Tars
December 17th, 2008
Say it out loud: tars. You know, those four black rubbery things on the corners. Tars. What about them?
After prolonged back-and-forth with Racer Matt, I’ve been hunting for tire advice from veteran LeMons racers the past few days, and in particular MR2 LeMons racers. The consensus seems to be as follows:
- The Falken Azezis RT-615 is the tire to race on in this race for any number of reasons (quality, price, availability, great dry grip and above-average wet grip);
- Start the race on new rubber on all 4 wheels;
- Although it is best practice to have 4 new spares ready to go if/when we sustain tire damage on the car, teams can probably get by with 2 new spares and 2 used spares if we keep our fingers crossed, God willin’ and the creek don’t rise.
New Blue has Miata wheels with 4 very used RT615’s on the car, one of which isn’t holding air worth a darn. The red parts car has 4 dry rotted crap tires that I wouldn’t rely upon to drive to the store, let alone at speed on the track. So although my preference would be to get 8 new tires, my budget-minded suggestion would be to get 6 new tires on steelies and if worse comes to worse use the used RT615’s in a pinch. Thoughts?
That sounds like the right balance to me. If we replace/upgrade the wheel studs, will the New Blue wheels still fit? That is, will the steelies and the existing wheels have the same…hole diameter? So that swapping them (hopefully won’t need to) during the race is as simple as possible?
Also possible that if for some reason we run through 2+ tires on Day 1, we could go get another set that evening. Maybe. Also, if we end up having to use the used tars, we can put them on back and practice our drifting technique.
Is it “if worse comes to worse” or “if worse comes to worst?”
Depends on what wheels studs we replace with. If we go with the same size studs, then these wheels will work as will any other wheel on a 4×100 pattern that’s for a Japanese import car (probably). We could put in bigger studs, but that could potentially complicate wheel selection. On the other hand, if we fell into a great deal on used wheels that required a larger stud size, Grayson tells me that it’s no big deal to drill out the hole a little larger for a bigger stud.
I like your drift plan.
I think it’s “if wurst comes to worst,” and it’s a sausage reference.
I think having another completely new set of spares is overkill. Or maybe it’s just me being cheap… I would stick with the 4 X 100 pattern for the studs and not jack with it. On another note, I like Matt’s suggestion of incorporating a tailgate into the race. Genius.
it shouldn’t effect wheel selection…may have to enlarge wheel stud hole or use different style lugs
Then in terms of spares, Dave, what would you propose? I think Matt’s plan is risky but acceptable.
Well, I’m not familiar with the “drifting technique”, but intriqued and will be excited to learn.
I think that if our primary goal is to the finish the race, we can take it a little easy on the tires. I agree w/ Matt on using the 3 good tires on new blue as spares to our four new, good, purchased tires/wheels. Just to be clear is Matt proposing we have 6 brand spanking new wheels on steelies or just the 4? In any case, I think 8 is overkill and would be willing to take the risk w/ 4 or 6.
We need to confront 2 myths here. The first is that we have sufficient driving talent to “take it a little easy on the tires.” Mario Andretti can take it a little easy on the tires. Michael Schumacher can save his tires. We are not going to be able to take it easy on our tires. We lack the talent to do so. None of us have enough seat time to know how to do it.
The second is that the tires on New Blue are anything other than emergency spares. They are just that — emergency tires. Like you might get in a few laps on them. They are trashed. The best of them has maybe 2/32 of tread left. The worst is almost treadless. We do not want to have to rely on these tires except in the most dire of circumstances. Like if there’s one hour left in the race and we’ve used all the others, then we could use these. Take a look at new RT-615’s on the web — just look at the photo of them on that site I linked above — and then come over here and take a look at these and you’ll see what I mean. These tires have been raced out.
Matt is proposing 6 new tires. I don’t think we can go with any fewer than that and still count on finishing the race, and I think that’s stretching it.
And how crappy would it be to be sitting there on Sunday afternoon with a car that is still running but that we can’t race because we’re out of tires? If we don’t use them we can return them or we can always sell them after the race.