[Fot] Has anybody ran these new brake calipers? Now Tires and Cheaters

[Bill Dentinger]

Steve...

I remember well when your Dad de tuned the car for 'vintage'.  The thing I remember most is how much those Bulbous orange (Signal Red) Fenders weighed due to all of the bondo repairs. I could hardly lift them.  I thought to myself, any advantaged picked up from wide wheels and slicks...gets tempored by the added weight.

Bill
Sent from AOL Mobile Mail

On Sunday, March 11, 2018, Steven Belfer via Fot <fot at autox.team.net> wrote:

My TR3 had wide slicks in the SCCA days, now I run 5.5 wide rims with the best rubber Legal in my vintage club.  The car handles great and is very controllable.  Also, the tires are less money than the treaded Hoosiers. 

~Steve


On Mar 11, 2018, at 6:09 PM, Michael Porter via Fot <fot at autox.team.net> wrote:

On 3/11/2018 3:52 PM, Terry Stetler via Fot wrote:
I totally agree with Glen and Tony here.  The skinny, hard Dunlops would be great if it were the spec tire for all production classes.
 
Sadly, the technological genie is out of the bottle, and once that happens, putting him (or her) back in that bottle is essentially impossible.
 

The mindset of vintage racers is a bit different than SCCA or IMSA, but, I have the feeling that the hard chargers will still push those old skinny skins beyond their limits, and spins would prevail, which are certain to cause more bent sheet metal than currently is the case, and vintage racing intends, in large part, to keep both drivers and cars in one piece and looking pretty much as they did before racing commenced.  But, this is not a new subject, and as for originality and the "old days," I do remember walking into a Triumph shop in New England in 1970 that ran an SCCA TR4A IRS, and it was wearing big, fat cheater slicks....

The larger question of when a safety improvement is a performance improvement in disguise is not one that's going to be resolved simply or easily.  Generally, bits that don't break unexpectedly are a safety enhancement, as Tony makes clear.  We don't think about safety in the same way as in 1962, because we know a lot more about it, especially from the experience of others.  No one gets too excited about helmet restraints, because we know a lot more today about TBI and its causes than we did then, for example.  We could get quite priggish about originality, but, would anyone today say that the stock fuel tanks were just fine and fuel cells are an unnecessary expense, knowing what we know about fires, or that four-point roll cages aren't original, and therefore shouldn't be allowed (even though there's clearly a performance advantage to them in stiffening the chassis, if done cleverly)?

But, one thing that everyone so far is unwilling to admit is that we are inveterate tinkerers, and saying, "well, this little piece of shit part that fails every Friday like it had a timer built into it was good enough for the factory in 1962, so it's good enough for me" just isn't in the vocabulary of most of us.  Kas must have file cabinets full of dynamometer test results as proof of that.  In that regard, the rules always have some rubber built into them, whether it's apparent to all or not.  No one goes into this hobby with the belief that a DNF every weekend is great fun.


Cheers.

-- 


Michael Porter
Roswell, NM


Never let anyone drive you crazy when you know it's within walking distance....
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