tires

[fredvance]

Try harder!!

[Peter Jack]

It's tough being a populist ogre John!

Pete

[John Noonan]

 

[desotoman]

Tom,

The comment you are referring to was not directed at you..

If you thought it was than I am sorry to have offended you when I did not mean too..I meant to offend others.. 

There are people that have posted that have never run these speeds that try to argue every point when given examples, data, facts etc..you are not one of them.

John

John,

Thanks for the reply and clarification. Since my name was above the paragraph you can understand how I read it as I did. No hard feelings from me, all is good.    I know this is a very sensitive issue and wish for a fast solution for everyone involved.

Tom G.

PS. I never put you on ignore.  

[nrhs sales]

Noonan,
You are such a drama Queen!

[jl222]

 

  There seems to be a lot of tire failure from tire spin and heat, has anyone having that problem tried higher gearing,lower spring rates or different instant centers?

         JL222

[nrhs sales]

While I am no expert. I  would think a lot of the tire spin actually happens when the boost kicks in on the turbo bikes or when you hit the nitrous button on fuel bikes.  We saw it happen with the nitrous but have never used a turbo so lets hear what the turbo experts such as Noonan and Joe A have to say???

[joea]

ironically, our measured mph matches our gearing and rpm....and plenty of folks
with normally aspirated engines even in production have had difficulties with
blistering and chunking...

thats why i have no reservations running race spec zr radials with softer compounds...

jl22....oh yes whatever you can imagine has and is being tried on bikes....!!!

[DahMurf]

Our experience this past week with tire spin on a naked NA < 200mph bike I feel was a direct result of headwind, damp salt after the shower and a soft/chewed up track on the last day. All of the above experienced individually & sometimes together. 1/2 - 2/3 of our runs had no "noticable" tire spin the rest of the runs the tire spin was obvious to both the riders & observers.

[nrhs sales]

Damp salt for sure is the one thing that caused our bikes to spin really badly no matter what else was involved!!!  I still remember Noonan in 2007 or maybe 2008 at Bubs fishtailing like a kid on snow in the parking lot. Almost put it into the markers yet he stayed in the throttle the whole way. That was some wet salt and was really dangerous.

John,
Care to tell us how that run felt???  You earned my respect that day dude!!!  You definately have some big cajones!!!!

[wobblywalrus]

Looking at this from a business viewpoint, and not as a racer, the issue looks somewhat different.  We have a known safety problem.  The waivers, insurance, and articles of incorporation give us some protection.  These things are like helmet, gloves and leathers, in this respect.  They protect us but we still can get hurt.

We can feel the pain in different ways.  One is the cost of a lawsuit.  We know about this problem.  Are we using "due diligence" to solve it?  Is lack of sufficient action on out part negligence?  This could be decided in the courts and it would be very expensive regardless of who prevailed.  There is no guarantee of which party would eventually win, either.  Our insurance carriers could take a skeptical view of this issue and either refuse coverage or make it very expensive.  Our landowner could also show some concerns and the permit application requirements can reflect this.

Good business practice is to steer clear of problems like this.  Uncertainty is a bad thing when an organization needs to plan for the future, and all good businesses do.  Our sanctioning bodies, insurers, and race sponsors must be very concerned.

Any solution will need to consider materials such as tires, equipment, and the human factor.  The fix must be idiot proof.  Er, to be politically correct, "not subject to error in application."  The solution may, and probably will, involve more than tire selection.  Limits on sit-on bikes, such as no fuel or blowers in larger displacement classes?  A possibility.  Traction control for the big bruisers?  Maybe.

External parties have the power to solve this problem for us.  The solution might not be what we want.  An alternative is for us to quickly fix the problem ourselves.  This winter.  As racers, we must realize that we cannot do business as usual.  We must change, and we need to support our leadership with our good ideas and participation.

Now I will go back to loading the truck. 

 

[John Noonan]

The cure for this is very simple I think, someone needs to shell out the upfront cost of an LSR tire to fit the popular sportbikes running these great speeds over 225+ mph, that would require an LSR tire that could bolt on to a 17" rim, no one has ever had an issue with the front tires chunking that I am aware of?

Thoughts and consturctive ideas..?

No bashing or BS..just good ideas please..

John


PS. Anyone know the cost for an LSR tire mold and the minimum amount of tires needed to get this going and the unit cost of the tire?

What company could/would do this?

J

[maguromic]

I don’t know about the cost of an LSR tire.  But I had some Firestone Indy tires made for car I am restoring and for them to pull their old molds and run a minimum of 30 tires cost 25K and two years of jumping through hoops.  Mind you this was for a tire they had the molds for with no changes.  Denis told me that for the 400 MPH tires it was in the six figures and Goodyear modified an existing LSR tire mold.

I think the problem you will run into is going to be on the liability side and finding a tire company to live with that liability.  With the familiarity of the fast Japanese bikes I would think that some of their tire manufactures might be open to the idea. But for the right amount of $$$ anything is possible.  Tony

[donpearsall]

John, that is a good point that you made about the FRONT tires never shredding, blistering, etc. They don't develop problems no matter what speed they are run because they do not spin and retain heat. That is why I think this issue is all about the rider managing the wheel spin, not whether the tire is a race tire or not. ZR DOT tires can hold up to the 3000+ RPM so that is not the problem.

My bike develops wheel spin on every run and I have to resist the impulse to go WOT when I see the timing marker. Wheel spin will actually slow me down. I have developed my own electronic "slipometer" and will test it at BUB. It measures wheel spin and tells me visually how much spin I am getting. Here is the prototype. It works on my bench testing, now lets see if it helps me stay hooked up. Here's a photo.

Don

[k.h.]

Might check with Acabion in Berlin, who came to this site 6 years ago looking for 300 to 400 mph tires for their Road Streamliner.  Perhaps they now have what they need (17 inch, if memory serves, as the vehicle is powered by a turbo Hayabusa).  6 years ago there was a problem for car tires, when the M/Ts were out of production.  It didn't look good, but after a couple of years of being approached they did make more.  The Alaska Bush Wheel company in Enterprise, OR, bought some tire building machines for possible race tire products, quoted about $150,000 cost to make the molds, again, 6 years ago.  Somewhere in my files are CAD pictures of the construction of  tires which were featured in a tire company news release, a decade ago, for their success in Iron Butt and LSR, including runs well over 200 at Bonneville; have a copy of that news release, too.  If one approaches a tire maker, it wouldn't hurt to have an idea of the number of motorcycles requiring 200 mph + tires and the number of replacements estimated to be needed during the racing seasons, so they can pencil out a forecast for the market.