RE-11's falling off after being heated up?
 

Has anyone running Bridgestone RE-11's had any experience with the grip falling off when they get really hot?
Ran my first AutoX event after installing them yesterday and I did two heats of 5 runs. In each heat, my 5th run was without a doubt my sloppiest run. Wondering if it's the tires getting hot or if it's me psyching myself out because it's the last run and I wanna be fast.


Anyone?

what are your pressures?


what are the ambient temperatures?


how do you drive? do you have video of your runs from inside the car?




in my experience, over-inflated RE11's, driven hard, do in fact overheat quite quickly.

I'm running 245/40/17 RE-11A's at 38psi hot and haven't experienced any loss of grip in 30 minute track sessions in 80-90 degree ambient temperatures.

The RE-11A is supposed to be a softer, more auto-x/track friendly compound than the RE-11 though.

From TireRack: http://blog.tirerack.com/blog/motors...-11-and-re-11a

If you're doing 5 runs back to back, you're probably ending up with much higher pressures than you want by the 4th and 5th run.

Probably need to bleed the pressures and spray the tires and then see how they feel.

I was checking and adjusting pressures after each run. I started out with regular street pressures; 35-36psi and ended up dropping all the way down to 25 in the driver's front and 28 passenger rear. Even with pressures this low I wasn't folding the sidewalls, and could even probably go another few pounds lower.


Ambient temps were between 78 and 83*F but as stated, I was checking tire pressures between each run.


My next event I will add tire temp to the data I collect. When taking temps on tires, is tread surface the best spot?

Try something more like 32 front 30 rear. Spray as soon as they are anything more than 'warm' to the touch on a hot day. On a cold day I will wait till they are hot to the touch.

Buy a 1 gallon garden pressure sprayer, fill it with water, and start spraying after your first or second runs to keep the tires cool.

It's funny that people have a hard time keeping tires cool enough in autox, up here most local autox's have enough wait between runs you have to make sure the engine is warmed up!

I've had autocrosses with co-drivers where we couldn't cool down the tires enough (Dunlop Star Specs), even with a 2 gallon sprayer full of cold water.

I'd probably be more into autox if it were like that here, I get bored (ADD much?) waiting 45-60 minutes between runs.

I had these tires on my last car, within a week it was clear they were horrible for track and street. They cannot handle heat. One of the few tires I regretted blowing money on.

No. See: http://www.longacreracing.com/techni...sus%20Infrared

I would never go if it was 45-60 minutes between runs...up here I'm lucky if I have enough time to adjust tire pressures between runs and even then I'm being rushed