Hoosiers for CM FF cars in 2016

[Barry Ott]

First off, this should not be interpreted in any way as a debate on Spec tires.

With the potential of a Hoosier Radial spec tire in Road Racing for the 2016, I was curious what that might do to the availability of R25B bias ply tires for CM FF autoX cars. When we were in Lincoln, I took the opportunity to talk with Jeff Spear from Hoosier about CM tires for next year. The short answer is we should be fine running the 20.5x7-13 fronts and 22.5x7.2-13 rears. The long answer, Here's what Jeff had to say:

- If Hoosier wins the spec tire contract, will we still be able to get the R25Bs that we're running now? The fronts are no problem at all. There's several other cars that run them, FC's, FSAE's, etc. so we're only a portion of that market. For the rear tires, Hoosier is flexible enough that they can do small runs of specific tires so making a run of the rears shouldn't be a problem. Jeff is in charge of these requests and he's done plenty of 48 or 60 tire runs and he's sure they could do that kind of thing for the R25b cantilever rear tires.

- I also asked about running the new radials. First, the 7.0 FC radial is a different construction than the FF radial and he didn't think that would work well for our application. He seemed intrigued with the idea of running the FF radial *at Lincoln*, he thought the radial rear tire is "a lot of tire" and thought running "fronts" all around would be a good idea. Ultimately, he thought we'd have to test them to see. He was less optimistic about running the radial on a less coarse surface.

Personally, at this point, I'm planning to stick with the R25b's

Barry

[bassracer]

Thanks for the sharing the info Barry!

[TeamFRD]

My local tire shops grimace when they see me carrying in cantilevers. I found a powder coating place that use their oven to soften them up and then mount them. I'd like some 7-22s.

[ewcmr2]

With 5.5" wheels any non-cantilever rear tire is going to compromise grip/balance.

[CM/FFdriver]

Hey Barry,

Did Jeff give any indication that the cantilever rear tire will go away all together?

Is there a bias hoosier tire that maybe instead of a 5.5 rim for the cantilever tire, the FF/cm class could go to a 7, 8 or even a 9 inch wide rim to get what ewcmr2 said about the compromise in grip/balance back.

What do you think about having front tire on the rear of your CM car?

Ben

[Barry Ott]

Hey Barry,

Did Jeff give any indication that the cantilever rear tire will go away all together?

Is there a bias hoosier tire that maybe instead of a 5.5 rim for the cantilever tire, the FF/cm class could go to a 7, 8 or even a 9 inch wide rim to get what ewcmr2 said about the compromise in grip/balance back.

What do you think about having front tire on the rear of your CM car?

Ben

As long as there's a business case for making the cantilever rears in an R25b, they won't go away, at least not any time soon. Obviously, Jeff can't look too far into the future, but he didn't see a supply problem for a while. So, as long as "we" keep using them they should be available.

There are non-cantilever tires available if we went to a 8" wheel, similar to an FC set-up and others. That would be an option, but I'd rather not do that until we can't get tires for the current wheels. YMMV

I'm having enough trouble keeping up with Brandon, etc, I'd rather not start over trying to figure out how to make skinny's all around work. I really don't mind driving on the cantilever's and I mount them myself without any problems so I'm happy to stick with them.

Barry

[83Reynard118]

Good information to know! My wife and I recently bought our 83 Reynard for autocross. We have 2 very worn sets of the cantilever tires to use up learning the car. Good to know we can get a fresh set if we decide to make a run to Solo Nationals next year.

Joel Harleman

[Barry Ott]

Good information to know! My wife and I recently bought our 83 Reynard for autocross. We have 2 very worn sets of the cantilever tires to use up learning the car. Good to know we can get a fresh set if we decide to make a run to Solo Nationals next year.

Joel Harleman

Great to hear you've joined CM! You'll have a blast My two cents on tires, YMMV: I've ran on some old tires and they can make a car feel deceptively bad. I know one guy who gave up on FF because of them. So, if you get a little discouraged because the car is hard to drive and just doesn't seem to do anything right, find some new or new-ish tires .... please :-)

Welcome!
Barry