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: like we do when racing. : With the right air pressure, you still have a larger contact patch allowing for more traction? So shouldn't that technically benefit, even marginally? And slight more bulge would allow for more progressive nature, and slightly roll in higher G's. : What do you think? There's still a compromise. Each tire is different, so some need more pressure while others don't. Most likely, you're probably running around 40-44 psi on street tires, right? The higher pressure is more resistant to rollover during hard turns but it decreases the traction at those higher levels since the higher pressure causes the contact area to be in the center. There's no real way to determine the correct pressure unless you use a pyrometer to take readings across the tire after a run. If you run 44 psi front, and 38 psi, for example, and have no sidewall wear the obvious thing to do is lower the psi in small increments. If you can lower it to 38 psi front/33 psi rear, you would have more traction at this setup than the first setup (lower psi = better traction, generally speaking). After several autocrosses on my Miata earlier this year, I've dropped my tire pressure from 38/34 to 32/29.5 (Yokohama A032R tires, -1.5 camber in the front, -2.5 camber in the rear). With the lower psi, the car is able to stock much better coming out of the apex when the throttle is applied. For street tires, the slip angle stays fairly flat in relation to the cornering forces, so there's a larger margin for an early warning and progressive loss of traction (limit of adhesion). But, I don't see why anyone would want more bulge and a lower slip angle since this results in a loss of cornering force & traction.
Later,
Phuong
 rice is a smart man/grain. you should listen to him. - infinite loop 00:04:14 09/06/01 |
