Outside Asylum

Posted by Mart on June 29, 2000 at 06:06:39:

In Reply to: Cars and Hi-Fi posted by Fear3000 on June 29, 2000 at 04:16:38:

Well, the discussion of proper rubber varies greatly with duty (straight / windy course) & road surfacing (worn, concrete, wet, icy, snowy, dirty, etc). What are your priorities: reliability, adhession, durability, etc? Tweaking your selection is just as tricky as tweaking an audio system.

One might as well discuss suspension systems which dictate just how well the tires are allowed to work. We were just discussing one aspect. This shows no disrepect to other criteria. One can successfully argue that power to weight ratio has nada to do with performance if there's poor weight transfer, or if the the CG is too high for its stance.

FWIW, I'm waiting for a durable tire with radial high-temperature compound threads are aligned inside a sticky low-temperature matrix. Thus, making a defacto road-friendly studding. This would use the more rugged threds to grip the valleys in the road as allowed by the matrix. The only foreseen problem would be delamination. Otherwise, conventional tires would be sticky as licks & capable of high temperature (as the soft rubber sees much less stress as the hard rubber transmits the force to the belts bypassing the softer matrix).

Also, whatever happened to resin-reinforced ABS wheels? This ought to greatly aide in maintaining consistant tractive force.

Just some thoughts ....