When are the sidewalls done?

Seen all kinds of posts and talking about how many runs they get on a set of slicks till the sidewalls are done. How do you tell? Stiff wall and regular wall..

If you keep a good log book, you should be able to tell by your 60's

Curt wrote:If you keep a good log book, you should be able to tell by your 60's

X2 when your 60s start to fall off theyre done. Stiff sidewalls will typically last a few more runs than a standard sidewall, but every combo is different.

hell! when your poor! the side walls leak air as fast as you put it in! lol! I agree when the 60's fall off

My experience has been a little different...I don't notice a loss in 60' as much as I notice my reaction times starting to move around....or I have to start rolling delay out to keep on the edge.
A very experienced chassis man from this area told me once..."stiff sidewalls or not, after 100 passes, get them off the car. I don't care what the tread looks like...get them off the car."
I'm not sure if I agree totally with a "set" number such as 100...as I have put over double, almost triple that on sets...
Like mentioned above...keep a good log book and watch for changes.

With the smallblock car around 100 passes and the reaction time goes to hell, guys who run them till the holes are gone either have no power or are just career test n tuners.

i m certainly a career tnt ...but i do notice my 60' go away after 50 passes or so ....

richter69 wrote:With the smallblock car around 100 passes and the reaction time goes to hell, guys who run them till the holes are gone either have no power or are just career test n tuners.

dont talk about me that way! hell,poor people got poor way's. i try to get 200 passes outa mine but i'm not too hard on them in the burnout.

cool40 wrote:

richter69 wrote:With the smallblock car around 100 passes and the reaction time goes to hell, guys who run them till the holes are gone either have no power or are just career test n tuners.

dont talk about me that way! hell,poor people got poor way's. i try to get 200 passes outa mine but i'm not too hard on them in the burnout.

dang, we try to get 25 passes, on 29.5x10.5s, then we sell them to slower cars. they usually put about 100 on them after we get rid of them. we change them when they start to get loose on the big end.

I have NEVER gotten over 75 passes out of ANY slick. Stiff, tubes, rotated, mild burnout, it doesnt matter they start to fall off around 65-70 passes, and my car only goes 1 teens - low 1.2s in the 60. If you guys have some secrets or magic you work to get that many passes I would be all ears. Its never a contact patch issue, it always seems that either the sidewall is shot, or the compound is dead by that point. I log everything in my log book, and could predict with regularity when they are gonna fall off. I have found the MT stiffs with tubes to be the longest lasting, and Goodyears to go away VERY quickly( I only got 30 passes out of them before I had to do John Force burnouts to hook at all). This topic is pretty interesting, and I would be interested to see what others get out of their tires.

well from a career tnt'er i usually get 50 passes on mine before i start to lose my 60'

I would be sick if I only got 30 passes out of a set...
I have had the best luck with the regular sidewall M/T #3074...well over 200 shots on a slower car....100+ on my car.
I'm sure BigDog466 will chime in on this one too...I believe he got about 260 passes or so on his last set of GY Eagles.

I spoke to a Goodyear rep after I was so disgusted with the set I had, and he said that something had to be wrong and offered to look at them and see what he could find. By that time I had already went back to the 32x14s MT ET Drag, its a tire Im comfortable with and very predictable on my car, but like I said if there are guys getting over 100 passes on them, Im all ears.

maybe i'm missing something? if i could'nt get more than 50 passes outa my 15x33 m/t's before it slowed down or had some kinda problem down the track i'd sure be looken for a reason why.the last set of good years i had were off a "fast car"who changed after 30 passes and they went 1.22 60's and 5.70's 1/8mile.i ran them so long i wont even tell you. maybe a slow car like mine just aint hard on tires.

cool40 wrote:maybe i'm missing something? if i could'nt get more than 50 passes outa my 15x33 m/t's before it slowed down or had some kinda problem down the track i'd sure be looken for a reason why.the last set of good years i had were off a "fast car"who changed after 30 passes and they went 1.22 60's and 5.70's 1/8mile.i ran them so long i wont even tell you. maybe a slow car like mine just aint hard on tires.

My cars slow, but apparently it likes to have new shoes regularly. Fickle B@tch.

i dont have any problems hooken up.when i took the g/y's off and put the new m/t's on it ran the very same numbers as before.that's why i run the 15x33's cuz i have good luck with them,hell it may be slowen me down to run a tire that big but it sure does last.i footbrake the car when i do race so i would'nt know anything about r/t.

I talked with a record holding drag radial racer and he said that he can tell with his data logger. When he starts seeing the driveshaft rpm getting higher on the top end it's time to let them go. he told me this while I was looking at a set that still had the nipples. I think he said they lasted about three events.

ORSCA events are a great place to find used drag radials if you have a car that doesn't make 2,500-3,000hp.

jones wrote:I talked with a record holding drag radial racer and he said that he can tell with his data logger. When he starts seeing the driveshaft rpm getting higher on the top end it's time to let them go. he told me this while I was looking at a set that still had the nipples. I think he said they lasted about three events.

ORSCA events are a great place to find used drag radials if you have a car that doesn't make 2,500-3,000hp.

I wish our guys would let us run radials. I would love to put a set on to see how they feel. I really don't like the big end on the little slicks at all and our car goes straight as an arrow.

On the ole Maverick that I had we could go about 250-300 passes on a set but that was only running 11.30's. It was a leaf spring low horsepower 302 on 28x10.5 MT's. The sixty foot fell of but it would still be consistant as hell on every pass at each race but not race to race.

I have never tried bias ply's and from what I here everyone talk about, they tend to move the car around on the top end.
Can you not run the Mickey Thompson "Drag" radial? It looks just like the regular slicks except it is a radial design. Only differeance is it has "radial" molded into the tire. I hear that a flap wheel on a grinder will remove it pretty easy!

jones wrote:I have never tried bias ply's and from what I here everyone talk about, they tend to move the car around on the top end.
Can you not run the Mickey Thompson "Drag" radial? It looks just like the regular slicks except it is a radial design. Only differeance is it has "radial" molded into the tire. I hear that a flap wheel on a grinder will remove it pretty easy!

If they made a 29.5x10.5 or a 30x10.5 I would. I've tried to let us run the 295/55 or 295/65 tires but they think they are too big. I have had the 295/55's on my wheels and they are basically the same as the 28x10.5 slicks. I run a 12 inch wide wheel so they think my tires are too big anyway because they "look" bigger than the same tires on their wheels.

I get around 230 passes on a set of 17x32's and have won a race on cords, but all are different. How much air you run will make a difference in the side wall breaking down. The lower you run typically it will break down sooner. With a glide I just haze them now hell I may get 300 this year

You guys that only put 30 passes on 14-32's, save the rest for me.I put another 150 passes on them.

BIGDOG466 wrote:I get around 230 passes on a set of 17x32's and have won a race on cords, but all are different. How much air you run will make a difference in the side wall breaking down. The lower you run typically it will break down sooner. With a glide I just haze them now hell I may get 300 this year

This holds true for me also, except the cord part. I ran 8 1/2 cold in 14X32 and 16X32 on the Mustang and sometime down to 7 3/4. If tires feel "squirrly" at mid track and top end, there is not enough air in them or the tire is not big enough to start with.