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cmt52663:

This helpful soul at Discount Tire is polling for an item# from Toyo for this size every few days.  He called me yesterday to say "nothing yet".  Feedback from the Dixie Tour has not entirely doused my enthusiasm for this tire - although I'm certainly more thoughtful about it.  I'm curious to see where folks go with pressures to control the flex, and the wear is not a big concern for me... 

This tire was shaved to 3/32nds and then the following runs:

- 8 30-second runs on the front of a Civic on grippy asphalt

- 4 30 second runs on the front of a Miata on grippy asphalt

- 10 45-second runs on the rear of a CRX on slick, sealed asphalt

The gross wear showed up after 2 runs.  It was way worse than this pic shows.  It cleaned up a bunch when put on the CRX and run on the sealed asphalt.

Tire had 36 psi.

--Andy

Andy Hollis:

This tire was shaved to 3/32nds and then the following runs:

- 8 30-second runs on the front of a Civic on grippy asphalt

- 4 30 second runs on the front of a Miata on grippy asphalt

- 10 45-second runs on the rear of a CRX on slick, sealed asphalt

The gross wear showed up after 2 runs.  It was way worse than this pic shows. 

The whole concept of "Street Tires" has officially run its course.  They're now just slower "R-tires."  Can we just run real R tires so we can go faster?  Or is it time to seriously consider a "spec tire" (or spec tires) for Street Touring?   

gary p:

The whole concept of "Street Tires" has officially run its course.  They're now just slower "R-tires." 

I used to have a set of Pep Boys tires that had a similar wear cycle (we put them on my daughter's Civic).  And they were Real Street Tires.  I believe they lasted about 20K miles.

How is that any different?

--Andy

Andy Hollis:

This tire was shaved to 3/32nds and then the following runs:

 How much camber/toe?  Any idea of what kind of temps they got up to? 

That is a good bit of wear!

-Brian
 

Andy Hollis:

This tire was shaved to 3/32nds and then the following runs:

- 8 30-second runs on the front of a Civic on grippy asphalt

- 4 30 second runs on the front of a Miata on grippy asphalt

- 10 45-second runs on the rear of a CRX on slick, sealed asphalt

The gross wear showed up after 2 runs.  It was way worse than this pic shows.  It cleaned up a bunch when put on the CRX and run on the sealed asphalt.

Tire had 36 psi.

--Andy

 

Holy cow!, I can't believe the wear you guys are seeing on you're light cars.  I'm interested to see what you find out when testing more.   So far the reviews aren't raving.

 James

Andy Hollis:

gary p:

The whole concept of "Street Tires" has officially run its course.  They're now just slower "R-tires." 

I used to have a set of Pep Boys tires that had a similar wear cycle (we put them on my daughter's Civic).  And they were Real Street Tires.  I believe they lasted about 20K miles.

How is that any different?

And a set of Victoracers would last 12000 or 15000 miles on the street on a Civic if you treated them nice. 

The point is that, assuming these tires work out to be the fastest (which I know is still out for debate), we've lost any reason for not allowing R tires in street touring other than to artificially keep theclass significantly slower that SP.  If we haven't arrived yet at a point where you need a tire shaved to an "unstreetable" tread depth with a competition lifespan no longer than an R tire to be Nationally competitive, we're certainly closing in fast. 

Delete Accidental Double Post

Andy Hollis:

This tire was shaved to 3/32nds and then the following runs:

- 8 30-second runs on the front of a Civic on grippy asphalt

- 4 30 second runs on the front of a Miata on grippy asphalt

- 10 45-second runs on the rear of a CRX on slick, sealed asphalt

The gross wear showed up after 2 runs.  It was way worse than this pic shows.  It cleaned up a bunch when put on the CRX and run on the sealed asphalt.

Tire had 36 psi.

--Andy

 

Sounds like they're closer to the Hoosier A6 than the V710 for wear.

gary p:

The point is that, assuming these tires work out to be the fastest (which I know is still out for debate), we've lost any reason for not allowing R tires in street touring other than to artificially keep theclass significantly slower that SP.  If we haven't arrived yet at a point where you need a tire shaved to an "unstreetable" tread depth with a competition lifespan no longer than an R tire to be Nationally competitive, we're certainly closing in fast. 

I've been thinking the same thing for quite some time now.

I hardly think that allowing R comps is a solution, but "spec" tire(s) or a better rules/specs regarding tread life may be necessary.

 

gary p:

 

The point is that, assuming these tires work out to be the fastest (which I know is still out for debate), we've lost any reason for not allowing R tires in street touring other than to artificially keep theclass significantly slower that SP.  If we haven't arrived yet at a point where you need a tire shaved to an "unstreetable" tread depth with a competition lifespan no longer than an R tire to be Nationally competitive, we're certainly closing in fast. 

Counterpoint: 

The difference is that the best r-compounds are not at all streetable.  They have no discernable tread at all.  In fact, they are labeled "Not for Highway Use".  Flies completely in the face of ST's basic "street legal" tenets.

The Toyo, OTOH, is very streetable, especially at full tread depth.

--Andy

ProDarwin:

I hardly think that allowing R comps is a solution, but "spec" tire(s) or a better rules/specs regarding tread life may be necessary. 

As for a long time I had wondered (and spoke out against) how the "R" got into stock classes, when I remember the original intent of stock classes (and the original Showroom Stock road racing classes) was to be the absolute cheapest classes to get into any form of racing. Now we had to create "Street Touring" to allow true street tires, and this is getting out of hand too? But I think Darwin has a good idea! That is how they do the Speed GT and Touring car races, and that works great. Just a thought . . . . .

Would be nice to see some more sophisticated tire management rules in ST but nobody seemed to like my idea.

 My experience is the top ST tires are good for 10-20 runs per /32 of tread depth, depending on surface, course length, etc.

R-tired cars with decent suspension geometry usually can get 40 or so good runs out of a set.  Just not so good in the rain.  Even the Hoosiers have steel belts now though, not as unstreetable as they used to be...

skierd:

Maybe its time to use 14.3.D again before we start pushing spec tires?

What is 14.3.D?  I don't see this in my rule book.

 -Brian
 

Edit: Brian beat me to it..

 

jzr:

Would be nice to see some more sophisticated tire management rules in ST but nobody seemed to like my idea.

My experience is the top ST tires are good for 10-20 runs per /32 of tread depth, depending on surface, course length, etc.

R-tired cars with decent suspension geometry usually can get 40 or so good runs out of a set.  Just not so good in the rain.  Even the Hoosiers have steel belts now though, not as unstreetable as they used to be...

My experience with the RE-01R on a pair of light cars is that I get well over 200 runs for 3/32nds of tread.  Which is way better than your numbers above.  I can easily imagine that heavier cars, especially those with lousy weight balance like most rally cars, would have worse wear, though.  Wonder what an STi would do to a set of R1R's?

As for rules improvements, I had a completely unrelated discussion a couple months ago on this with one of the honchos at the Tire Rack, and he made some good suggestions that may deserve some consideration.  

1) Raise treadwear to 180, except for OE tires (leave them at 140).  This pushes the UHP aftermarket a little harder on the wear issue.  Sure someone could build a ringer with 20/32nds of soft tread and then recommend shaving, but such a ringer would be obvious and subject to 14.3.C.  The OE exception handles the case of the many OE tires with that number (many of them made by Bridgestone ironically).  You don't want to force people to actually buy different tires for their car than what came on it.

2) Minimum "new" molded tread depth of 8/32nds.

3) No truly solid outside shoulder at full depth (partial notches ok).

All of this relies on the fact that the autocross competition market is too small for a major tire manufacturer to build a tire just to circumvent our rules.  And it at least makes it harder for them to do that, which is where 14.3.C comes into play.

--Andy

PS: This is not official, nor is it me throwing out "strawmen".  This is me sharing info.