In a message dated 6/28/99 10:34:19 PM EST, Dave Young wrote:
> Any tire guru's out there that can provide a technical explanation why the
> highway driving appears effective without any apparent significant heating?
I don't claim to be a tire guru, but Jim Fogarty, who is a tire engineer with
BFG, has said that getting the tires to, say, 150-160deg is not necessary
as long as the tire does a certain amount of "work" in the process of being
heat-cycled. IOW, 100 miles on the Interstate is likely an equivalent amount
of work for the tire as would be 3-4 runs on an autocross course, or a
dozen tight circles in that empty high school parking lot, even though the
tires may have seen a peak temperature of only 100deg on that Interstate
run. The bottom line is that they reached a relatively lower "peak" temp but
remained at that temp for a longer period of time. Seems logical to me....
I've heat-cycled tires by ALL the above methods, and also bought them
heat-cycled from Tire Rack, and I've not seen any apparent differences
in wear from one method vs another. As always, YMMV, and this may
only apply to BFG's, but I see no reason why it shouldn't apply to any tire
used for autocrossing or racing.
And again, this doesn't make the tires any FASTER, it just makes them
LAST LONGER.
GH Sharp
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