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I'm not understanding something here. Is there an inventory of tires manufactured 8 years ago sitting somewhere? If so, how many are sitting around?
Drag racing tires are so specialized I can't imagine that Good Year knowingly makes a quantity that surpasses demand by that much. That's a lot of cost to carry on the books.
Sounds to me like people are more riled up about not being able to obtain their share of (presumably better) 8 year old tires than they are about them being safe. They may have a point. I wouldn't think anyone in their right mind would run a set of them on a 210mph race car if there was any evidence they were dangerous and neither would Goodyear or NHRA stand idly by and allow them to be used. After all, when's the last time a PS crash was determined to be the fault of a blowout on account of an aged Goodyear slick?
If KB hoarded and is now running these things and it gives them a theoretical .03 advantage - their cars ARE notably superior to the 60 - and Elite doesn't have any - well, that might be a factor in all the bitching.
NHRA had to be aware of it. They put in the rule not long ago that you can’t move a tire from car to car. Seemed odd at the time but now makes more sense. Would the non KB cars also have access to the special tires? Hartford and Kramer have ran better than the Elite cars this year. Maybe there is a KB tire rental buisness too!
what's that old saying..... no such thing as bad press? pro stock is getting plenty of air time now from drama. like it or not , its making people talk
That's pretty interesting. Still, hoarding a certain group of tires for what ended up being 8 years, just in case Goodyear decides at some unknown future date to allegedly make a very slight change to the manufacture of the tires, seems like a real stretch. But why else would they keep such old tires sitting around? Wouldn't they use the oldest ones first, so they always had fairly fresh tires in stock? And why does Greg say they all run to the Goodyear trailer at the start of every event and carefully select new tires, when it looks like they have dozens sitting on the shelves back at home? Wouldn't they use up the shelf stock first?
So their is obviously no rule about how old the tire is. Seems odd but I suppose if the tires are kept inside in a controlled environment their still safe?
I'm confused, if the 8 year old tires are the culprit for the KB advantage then why break them out now? Elite has been running equal or better than KB for the better part of the last decade ???
I'm confused, if the 8 year old tires are the culprit for the KB advantage then why break them out now? Elite has been running equal or better than KB for the better part of the last decade ???
The way I'm reading it is KB/Titan must have stock or access to old stock on tires that Elite doesn't. I know the tires are a big deal on P/S cars because of the diameter or circumference.
What's next? Hoarding valve springs? If a team wants to keep older tires around and use them when they want, why is it any business of the NHRA? Maybe I'm missing something here.
What's next? Hoarding valve springs? If a team wants to keep older tires around and use them when they want, why is it any business of the NHRA? Maybe I'm missing something here.
In the auto restoration world, as I understand it the old tires being unusable mantra pertains to radial tires and tires that were not stored correctly.
Any bias ply tire that isn't dry rotted or cracking is ok to use....but not at 200+mph.
Ten years seems to be the limit on radials and I experienced it myself with my Honda, which was a 2013 with only 13,000 miles on it when I got it in 2022 from my 92 yo father. I blew a tire on the NJ Garden State Parkway and the shop said all were ready to go.
There is a difference between driving your everyday car 8 with year old tires vs a brand new 8 year old set of slicks that are stored in a controlled enviroment. Your everyday car tires go through heat cycles everytime you drive it and then you have to factor in the sun and weather exposure to them also. UV light from the sun will break them down. So if stored correctly, those slicks perfectly fine. Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if the KB/Titan guys even vacuum seal each slick so they have absolutely No exposure to air at all!
Everybody seems to be saying there may be 8 year old tires running on KB cars, but who says they were manufactured in 2017? The CompPlus article indicates that the Pro Stock tire changed during Covid, which was form March 2020 to sometime in 2022 so possibly the tires were the same from 2017 thru 2022? Goodyear needs to respond to the public (yeah right?) and give an answer to what changed between the tires in 2017 and the current tire, whenever they started producing it. The racers claim the diameter changed which can be a significant difference between cars running the shorter and taller tires. I'm talking hearsay here so have no facts, just 3rd hand info.
I’m still confused. Why would KB still be running old tires on GA’s car if it’s illegal? If Erica was flagged for her tires, wouldn’t that mean that no one else is allowed to run them either? Or was the issue that EE’s tires were too old? That would imply there’s a cutoff somewhere before 2017 that the tires couldn’t be run.
Thats what I read too. So, it had to do with the bead lock design and the fact that her configuration required an inner tube in the tire, which is safer than a tire without one, at least that’s what the article stated.
i believe elite had modified the wheel to accept a second valve stem, so it was an unauthorized modification of
an SFI approved part (the wheel), the inner liner i think is a separtate discussion where supposedly something was discussed in epping,
then went the other way in bristol....... as usual, please correct me if i'm off base here.
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