Tire Issues

[ShadowBolt]

We have run the kumho XS at the driveway for 5 yrs and they are great but they will not last a season. I can't see any tire lasting a whole season. Yah you buy less of something but on a racecar all tires will get destroyed somehow. Either by chunking, chording, or tread flare.

I assume you would need to shave them. I think two sets per year should be our goal but I don't know if it is possible.

JJ

[Tilton]

Nitto NT01 $205/tire $820/set

[mach1]

Nitto NT01 $205/tire $820/set

AKA 6/32 Toyo RA1??

[Rob Liebbe]

I am all for a non-contingency tire. The current RR and rumor of two-race weekends has me really reconsidering coming back to CMC. I'll take the new car, put a passenger seat in it and go run DE's in the instructor class with open passing on NT01's. I would really like to see some serious thought into running one spec tire for all or have CMC on one tire and AI on a more racy/aggressive tire. It could be CMC and Spec Iron on Nitto NT01's and AI on Toyo RR's for example. Adding extra classes will only get confusing, and more difficult to keep track of. We already had that with CMC1, CMC2, AI and allowing wings on all cars. The different colored windshield banners didn't do enough to help spectators know what was going on.

In the end, we are NASA customers, people who NASA should listen to, people who could stop coming to their events, people who could stop buying Toyo tires, etc. I really like the idea of running the NT01 if it still the equivalent of an RA1 which they seem to be for now. Nitto is part of Toyo if I remember correctly, spec Nittos and change the required sticker and everybody wins.

Your mileage may vary, and your viewpoint and goals may be different. Mine are to run a few race weekends a year, have fun with my buds, not wreck anybody else's car all while not spending a huge amount of money on tires for no good reason.


Cheers.

[Suck fumes]

I'm all for a tire that doesn't require shaving!

[michaelmosty]

Just a couple of thoughts:
I have run Chumpcar in a Mustang that had 28 hours of racing (two 14-hour events) on a set of Dunlop Direzza tires (200 treadwear). Granted, being endurance racing the racing was not 100% pedal down but the tires still felt great and after 28 hours still had tread left. I was very surprised at the amount of grip the street tires had.

I like the idea of the NT01's b/c you wouldn't need to shave them and they are cheaper than the RA1's.

Toyo wants to make money and sell more tires. I'm sure they wanted a tire that didn't last as long as the RA1 so they could sell more tires and make more money. Mission accomplished for them, bad for us.

I think the easiest solution for the time being is to go back to the RA1's. I don't have any data but would guess that a 10-heat cycle RA1 would be faster than a 10-heat cycle RR. The brand new RR would have the advantage at the 1st event but after that would not be worth it.
Who knows, just thinking out loud.

[smitty328]

I'd love to run NT01s. Too bad they don't make them in 295s.

[blk96gt]

I've talked to a number of people who run NT01's at DE's and they seem to be able to get at least 2.5-3 weekends (most get 3-4) out of a set with a minimal performance degradation (< 1 second). This is on cars weighing anywhere from 2800lbs to 4000+lbs.

I've been impressed enough with the 01's from talking to others that I'm planning to buy another set of rims and put some NT01's on for DE weekends. I can report back with my experience.

[kbrewmr2]

I'm just going to drop this here with the note that AIX (and many other open tire classes) are eligible. I've seen some good things out of them thus far from some of my budget TT guys that run them. They seem to be fairly "RA1" like in terms of their degridation curve but I've not run them to see for myself yet. No shaving, and will probably take some racing abuse for sure.

http://www.nasaproracing.com/conting...gency_Info.pdf