Tire lathe

Under 2016 Eldora tire rules it appears to me that using a tire lathe would be illegal. How will UMP tech this?
 
My dad this to the tires that they ran at Lake Hill Speedway in 1979 when the rules required a street tire. Reducing the tread depth on a new tire helps a LOT. They would have no way to police something like that unless they made you run a new tire.
 
Wib444 said:
Never heard of one. I assume it cuts a desired amount of tread off uniformally?
Click to expand...

Yes. Back when bias tires in particular were popular they were bad for developing weird tread wear patterns and problems such as cupping. Placing the tire and wheel in the tire lathe and using the blade to remove some tread could often fix the tire. It was also great for truing a brand new tire to make it really round and balance using a lot less weight. This really worked on larger 4X4 Swamper and similar tires.

That guy Pee Wee Merideth used to have one at his shop across the street from Wise Speed Shop on Hampton Ave.
 
Karting has been doing it for years.They take a set of new tires and trim off the top,truing them.They also claim it gets to the richer part of the rubber.Then the treat with chemicals and really make it sticky!But,this ruins the rubber after a short time.So,they buy another new set and do it again!This open prepping of tires killed Karting.Working class folks couldn't afford new tires every few weeks for there kids to compete,so they quit.
 
Tread depth gauge would be the only way to tech prior to rolling out, aside from the obvious mark left until it was ground. Less tread squirm, and it would hold heat better as well and wear longer.
 
You know, this is just another example of how racers ruin the sport for themselves.

Sooner or later, some of the top guys are going to set up a test track, invest in telemetry and sensors and cameras and run cars around that test track for days on end experimenting. And they will be unbeatable in the end.

And that will be the end of the sport.
 
t.nie said:
You know, this is just another example of how racers ruin the sport for themselves.

Sooner or later, some of the top guys are going to set up a test track, invest in telemetry and sensors and cameras and run cars around that test track for days on end experimenting. And they will be unbeatable in the end.

And that will be the end of the sport.
Click to expand...
You do realize that the testing part is going on right now and has been going on for sometime? The only thing is they havent built the track with all the fancy gadgets yet, instead they find a teack that will let them use that track. Prime example....summer nationals at Fayette County. Josh Richards and a few others hung around until the next morning and Charlie let them test.
 
t.nie said:
You know, this is just another example of how racers ruin the sport for themselves.

Sooner or later, some of the top guys are going to set up a test track, invest in telemetry and sensors and cameras and run cars around that test track for days on end experimenting. And they will be unbeatable in the end.

And that will be the end of the sport.
Click to expand...

While we didn't set up a test track and run the car for days I've run a customer's car with a data logger to gather information on the engine and other things. This isn't a big deal and I think it is probably done a lot. If I had more resources I would do it a lot more and it is quite interesting to compare the engine in the car vs the engine on the dyno.
 
I am very aware that testing happens at local tracks. I have been to a few myself, even driving my own car and another one at a test session on a Sunday afternoon. I think it's one thing to pay to rent a track, get some laps in to shake a car down or experiment with setups outside of competition or just practice (one session I was at many years ago was Tim Manville at TCS and I believe it was his first time in a car and he was out doing laps in a modified just to figure it out, if memory serves me right).

But it's another thing altogether to build your own test track, wire the whole car up with telemetry and then go to town with data acquisition to figure out exactly what is going on with the car. There was some talk of wind tunnel testing in Late Models a few years ago, not sure how true that was. But what I am driving at is if anyone ever gets really serious about cleaning up in DLM and has the resources, that kind of program would probably be lights out for everyone else. And if some chassis builder somewhere decides to be the guy that provides the only winning chassis for a couple years off the back of it, he can pretty much name his price.

I read this article a while back about testing in Indy car back in the 90's, I think. And the big thing was, the only way to really know what was going on with a car was to do testing with the car being driven in a windless environment. So I think it was Gannassi who was rumored to have bought this mile long tunnel somewhere in Pennsylvania, a disused road or rail tunnel or something like that and they would fire the car up at one end, all wired up, and the driver would blast down this tunnel at full speed in it getting all kinds of data.

You know, "wind tunnel" type testing but with the car in motion, not just blowing wind over it. Of course, all this was highly illegal and top secret, yada yada, and the tunnel hasn't been in use for a long time, but apparently this was some kind of black ops thing one Indy team did and signed everyone to secrecy on it. I think it was Darren Manning who did the driving, and he said it was boring as all get out but could be scary as hell too to drive top speed in the tunnel. He said he wrecked in it one time and that was a real disaster... lol

Anyway, apparently that was the big thing at the time and the team doing it won a lot for awhile and then for whatever reason the program was shut down. Point being, it will probably happen sooner or later.

http://kinja.roadandtrack.com/the-secret-racing-test-tunnel-no-one-wants-to-talk-abou-1678596274


I think a few years back some DLM guy was putting like, GoPro style cameras on his suspension and getting footage of the four corners working while he raced? I think with how inexpensive GoPro has become a lot of guys would be doing that in all divisions these days. Cheap telemetry, and some data is better than nothing.
 
With a background in avionics and electronics engineering, I think you could build a decent data logging system for a few hundred bucks with off the shelf stuff.

Maybe a raspberry pi as the heart and some IMU's at 20-30$ a piece. Add some other sensors for motor and such

You could even get crazy and use Bluetooth or wifi and monitor the car from the stands.

Just record 3D coordinates of the 4 corners of the car and the 4 corners of the wheels/suspension and plot the graphically.

I'm not an automotive expert tho but if it was a helicopter, I'm your guy
 
You must log in or register to reply here.




Back
Top