Hoosier tire, recent changes (1 Viewer)

[Jeff]

Related to the TAD class, several of us have noticed that the Hoosier tires that seemed to make up a reasonable amount of the field have fallen out of favor. Further, some of the fast Top Dragster guys who bolted on a new set of the same Hooisers many of us have been running, have had problems getting them to hook up. We have reason to suspect that Hoosier has changed the mold release agent the allows the "just made" tire to come out of the tire mold cleanly. With the TAD/AF guys only making a few passes on a set, I can see them flocking to Goodyear's which can work right off the truck .... anybody have any scoop on this?

Hopefully a really good soap/water scrubbing/cleaning of the brand new tire by someone who can make 30 or 40 passes before the sidewall gets spongy can make a great tire still work great from the first pass on.

Or maybe the Goodyear tire is just faster ... but it's clear some of the high horsepower guys one class down are seeing a change in how they work right off the truck.

 

[Justin@NRE]

Related to the TAD class, several of us have noticed that the Hoosier tires that seemed to make up a reasonable amount of the field have fallen out of favor. Further, some of the fast Top Dragster guys who bolted on a new set of the same Hooisers many of us have been running, have had problems getting them to hook up. We have reason to suspect that Hoosier has changed the mold release agent the allows the "just made" tire to come out of the tire mold cleanly. With the TAD/AF guys only making a few passes on a set, I can see them flocking to Goodyear's which can work right off the truck .... anybody have any scoop on this?

Hopefully a really good soap/water scrubbing/cleaning of the brand new tire by someone who can make 30 or 40 passes before the sidewall gets spongy can make a great tire still work great from the first pass on.

Or maybe the Goodyear tire is just faster ... but it's clear some of the high horsepower guys one class down are seeing a change in how they work right off the truck.

Jeff,
Hoosiers were essentially banned from use on A/Fuel cars until further notice after the Monroe Guest/Brandon Greco crash at E-town two years ago. The 36" tire apparently had issues with the downforce, speed and load from an A/Fueler. On Blown TAD's, I don't think there's been a huge migration. Seems like the same people who have been running Hoosiers for a while are still using them. You are right about the GY tire being dead nuts with the sticker still on it. That's what we use on our TAFC and have forever. I do clutch parts for most of Top Alcohol, so I've helped people who run both. The only things I can say in favor of the GY's over the Hoosiers in my experience is that you can get away with some pretty evil things with the GY and they'll recover better if the driver decides to drive through the shake. The other would be getting 15 runs out of tires, not wasting 3 of them breaking them in helps the bottom line. I personally tend to favor the Goodyears..

The big migration from Hoosiers that I've seen has been in TAFC. Lots of cars were having shake problems every lap this last year and switching to GY's seemed to be the magic fix for them. Does that mean there is something wrong with the Hoosier? Probably not. Even the Goodyear seems a lot different now than even 2 years ago.. I think that it has more to do with track prep than anything else these days. I think the grip/prep for us is so much better now then it was even in 2011, if you get carried away trying to run wheel speed like you did then, all you do is shake because the tire doesn't want to spin no matter what tire you're using..