Tires?

[Ian Turgeon]

Tires I've used:

Stock Firehawk SVX, great tire IMO.
Falken ZIEX, poo. rounded, spin easy, no like
Goodyear Eagle F1 GS, awesome tire, no makey in our size anymore
Kumho ECSTA, great price for performance, ive seen lots of auto-x'rs useing em.

They seem to have a softish sidewall, but they look great and perform damn well so far.

 

[JoeLutz]

About the above post, I just had to share what we've been discusing in Dynamics Class. The mileage sux on the Nittos because the coupound is so soft. That soft compound is what gives the excellent frictional coefficient.

I'm thinking about upgrading to 17's. Any experiences or suggestions for 17" tires? I want something that gives decent mileage and still performs well, but will not make me go broke :smile:

_________________
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<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: joeelutz on 2001-12-06 14:08 ]</font>

 

[Mephisto]

before i got my sy, i was a wannabe and had a set of sy/ty wheels on my blazer, with the SZ50's... before i took the wheels off the blazer, the tires had over 30000 on them and still quite a bit of rubber on them.

i found the SZ50's for $85 a tire, at tirerack.com, and couldnt pass it up. the SZ's are great tires IMO, ive got them on my sy now, theyre quiet, and handle excellent. i was pullin 8lb launches at the track and they didnt even chirp. i havent driven in any really heavy rain yet, but they havent hydro'd on me in regular rain.

ive never really tried out any other Z rated tires, but i think when these get worn out, im might try out the potenzas just to see what else is out there.

 

[Irid]

I worked with the Goodyear engineers awhile back, and their tire "grip" equation is this 25+ variable monster. (I used to make vehicle physics models and such and it's all about weight transfer and tires :wink

What joe was talking about is the elastic friction properties of a tire. The other thing that screws people up is that tires don't respond in a linear manner to vertical load. Because of their construction, a tires CF will change with different vertical loads (higher vertical loading = lower cf over a tire's working range). Most people assume that the side force will always be the normal force x the cf (true for solid collisions), but don't factor in that a tire's cf will change as it's loaded.

Tire's "stick" better when soft because part of the compound actually fills in the minor imperfections in the ground. In order to make the tire slip, you literally have to shear those portions of the tread off the tire. They "dig in" basically.

 

[JoeLutz]

Irid,
Thanks for the info! That stuff is interesteing.

 

[7dhamper]

I agree with the 255/50ZR16 size. I have not used this tire size on my Jimmy because I have 255/35ZR18's on Z06 rims on it, but I had a 16X8 inch rim on my 5.0 302 '92 Mazda B2200 and the BF Goodrich G-Force TA was an excelent street tire in the summer. I'd swap to the same size minus the Z rating Euro TA on my winter rims when it started getting colder (Ohio). I'd never run a 40 series tire on that small of a rim (16 inch).