Lessons from Putnam Park

New 7/23/05

This is the frt passenger side and has about 600 miles on it. The DS didn't show up good in the pic.

What have we learned ? Don't track brand new street tires.

Oh, I made it home safe, no exploding tranny and the warranty expired just before made it into Tennessee........should we start a poll or takes bets on the date or at what mileage it will be when it finally decides to STB ?

Rick Glass

wow that's quite a site! my money is on Monday morning, sorry to break it to you.

Chris

Well the tranny stayed under 210F until the last run then peaked at 215F. This is well below the max of 240F that I would tolerate. In the four different sessions the fluid was 195F at the end of the first and climbed 5F with each run. This was with mid 90F ambient temps and 130F track temps with the usual high humidity.

But on the last run the water temp got too high. I did have a passenger and had failed to turn on the heater which I had been doing. Soon as I did the temp started to drop but then the fuel was too low, with pickup problems in the turns at WOT and the fuel gets too hot when below a 1/4 tank and under large engine demands.

The brakes held out good but there was only one turn where I got on them hard at the end of the straight. Another place half way through but still not to bad. No fade but they did heat up the fluid and I need to bleed them again. Seems this is the routine after a track day. So I assume the fluid is boiling and getting air bubbles. That being said I can either add cooling for the front brakes which is easy to do or got to bigger brakes for a good sum of money.

So I am going to remove the flat ATX cooler I have and insert the oil cooler water cooler in there again. This connects to the oil cooler input hose. Goes to the large Hayden oil cooler I have and it will lay flat over the gill slits. I also am going to clean out the condenser as I assume it is clogged up too like the radiator was.

One thing I noticed at the drags is Ian was running quite strong. The best of the NA Gen3s with 15.3s. I think he was using his exhaust cut out which may be dumping a lot of heat compared to the closed exhaust setup? I also am considering getting the exhaust manifolds Jet Coated to help keep the heat out of the engine compartment. Looks to me though that there just is not enough air getting into the grill of the GEN 3 SHO even at speed.

I also learned that once the tread is off the race tires you need to drop the pressure considerably. Didn't stay on the track too well in the first session. ;) At Gingerman when the tires were new I had to pump up the pressure to +50 lbs. So this is what I started with at Putman. Ended up dropping down to about ~45 lbs or so and had no further off road touring.

Paul

man, how does Ian do it???? That is STRONG especially in the heat. What did he trap? Paul, what did you run and trap? - David

I couldn't do better than a 15.6 but the trap speed was 115!! There was a big thunderstorm the night before that knocked out the trap lights and they had a lot of problems getting them to work right.

Paul

Bring cheater tires??? Who would ever think of such a thing.....

Paul

On 7/23/2005 11:17:58 AM, Timothy Wright (buford_sho@comcast.net) wrote:
> RE Premature Tire damage from the track.
>
> I'm no expert driver, this is what little I think I may know.
>
> Some ultra high performance street tire survive track abuse better than others. As an example Bridgestone S-03 are supposed to be a better all around street tire than Yokohama AVS Sports, (but not by much) but the Yokohamas are much more tolerant of track use.
>
> This is also skill related, 2 drivers in identical cars and the faster driver may very well have much less tire dammage because he/she/it is a smoother driver.
>
> So it's neither 100% the tires fault nor 100% the driver's fault.
>
> I do wonder that as serious as track day has become at conventions nobody is bringing cheater's tires to the track? I know Kirk for example has brought some well prepared SHOs, but then he does jus as well in rental cars so what do I know?
>
> Tim

I have some Kumho Victor Racers in size 225/50/16. These tires are quite big actually and defy the size markings. They were shaved to 4/32" and heat cycled. The first time I used them at Gingerman they were a bit squirmy due to the little bit of tread left. Now they are nice and broke in. :) Not a street tire per say but they are DOT approved. A tread wear rating of 60 though kind or rules that out. Dave Kegel had some nice Toyos with a tread wear rating of 100.

Paul

On 7/23/2005 11:49:43 AM, Timothy Wright (buford_sho@comcast.net) wrote:
> Something slightly stickier,
> I'm told one can buy them if they know where to look.....
>
> As long as they are DOT approved Paul, and it stays sunny.
>
> With my skills Hoosiers would not help much.
>
> They might help a person with your skills?
>
> I went to tire rack and looked for competition tines in 225/55/16 but found none. So I searched in 245/45/16 and found 10 sets. They have Yokohama ADVAN A032R on closeout for $166 each. Don has the same set of sticky tires on rims since God may dirt, and they fit any of his SHOs. One could also get 4 sticky tires of their own and get many conventions out of them?
>
> Might even be fun?
>
> Tim

7/23/05

Paul Nimz wrote:

> Bring cheater tires??? Who would ever think of such a thing.....

Of course Tim didn't mean cheater tires in a bad way. The term "racing tires" is maybe more accurate, but not as much fun to say! :)

Anyway, I agree with Tim that driver skill has more to do with tire wear and tear than the tire itself.

For example, Driver one attempts the fastest lap they can do, and in so doing, go into corners WAY hot. The result is understeer as they overpower the ability of the tire to slow and turn at the same time. What then happens is they have to crank in much more steering angle, reduce speed, the tires slide sideways a LOT and the car exits the corner much slower than when it came in.

Driver two brakes to the proper entry speed to manage cornering and power, and is able to get on the gas with the steering and thus tires at a much smaller "slip" angle. There may be some slide as the car powers out and maybe the tire spins, but it is now under acceleration, tire angle is small and the pressure on the tread blocks and heat developed is much less.

I can pretty much guarantee that any tire with chunking, tearing, and massive wear is being overdriven into corners. and that lap times are worse than the driver that enters the corner slower, saves his tires and exits the corner much faster.

So if you are tearing up tires, grab an instructor at the next event and practice braking in a straight line, and finding the correct corner entry speed and turn-in point. Apex properly and hit the correct track out point. Then you will find out why I have been running the same BFG R1 tires since about 1998 or so and many track events. They were heat treated and shaved. I haven't scrubbed them with terminal oversteer, and can circulate as fast as many people that wear out tires in one or two track events. I thank my friends Mike Benet, boris Peharda, Scott Schaeffer and Skip Barber driving schools for teaching me the correct way to get speed on a track without tearing up tires.

Don Mallinson

7/24/05

????????

Non-DOT race tires are becoming “THE” tire of choice in the Advanced class.

In fact, my thought after Putnam is that, with more & more folks running race tires (Jim Pappas in his CTS-V, Paul Nimz, and Dave Kegel immediately come to mind), the Advanced Class will not be any fun within a couple of years UNLESS you have race tires, as it will be no fun to constantly be waving cars past.

I am already considering looking for cheap 17x8” wheels for race tires for future track work.

Ron Porter

On another note…..

You do NOT want to run the Advan 032r 245/45/16 tires on anything less than an 8” wide rim. And, if you are going to spend the $$$, get the latest Advan 036r. These are the best street tires available, as they are the closest to race rubber that you can buy.

FWIW, the Michelin Pilot Exalto PE2 tires I have absolutely ROCK on the track.

They were rated slightly higher than the Yoko ES100 tire in Tire Rack tests. They worked a lot better than the ES100s that I loved on my SHO, but it was an apples-to-oranges comparison because I had the 225/55/15 ES100s on 16x6” slicers (way less than optimal), versus 215/45/17 PE2s on 17x7.5” rims (Perfect!!).

Unless I could find the same great deal on PE2s the next time (doubtful), I will go with either 215/45/17 ES100s or summer P Zero Neros on my 17x7.5” summer rims.

Ron Porter

After my last question about wheel weights, I was reading my copy of GRM and found http://www.edgeracing.com/ which seems to have some pretty light wheels for reasonable prices. 15 pounds for 17x7 for your Legacy for $188 each.

Paul L Fisher

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