Tire pressure/ tricks to make your tires last longer? (drifting)

[redsx13]

So Ive been wondering this one for a while now, and a recent search of that forum has come up with nothing, so here it goes...

Ive run everything from federal 595's to kumo ecasta's to pilotsports to gforce's to falkens to nankings to toyos to yokohamas and everything in between but i still seem to go through a lot of tires; most of the time around 6-8 *new* rear tires in a day, i must be doing something wrong. i pay retail for all my tires and let me tell you, it hurts.

currently i have been running my tires at 35psi, and i have adjusted my rear camber so the tires wear evenly, none of that inner tire ware s*** caused by excessive negative camber. but my tires still manage to chunk like crazy and sometimes peel off in large strips.

I have asked around a little, and i have heard of people running their tires at 60psi and others running tires backwards others say do short runs and let the tires cool down in between.

advice?

[Shabbernigdo]

yeah drift = fked tires.

tires arnt really ment to do what your doin with em.

your not gonna get much life out of em over heating em and burnin em off.

Imo you may wanna try a harder compound tire and keep the pressure at its max rating on the tire.

[tctomasc]

This is a great question. I like the above suggestion of a harder compound. It would seem logical that a softer compound would be more likely to chunk and come off in strips. IDK what kind of falkens I've run, but I did notice that the ecsta's I had were a lot more tacky then the falkens, and the falkens wore a lot better, but gripped a lot worse (This was when I was a gripper not a drifter, so I didn't have any chunking or stripping or anything of that nature), but even gripping the harder compound lasted a significant amount longer. I would say that with a decent tire pressure (25-35) should prolly be good, as the tires will expand a bit and pressure will build inside as they get hotter, so your contact patch should stay nice and big. If you fill to the max of the tire, i feel you'd be close to putting your tires at risk of popping, or lowering your contact patch because of the ballooning. but then again i dont really know. I'm curious to see what other people have to say.

[sommmatt]

USED TIRES.

/thread

[sicride]

try your hand at a few used higher quality tires, not as sporty. Like Bridgestone Insignia's, or Firestone FR380's. BF-G Traction T/A's Falken Ziex-912 (that tires tread is hard as hell). Also, see if you can't heat cycle the tires, even passenger tires benefit from heat cycling. Basically put them on the car for a couple days before the event to heat each of the new tires up and allow them to cool down again on their own.

[Future_gohan]

USED TIRES.

/thread

+1 go to tire shops or other places and ask to take tires from they're left over tire pile. take what you need. lol

[YoungGun]

try to not put as much air in them.

and if you have a lot of camber take some out.

[redsx13]

i wanted to mention that i dont normally run new tires, i wanted to try it out for a change, see if i went through less tires, nope.

btw, i have used alot of harder compound tires, i think the yokohamas i have are treadwear 440, and thats really high for anyone that knows their tires. anyway, they lasted about the same as some of the high performance summer tires i have run, with treadwear that gets into the 1's (i think potenza's are around treadwear 180 ) thats low for a street tire.

[AZ89two4Tsx]

how much power are you putting down and what size wheel/tire combo are you using?

[E7-S14]

ill add that used tires are not always the better choiceused tires are old/worn and prone to dry rot.which will make them chunk easier.

[AutoShadow]

ill add that used tires are not always the better choiceused tires are old/worn and prone to dry rot.which will make them chunk easier.

But if they're free or real cheap, why not give em a chance?

[redsx13]

how much power are you putting down and what size wheel/tire combo are you using?

believe it or not, that was with my n/a ka. i was running a 205 40 16, those tires aren't very wide, maybe the with has somthing to do with it?

[mattblancarte]

But if they're free or real cheap, why not give em a chance?

I agree. Trying to extend the life of drifted tires sounds like crazy talk. Save up-front and just destroy cheap tires.

[YoungGun]

used tires are usually horrible.

get some new cheap tires like federal or nexen.

[Matej]

Make your car lighter.

Make sure you do not have toe-out in the rear.

If they are directional tires, try running them backwards. Many tires last longer that way, especially ones that tend to chunk or peel.

[mattblancarte]

You could always lower the RPM at which the rear wheels are spinning via your driving. That should technically lower the amount of damage done to the tires.

[YoungGun]

You could always lower the RPM at which the rear wheels are spinning via your driving. That should technically lower the amount of damage done to the tires.

so drift, but try to not make smoke?

and I agree with flipping the directional tires backwards, they usually last longer and grip better that way.

[S13Joe]

+1 go to tire shops or other places and ask to take tires from they're left over tire pile. take what you need. lol

Exactly. Me and a friend of mine do this, they said they have to pay to get them taken away so we're just helping them.

[mattblancarte]

so drift, but try to not make smoke?

Your sarcasm detector has malfunctioned.

Hopefully Joe will swing by this thread and provide some wisdom. He's a madman drifter.

[cody180sx]

and times like this i'm glad i know someone at a local tire shop to get cheap and/ or free tires. but to answer the op question alot of drifters pro and amateur both inflate the tires to 60psi but when that tire does it will go

[sicride]

tire chunking is a product of temperature not treadwear so your stating that yoko's have a 440 treadwear rating doesn't mean anything if it's temperature rating is B. Also lower air pressures = more built up heat and more built up pressure eventually, higher pressure is less flexing of the tread and sidewall and thus less heat. I would set pressures to the max recommended tire pressure cold usually on a profile like that it would be around 40-44psi. Also what size rim are you mounting those little 205/40/16's on? If the rim is too wide it'll wear the edges out pretty quick most likely and you'll want to run quite a bit more pressure.. If it's not wide enough then you'll want wider rims. You'll likely want a 6.5-7" wide rim to fit those properly. If you're running 7.5-8" wide rims that'd probably be hurting your tire wear.

[redsx13]

tire chunking is a product of temperature not treadwear so your stating that yoko's have a 440 treadwear rating doesn't mean anything if it's temperature rating is B. Also lower air pressures = more built up heat and more built up pressure eventually, higher pressure is less flexing of the tread and sidewall and thus less heat. I would set pressures to the max recommended tire pressure cold usually on a profile like that it would be around 40-44psi. Also what size rim are you mounting those little 205/40/16's on? If the rim is too wide it'll wear the edges out pretty quick most likely and you'll want to run quite a bit more pressure.. If it's not wide enough then you'll want wider rims. You'll likely want a 6.5-7" wide rim to fit those properly. If you're running 7.5-8" wide rims that'd probably be hurting your tire wear.

The only reason that I mentioned the tread wear rating is because if you notice the beginimg of the thread that's all people where talking about. I'm running 16x7s so that siZe tire fits on the rim nicely, maybe it was a combination of not running them backwards, and running them to hard to long. I'm gonna be at the track tomorrow and I have a ton of different tires to burn, new and used, so I will try a few different things and let you guys know what works

[S13Teddy]

I use Nexens, which do not have as much grip as some of the others, and run them at 35psi. With a stock SR, I've had 2 pairs last me 3 events or more before.

[raven2345]

just to put it out there, i read in one of the project car mags where they built a white 240 coupe and had a pro drifter slide it around, and i believe they were running 60+ psi. i'll look for the article...

[swift240sx]

just to put it out there, i read in one of the project car mags where they built a white 240 coupe and had a pro drifter slide it around, and i believe they were running 60+ psi. i'll look for the article...

yeah when i drift i run stretched tires maxed out psi like 70psi on a tire that is like 50psi max. never any problems. a lot of my friends and other people do this. not a problem. and yeah switch your wheels to different sides to even tread wear as well as running directional tires backwards to lessen chunking. cheers

[raven2345]

Issue 10, Project Car Mag - "...we kept pumping till we reached his requested 68psi. A bit concerned about the higher pressure, Aono and Kobayashi assured us that they've run higher. In fact, they're seen pressures well over 100psi before things started to blow."

i'm not entirely sure that'll prolong the life of your tires, but those pressures are right from pro drifters that slid PCM's 240, so there ya go.

edit: rims are 16x8 xxr 002'ss with 205/50 falken 452's
Modified by raven2345 at 6:45 PM 5/7/2009

[mattblancarte]

That's redonkulus. 68 psi

[sicride]

I think most important is to heat cycle the tires... thats probably more critical than anything else, drive to the event on a set of tires and use that set near the end and see if they last a good while.

[redsx13]

Well as promised, i said i would let you guys know about some of the methods after some further testing at the track.

1. Running directional tires backwards- this did help, it also minimised the "feathering" effect, caused by the rotation of the tire, it also helped to reduce chunking.

2. Running higher pressures- under no circumstance would i advise running higher than the max psi for a tire. lower psi (25-30) did seem to have an adverse effect on tire wear as opposed to higher pressures (35-45+). There seems to be a pattern here, and if one where to boost tire pressure up to say 55-60 even 68 lol, you might experience some beneficial results.

3.Swapping tires from side to side- (This is when you have more wear on one side of the car so you swap good tires to that side) Obviously it works, but the downside is it only works on tracks that have a larger amount of turns in one direction than another, the best way to anticipate for this is to take note of the length/ # of turns on the track in a single direction, and make adjustments accordingly. remember, you want the good tire on the outside side of the car when making a turn.

4. Letting your tires cool down- I had the most beneficial results with this method, if you have a problem with delaminating tires that peel off in long strips or chunk try this method, you will be surprised how long your tires last.

The Tires

Kumho ecasta- I love these tires, very nice, a lot of grip. These tires put out a lot of smoke too, life was farily short.

Capitol nagotiators- i know they where mentioned in one of the above posts for their durability and affordability, but that's about as far as it goes. The do last a long time as long if they are given a short chance to cool down in between runs, but other than that these tires aren't that great. They have no grip at all, if all you want to do is spin out, these tires are for you.

Yokohama advans- Not bad tires, similar to the negotiators, but with more grip. durability is also pretty good as reflected buy their tread wear rating. all around, a good tire.

[RustspecS13]

I work at a tire shop and I drift as much as possible. The last two years I have been NA KA and ran 15's. This year it'll be RB20 and 16s and I will probably pick up 17s to just burn.

The only thing that will help your tires last longer is not getting them hot for long peroids of time.

I run 50-70psi in my tires depending on age/dryrot and how much traction I need. I run grippier tires at higher pressures and lower grip tires at higher pressure to mainly keep an even traction level.

What Kumhos did you use?

I LOVE BFG's. I used a pair that had super low tread for a while at drift pratice and they lasted a good long time and smoked like crazy. Those were the BFG sports, and I have traction T/A's to try this year too.

But mainly I just run what ever I can find with the most tread possible and arent taller then 225/50/ or 205/55/16's.

But pretty much the only thing you can do is not get them hot for long peroids of time. And as far as a tire goes while drifing, thats probably 1-3min at most. I do know that autoxers use chemical sprayers with water in them to cool their tires down between runs. Maybe I'll try that this year...

~Alex