In all situations we bring a "race" spare,
just in case.
Don
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