Re: 7" vs 8" wheel update

[trnsfrma@ix.netcom.com (Shawn C. Meze)]

At 01:40 AM 5/31/97 -0400, you wrote:

>I bought these BFG's from a friend of mine.  He purchased them new 2 years
>ago and ran about 6 events on them (about 24-30 runs).  He then parked his
>car and stored the tires until I bought them.  There is very little wear on
>them and they look almost brand-new.  

Thats the reason right there. BFG's cant be stored! They simply harden with 
age. (in a bad-bad way) 

>Here is a list of ideas:
>1.  This one is pretty easy, the tires have not been shaved and are at full
>tread depth.  I can have them shaved locally for $60.

Most tire shaving places simply WILL NOT shave a tire that has been driven on. 
The reason being is that even the smallest teencie tiencie pieces of gravel 
will eat up a shaving blade. (And they're gawd-awfully expensive, 
so I understand why.) 
I do know of one guy that ran 3 runs on his new set and decided they had to be 
shaved. They explained to him the rule and why. He took a metal brush and 
scrubbed each wheel so clean they allowed him to bring them in and after a 
detailed inspection of his tires (With magnifying glass!) they shaved them for 
him. Rare, but it happened. (This is the same guy who broke his Sparko Racing 
wheel a couple sundays ago.) 
Anyways, at this point, with the tires having been run on for 6 months, shaving 
them wont help much. 

You may want to try this trick we used on the Funnycar we campaigned years ago. 
We bought a set of Firestone drag slicks. (At the time, the new up and comming 
tire. They were really pushing selling these and offered LOTS of contigency 
money to use them. So we did. After one race, ( 6 passes) the tires changed the 
compound so much we couldnt get traction off of the starting line. Id smoke the 
hell out of them every time. Clutch settings were as soft as we could set it, 
ect. 
We asked a friend who was a tire specialist to look at the tires. He told us, 
after one race, they're junk. Naturally, money was tight and at $500 a tire, we 
couldnt just plop down another grand for 2 more tires, so we did the next best 
thing, on the advice of the tire dude. I didnt believe him, but we really didnt 
have anything to loose either. We were loosing our asses from race to race. 
Heres the deal, we took a full can of (DONT LAUGH!!) "Liquid Wrench" and spray 
the contact patch of both tires. Let it dry a little and spray it again. 
Believe it or not, it helped. I dont think it did anything to soften the 
compound (although it could have..) but it did help us get through 4 rounds the 
next race. Another application of the stuff and all was well until a tire was 
destroyed by another car exploding through the lights.... another story.
You might want to try this? Maybe you dont. Just an idea. 


>The car has a decent balance, but behaves very differntly than before.  My
>guess is that the stiffer sidewalls in the non-EGOD tires has reduced the
>allowable slip angle in the tire.  In order to get the same amount of
>oversteer as before I've had to really up my rear tire pressures.  I am now
>running tire pressures in the ranges of what Shawn recommended.  This setup
>feels O.K. but is really slow.  I just ran my first divisional of the year
>and got my but seriously kicked.  Usually I'm the second or third fastest
>car in the class and within 3/10ths of a second of the winner.  I was off
>by over 2 seconds on each days course last weekend!!  This is not good!

I conferred with a BFG knowleged oerson about what you said in this message 
today and he said you ran way to low a pressure and agreed with me in that the 
2 yr storage is responsable for the tires hardening. His recomendation is that 
you find a desolate place with a decent surface and set up a little figure 8 
track and run about 10-15 laps. (after about 3 laps, check tire pressures and 
set them to what you used before) He thinks that if you just get them good and 
hot, they may come back a little, but dont expect them to handle like new 
tires. Basically, he thinks they're junk but you can still use them to your 
advantage to learn how to drive fast on them.
 It will teach steering and throttle control, as well as really forcing you to 
simply be smooth. (Im not saying you dont already do any of these, just 
relaying what was told to me)  



>Sorry to be so long
>Thanks
>Alan


Ya, mine too, hope it was helpfull, that is if your not asleep after all that! 
:)

Shawn 
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