Thanks to everyone who responded to me question regarding oversteer
management with Hoosiers. To make a short story long, it seems that
there's no "right" answer and I'll just have to experiment to see what I
like.
The basics behind this is that every tire has a pressure where it will
achieve optimum traction based on prevailing conditions. Changing the
pressure either way will result in a general loss of the tire's ability
to achieve maximum lateral traction. One person noted that oversteer
was ofter more controllable with an overpressure rather than
underpressure. Another noted that lower pressures made the rear of the
car feel mushy and slow, which probably would blend in well with my 12
yr old springs. A well known personality of this list, whom drives a
torquey German RWD vehicle, suggested that overpressure was THE way to
go, but since his application puts power at a different axle than mine,
I'll file this with the rest of everyone's advice as TBT - to be tested.
Again, thanks for everyone's advice. The original question follows.
>Question for you gurus running the Hossiers aforementioned. My car is
>FWD with roughly a 30/70 R/F weight distribution. I run my fronts at
>around 50 psi, and the rollover looks just right to my untrained eye -
>the shoe polish is rubbed off to the shoulder and no further.
>
>The rears I run at about 45psi, and they don't roll a bit. Lots of shoe
>polish remains. The tread is crowned somewhat. My thinking was that,
>by leaving the pressure up, and preventing the tread from rolling to the
>shoulder edge, I was minimizing the contact patch, thus reducing
>traction and helping to make the back end more loose. This is how I ran
>just the last weekend. But, as I was packing up after my last run, it
>occured to me that the rule says reducing tire pressure will allow for
>less lateral traction. But I was under the impression that, if the
>rollover was allowed to increase to the point where they roll like the
>fronts do, that would give me more traction on the rear axle. I haven't
>had a chance to test the theory either way, but would like to have some
>inputs from anyone who knows what I can expect. Would reducing the rear
>pressure reduce the lateral traction, and vice versa? Or am I doing the
>correct thing by leaving the pressures way up?
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D. Barry Stubbs http://surf.to/z24man
(912) 745-9429 AOL IM: thez24man
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