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RE: disaster at Sacramento

To: ba-autox@autox.team.net
Subject: RE: disaster at Sacramento
From: "Phil Esra" <philesra@hotmail.com>
Date: Mon, 08 May 2000 16:29:19 PDT
Hmm. I ran SP8000s on the old Civic with no drama. Liked them a lot. It 
sounds like your Tiburon might have a pretty tire-unfriendly camber curve. 
But the problem might also be that it's just really nose-heavy. That 
McClellan surface is pretty seriously abrasive, too.

When you say they were still rolling over with 53 lbs of air, were you 
checking with shoe polish? You might try +5 lbs with whatever your next set 
of tires is and see if that helps. Mark W and I found that his RE71s and my 
SP8000s seemed to work best when they were rolling over more than optimal 
for wear--if you put enough air in them so they didn't roll over at all, 
they didn't seem to stick as well. But even with that, mine were good for at 
least 100 runs or so and 15k miles. They *did* wear out out first on the 
outside shoulder. Sorry to hear about the tires' untimely demise. I wouldn't 
THINK your front toe settings would cause that, but I dunno. And I would 
guess that your camber isn't particularly adjustable, so it seems unlikely 
that it's out of spec badly on both sides.

Not sure if any of this helps at all, but that's pretty much the entirety of 
my experience with street tires in general and SP8000s in particular. I 
think I was running about 35 lbs in the front, but my car only weighed 1980 
lbs...

phil


> > -----Original Message-----
> > From:       Chris Tweney [SMTP:cat@pobox.com]
> > Sent:       Sunday, May 07, 2000 8:54 AM
> > To: ba-autox@autox.team.net
> > Subject:    disaster at Sacramento
> >
> > All---
> >
> > I had a terrible shock yesterday at Sacramento's round 3.
> > After 5 runs (3 runs of my own and 2 of my co-driver's),
> > both front tires started showing cord on the sidewalls,
> > right at the shoulder. I'm running Dunlop SP8000s with
> > 1500 miles and about 30 autocross laps on them, inflated
> > to 45 psi front/42 rear. After the 5th run I added another
> > 8 psi each to the fronts; one lap later they were still
> > rolling over, so we bailed out and drove home very
> > cautiously.
> >
> > So whyinole should near-new Dunlop's give out so quick?
> > And why would they roll over with such high pressures?
> > I made sure to check my tire gauge against a couple of
> > others, and it was in agreement.
> >
> > These tires are marginally larger than the stock tire
> > (205/50 R15 vs 195/55 R15, a +0 fitment that Tire Rack
> > said would be just fine). Everything else on the car is
> > totally stock.
> >
> > Do I have some heinous suspension problem that would cause
> > this? Or have I just had the bad luck to get two faulty
> > Dunlops? Can anybody shed any light on this?
> >
> > -chris.
> > #333 ES Hyundai Tiburon
> > 'the sad little shark' (at the moment)
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > ---
> > Chris Tweney
> > http://www.pobox.com/~cat
> >



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