struggle with Small tyres?

[steven bough]

For some reason,i find it very hard to drive my 12M with older tyres,

when i buy new tyres i find the car to handle well and im confident with it-but once ive used them for 3 or so meetings i really struggle.the car is not has smooth and my lap times are down. :-

which means if i want to enjoy doing the Natts i will have to buy new Tyres for each meeting.has i do 3 club meetings between-
But i could do with out the cost.

has anyone else found this or is it just me

[Mark Stiles]

Could it be something to do with ride height? (ie the tyres are wearing?). Also, have you got several sets, as its best to only use additive on them once every 12 hours or so, otherwise they go really soft if they don't have a chance to dry out properly.

[B3buggy]

hi,
could be to do with the car accelerating faster as it will have smaller tyre diameter. large tyres will make it is easier to control as it is accelerating smoother. unless you are changing the ratio, mm per rev is what the 1/12th boys use. Sure someone will elaborate more.

just a thought.

ross

[MattW]

Generally speaking i would say that the car is much sharper on small tyres. This can be a good thing or can be a bad thing depending on how you like you car to handle. That said i generally found that smaller tyres suffer from a larger "drop off" toward the end of the race.

[rice98w]

i was racing with steve today and noticed his problem.

his tires by my standards are not SMALL, they are just not BIG! :D i can confidently run my rears to about 47.5mm, and front even smaller... however steves car seemd to suffer VERY badly from racing on small tires, and we're talking like 49mm rears and about 47mm fronts, which by trinity standards is far from small.

looking at griffs, sawyers and robins cars (all corally) none of them use small tires.

maybe buy some sets of tires JUST for use at nationals? and keep your smaller ones that your not so confident with just for club?

then again, maybe just do less club! ROFLOL.

i must say, my car performs best on about a 49mmm rear and about a 46mm front... for optimum performance....

i have a load of old tires, and some brand spankers, i worked out at the start of the season how much wear my tires will have, and have trued them so that by the time the euros comes, they will be at the optimum size. my club tires i just slam on and get on the track, im not so fussed.

[rice98w]

and matt w is spot on... i reckon its because a smaller tire cant soak in as much as a bigger tire, so it will normally drop off.

i find that when a tire is about 47mm (rears) then they cant hold enough adative to last the whole 8 mins, that said some of the top (ex now) trinity drivers, like JC use REALLY small tires...

[MattW]

I suspect this is because at the real big world wide / US meetings there is much more traction in the rug (as our american friends like to call it!!) also i would guess that most of them are not using non smelly adative - it makes a difference. If you have this extra grip in the carpet then bigger tyres will probably make the car want to traction roll due to "side wall" flex, small tyres will iliminate this.

[rice98w]

even JC when i spoke to him said "dave uses really big tires... i'd never run them that big!"... and daves tires by our standards were small!

lol

i suspect this major traction is the reason they make the trinity chassis so thick then... :(

[Mark Stiles]

I raced today with some brand spanking new tires. Rears were 55mm, fronts49mm. I couldn't seem to stop the front digging in, causing the rear end to lose grip. I've never had this problem before. I tried less additive on the front tires, less castor, turning the steering travel down on the transmitter.... but nothing seemed to make a big difference. Do you think that the fact that my front tires are so big means that the side walls are flexing too much? What does everyone else true their tyres to? Also, what additive is most popular at the moment. I have some team orion, but others had jack the gripper and lrp.

[MattW]

With my limited experience i would say that those front tyres are too big, and the rears are bigger than i have ever used. From memory new Corally's come out of the packet at 53/46

[steven bough]

When using new tyres on Corally Andy Sawyer has Advised me to take the fronts dowm to 46mm

[rice98w]

and rest assured, lrp, tc2 and orion are essentially all the same stuff.

[Mark Stiles]

Just noticed, when cleaning my car, that all four tyres must have been rubbing on the tops of the wheel arches when the suspension was under compression, as there are black marks there to prove it. The car was spinning out on apexes in fast corners, and on corners after straights, so I reckon the wheels must have been locking up, causing the car to spin. Thats so irritating! >:(