Do you know if the tire places are sticking to the air pressure limits listed on the sidewall of the tire? We had some OEM forged porsche wheels that wouldn't bead. Our shop is next door to the Honda HPD racing grage, and when we picked their brain about it. They basically said it just takes more air pressure to mount some competition tires. They said the risk was; with cheap wheels you could fracture the rim when the tire finally goes over the bead. Also, on some OEM porsche wheels The outer bead is more pronounced. I have considered making an adaptor to press the outer bead on, and then use the air pressure to seat the inner. Ultimately I've never met a tire that wouldn't go on with more pressure.

 

Well there's also that thread (I forget.. is it here or is it in a GT4 Facebook group) where the rim barrel winds up rippled - and the cause is "too much air pressure when mounting new tires." I'd be careful.

I've been a 71R guy for a long time. Just switched to the RT660 because it's what's available in my sizes currently. One bonus: cake to mount compared to the 71R. Until I see that the RS is HUGELY better I'll be sticking to the RT's... I'm tired of going to tire guys who either can't mount them at all, or (in at least one case) spend the better part of an afternoon trying to get them mounted.

That said, at a regional SCCA event yesterday, talked to David Nolan a bit (trophied at Nats this year in a Civic Type R), he did a bunch of back-to-back tests on the test course, RT660 vs. 71RS and he and his co-driver both showed about a 0.5s improvement on the RS over the RT660. Pretty surprising. They said it was noticeable in both seat-of-the-pants and the times.

 

I haven't pressed the second installer as to what they did or didn't do including how high of pressures they went to in trying to get it mounted. The hardest tire I've ever encountered mounting was a 285/30-18 RE71R on a 9" wheel right before 2019 Nats. Dave at SPS was able to install it but it took hella high pressures which I won't discuss (I was standing next to him) and a piece of tubing he used to create enough of a air tight hold at high pressures to get the tire to pop onto the seat. Scary as **** but it worked but he's 2.5 hours away.

 

I just mounted a set of 71RS with no issues. 245/35/19 on 8” for front and 275/35/19 on 10” rear. The local tire shop on the Tire Rack list wouldn’t touch them but the Ford dealer next door mounted with no problems.

 

While that's interesting data, it's a key example of why the street tires are completely stupid for serious competitors. If I would have switched from my 660s to the RE71RS and found 0.5 seconds per side, I would have taken that last trophy spot from him. I don't like feeling like I need to test every brand, because that's more expensive than just buying Hoosiers. We've only been running the 660s for a while. Guess we should have spent $5,000 more in wheels in tires for testing...... all in the name of saving money.

 

Until the SCCA (or even other orgs) decides to present an objective criteria for street tires, we'll continue to be in this mess with tire wars. I would say that the top people in street/stock class would always be buying several sets for or just prior to nationals. That hasn't changed. What is different is that the people who are competitive or newer people feel they have to do similar. "200 treadwear UTQG" rating is about as clear and objective as saying something is "soft". There is no objective measure that can be compared between brands for tire compound. It's baffling to me that this continues, but this is the game we play. Outside of local events, I'm transporting my competition tires as it is, so why not run Hoosiers?

 

Because we tried that. We ran Stock and RT at the same time, and even indexed together people chose RT over Stock. We have SS and SSR right now with the same cars, and 7 cars chose Hoosiers, compared to 24 cars (note I prefer using cars rather than entries) that chose 200TW. And SS has it the toughest for 200TW - size availability is not great and costs (per set, not necessarily per run) are similar to R comp if not more. CAM has wiped out ESP. ST has massively reduced SP. The membership prefers 200tw, despite the issues.

This year sucked, I get it. Refresh time, late intros / supply chain / availability had a lot of people scrambling. But things should be fairly stable, knowledge wise, by mid next season. We'll have to know where the Nexen fits in, but hopefully we'll have another long stable period like we did in the Rival S / RE71R generation.

 

No doubt, I think most of us do prefer it still. Last year Yok and Hoosier prices were really close. This year there's more separation (purple got more expensive) but both still very expensive, and the supply issues just made it that much more frustrating. I think this is fighting a perception rather than reality problem, but engineering minds still see what 200 UTQG actually is and sigh in disappointment. I want to see our sport thrive as much as anyone, and have seen uncontrolled tire wars ruin other hobbies/sports for the 'regulars'.

 

Operating a club based on what hopefully will happen is something that infuriates me. Make sensible rules and get control of the classing. These are issues that we can get ahead of. It's clear that people don't want to use hoosiers, but like Bmac said, that's a problem with perception. No one that is calculating their expenses could say with a straight face that getting off hoosiers saved them money. I don't really *want* to run hoosiers either, what I want is to have few enough tire options that I can fully test them and try some different setups without wasting thousands and thousands of dollars on tires that I wont compete on. Right now there are too many tires that are "pretty close". Do the research on what brands people are already running, get rid of the Yoke, which has had abysmal supply, and pick a managable number of tire brands for an inclusion list. Two brands should cover all the wheel sizes that people typically use, if you pick reasonably.

Personally, I'm very very close to running SSR for 2023 even though it's dead, because I don't want to have to test 2 more brands of street tires.

It's not impossible to come up with a solution that doesn't require someone to become a lemming, or waste a minumum wage earner's yearly take home pay on testing, and also manages perception.

 

I'll call your bluff. All tires legal at Lincoln met 13.3 so you knew which tires would be legal by April 30th. 13.3 is written to give ample time to prepare. There's an open proposal to push the cutoff back to 1/1 (Letter #32595 which came down from the SEB.) That's plenty of time to test tires if you're the proactive type, or do like the majority of the membership does and use what the fast guys in similar cars use. I'm sure you haven't purchased every car legal for the class, used every legal suspension allowance on each to find which one is fastest, right?

National Championships in Street were won on the Yok, Stone, Falken, and whatever the heck Multi that Ron ran. Plenty of Kumhos and BFGs in trophy positions as well. I'll wager you $1 that NOBODY brought all five of those to the practice course, and threw in the Nankang for good measure just to be sure.

We have a spec class that uses a spec tire if it's that important to you. No classing concerns in that one either.

 

I'm not sure what bluff you're calling.. Im saying exactly that I don't want to have 5 sets of tires to test in grid. It's not that I don't think I had enough time to test tires, I'm saying that it's not reasonable that we should have unfettered options. Alex Piehl bought every single practice course time slot in the day preceding DS competition. He had 4 different tires he was testing. Strano also brought 4 sets. Those are just people that I know personally, and happen to see posting about the tests. Nobody that's testing anything is running a BFG, so I'd say you owe me $.75. We're moving back into the GT3 for next season. We have already tested the old Potenza, the BFG, and now the falken. We have at least 2 more brands to try if we want to cover all the bases. The suspension is basically fully adjustable so the world is our oyster without needing to buy parts like a budget car.

And as for spec classes; class some decent cars that way, and I will adopt immediately. First gen BRZ is a no for me, the car is irredeemable with the torqe / torque dip. We bought a 2nd gen 86.... the minute there is a spec class for that we will bail out of DS.

 

I feel like Strano has re-emerged with a different name. I seriously hated the concept of having to swap wheels at the end of events and load the tires onto a trailer just to get home or when I knew an average driver on fresh Hoho's was much faster just because I was wheeling it on my 60 run A6's. Let's get real, the argument over costs based on the assumption we're all testing every tire is simply not valid. The vast majority of competitors, even those at Tours and Nat's, tend to assess the tire tests, try a few sets of tires out and roll with it. Very few folks, and especially not Dave Nolan (a very good friend and former team mate at Shenanigan's Racing), is buying 3 and 4 sets of tires and testing. I personally don't mind the 200TW creep as the tires rock, can be driven on to and from events locally, and are damn good in the rain.

 

The part in red...... That's tire testing. That's possibly a few alignments, a few sway bars, a few test days, a few wasted events. That part is literal waste. it's not helping anyone except Tire Rack. You know everyone is doing it, and you won't call a spade a spade.

 

To run at the pointy end of anything... ANY racing field, and heck, even most non-team solo sports... you gotta spend money, because when you're trying to be at the top, hundredths count.

Autocross is not safe from that. The virtuous attitude of "autocross should be cheap" needs to be forgotten when talking about SCCA Nats/Tours/etc - those events are the top of the game. Autocross is one of the cheapEST forms of motorsports around, certainly one of the cheapest to make your start into the world of motorsports... but expecting it to be cheap at the top is ridiculous.

I'm far from one to defend the SCCA, but they're the holder of the top events. And for those that want to win... you have people not just doing 3-4 sets of tires to find "the best" - people buy whole new cars every year so that they can have the new class hotness. I remember one guy, from my old region, who bought a C8 to compete in SS class. He hated the car. Didn't fit in it well. Only drove it to/from autocross events, and otherwise the car sat in the garage. Why? At the time, he believed that the C8 was going to be the car to have to win SS so that's what he bought. And he's not the only person out there who does that. (I'm not advocating one way or another if the C8 actually IS the SS car to beat... only pointing out that people spend inordinate amounts of money JUST to have the best for their class of choice.)

And also keep in mind - just like suspension and car setup: tires can be preferred based on personal taste, driving style, pace and ability. Even with the RS, as referenced, Nolan and his co-driver loved the RS and had personal data to back up their opinion. In my former region, there's a local guy who offers cheap tire changing services - he's said that a couple of the regional "fast guys" have swapped AWAY from the RS already, stating they don't like them.

Some people (myself included) autocross as a way to get our competition fix for low dollars, relative to wheel-to-wheel. I also do (er, did) W2W for a few seasons and I spend more money on one W2W weekend than I do in two AX seasons, and that includes a set of wheels and 2 sets of tires. If I had unlimited budget? I'd never set foot on an AX course again.... I'd be doing W2W events every weekend.

But I can accept that some people, even with unlimited budgets, AX is their jam. They're going to do the tire tests, spend the money, and try to make the top rung. More power to them. As Auto_Werks said, " If I would have switched from my 660s to the RE71RS and found 0.5 seconds per side, I would have taken that last trophy spot from him"... well... perhaps you are 100% right. Next time do it. Or don't. But it seems like that data and knowledge he gained landed him the spot - and the pain of swapping + the expense of having multiple sets was worth it to him. At the Nats level... to claim you're one of the best in the nation... that's what it takes. Woulda-shoulda-coulda is only good for bench racing.

And for all I really know, some of the guys that bring multiple tires and experiment, only wanted to experiment for experiment's sake. And as a dork, I can accept and appreciate that too.

 

Trying out a set or two of tires is not Tire Testing in my book. Maybe it is yours and might explain a bit but I won't waste my breath discussing this with you. Go to SSR, get your *** handed to you and look for some reason why you didn't get the result you were looking for. You obviously know everything, and feel that autocross is a waste of money.