Dragging tyre pressure - effects

[quicklvn]

Hey there

I'm going to meremere this weekend and iv been looking at previous posts to see the time differences with lower tyre pressure.

What I want to know is: does it wear the tyres alot faster or create splits in the sidewalls etc, you'd think lower pressure would have some kind of effect like that.

[Quint]

Lower pressure will make the sides wear faster as it balloons out... but, if ur worried about tyre wear at the drag strip....

[Jebus]

Yeh as above on the worrying about tyre wear at the drag strip comment.

And the pressure only needs to go as low as maybe 20psi, and a few 16 second runs down the strip isnt going to hurt them. Take a pressure guage with you and drop it down gradually over the day. Youll feel it when you let out too much pressure

[quicklvn]

Hey who said anything about 16 sec runs?

I hope its faster than that. Im not worried about general wear just about completely f*$%ing my tyres from doing it on a couple of runs.

[Ako]

It won't.

And unless you have 15" tyres, you won't find any gain from deflating them really either - road tyres are designed to have as little sidewall flex as possible, so deflating them won't achieve a whole lot.

I'm sure some people have found otherwise, but just like doing a big burnout before a run (a little one has merit in scrubbing crap off the tyres), I've never found much point with it on road tyres.

[quicklvn]

yeh I though so but luckly I do have 15" tyres and they are quite good ones I think, so here hoping then cause I get some mean wheelspin on take off. I've been trying to adjust my launch to compensate but im still getting used to it cause iv only just got the car. Ohwell hopefully its low 15's for me

[Snoozin]

It won't.

And unless you have 15" tyres, you won't find any gain from deflating them really either - road tyres are designed to have as little sidewall flex as possible, so deflating them won't achieve a whole lot.

I'm sure some people have found otherwise, but just like doing a big burnout before a run (a little one has merit in scrubbing crap off the tyres), I've never found much point with it on road tyres.

Agreed, you end up with less contact patch if you go too low, as the tyre tread bows inwards and the out edges remain in contact with the surface

[method]

On my car i took my pressure down from 45psi to 27psi and noticed a huge difference, the extra grip was phenominal on the slippery track (was raining that day)

This is on normal road tyres, the reason they were at 45psi was because i was worried about too much grip, but since it was raining the start box was pretty bloody slipery.

Also try and go after a big V8 with huge slicks on the back, makes a difference in grip too

[Bazda]

On my car i took my pressure down from 45psi to 27psi and noticed a huge difference, the extra grip was phenominal on the slippery track (was raining that day)

This is on normal road tyres, the reason they were at 45psi was because i was worried about too much grip, but since it was raining the start box was pretty bloody slipery.

Also try and go after a big V8 with huge slicks on the back, makes a difference in grip too

45psi is a bit excessive thats why u noticed a huge difference from that to 27psi.

road tyres generally 25-30psi i found good, they arent like drag tyres where u put them low u get more grip.

[Loudtoy]

Maybe a personal preference thing more than anything but i found the optimum for me was 19psi, but as has been stated you need to try things during the day to see what's best for you. I was also on 15's as well but i did find that between dunlops and michellins the difference for what was the best launch grip seemed to be about 4psi - dunlops 23psi - hard to say as the best pressure for each set was found on different weekends tho.

[Jebus]

Hey who said anything about 16 sec runs?

I did, so what time did you run

[malc]

On my car i took my pressure down from 45psi

[quicklvn]

Damn it my fastest was 16.1

Ohwell i don't really mind, I just wanted to see what the car could do. It was a bit of fun, but now i'm looking at maybe doing a blacktop transplant so if anyone has one for sale????