Doubt it’s any different from the c190, but I haven’t tried them.
I purchased them a long while back but haven’t given them a proper test. They (at least the set I bought) needed a 4 inch diameter hub which i didnt have at the time so i sold them off. From what I hear they’re decent for grip, but I’m not sure I could achieve the right gearing to make them worth my while on our particular indoor track. I think I’d also be be risking wheelbite on the v5
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Thanks that’s helpful, wheelbite and gear ratio is no issue so I’ll see if I can get some.
I’m surprised there are issues they list compatible hubs and say 3.75/4”. I’m not familiar with the different hub sizes but I do need a new set.
Has anyone here tried stretching (putting them on a wide hub) the nova tire 6" like we used to do with the Metroboard tires?
It looks like they have a seem in the middel, and I think I remember Vasek had a set that split in that seem at Esk8con last year. So stretching them mmm…
I’ve been running the 8in Novas on Hubba hubs and tbh, stretching them doesn’t rl do anything for the contact patch. I also have this theory with Novas tire, not sure if it make sense or not.
Blue is pre-stretch, red is post-stretch. Nova tires already have a slight indent on the tread, you need to run them at higher PSI than normal to keep them flat. If you stretch them, you make the tread caved in even more, thus increasing the PSI you need to keep them flat. That affects the ride quality even more since Novas already ride pretty rough.
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I stretched them onto a Newbee Pentagram rim but they were awfully unbalanced in doing so. Maybe because I wasn’t careful enough trying to keep them centred when they stretched.
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Naw, the Novas are just very imbalance. I helped someone balance them before and one of them need 3 1/4oz weight to make it semi balance.
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Maybe I’m not thinking right, but in my experience with car tires, wheel width doesn’t actually end up affecting the contact patch much if you have the same tread width. Also, even if there is some deformation without weight on it, usually that shouldn’t matter much on the road because the load will flatten it out when it’s actually being used. For rounded tires, the wheel width could definitely matter, but for squared off ones, as long as you run them low enough that they’re affected by the weight and form to the road some, I would expect it doesn’t matter much. If you want to actually look at what is happening to the contact patch, you need a way to look at it when there is weight on the tire.
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This is definitely a thing that can happen. I’ve actually noticed it quite a bit when I was stretching my 9x3.5s to their current width - it now requires more pressure otherwise I ride on the sidewalls. Before, I could basically run them flat.
You do need the center of the tread firmly planted on the ground - too little pressure and you loose grip.
I don’t think it affected grip much once I compensated with pressure though in my case. But that was moving from slight squish to slight stretch, so not an extreme difference. It however did make them a little more responsible on the edge which was nice.
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I prefer mine to be soft cause I mostly ride streets. I rarely able to get on a track.
I wonder if a go kart tire prep that decreases the durometer of rubber could help the performance of commonly found pneumatic tires.
If you try, be aware of the dangers of doing so. Those are quite toxic and carcenogenic chemical solvents that you need to handle with care, and the tire will stink quite badly for weeks afterwards. Also some tracks ban the use of tire softeners, just be aware of that too. And there’s no hiding that smell, they will know if you use it.
I did try on a set of linnpowers, although I couldn’t really do back to back runs with untreated ones so I don’t know exactly how much it helped. But the smell was so bad that I wouldn’t do it again to tires that I want to store indoors. Also being in Europe we have much stricter laws regarding safety around chemicals and such, and I suspect that’s the reason why it’s very hard to find tire softeners here compared to the US, at least as a customer.
Also I probably wouldn’t try with BRPs because I would fear the glue they use to hold the tire together might interact with the softener.
From what I read nylon based tires aren’t effected too much by softeners, syntetic rubber is like medium effect, natural rubber is best. So if there’s an esk8 tire compound that it’s worth trying it on it’s probably gonna be the Novas.
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We did it on the WTF I was on at esk8con. But it has gokart tires so…
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Thanks for the warning. I would prefer not to be playing with carcinogenic chemicals. ESK8 racing is dangerous enough.
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I stretched them on to the linnpower quick release hubs. they didn’t perform noticeably better or worse, but I couldn’t balance them perfectly so they were a bit wobbly. I also was concerned about addtional wearing down of the tyre so I went back to standard width
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Sounds like I will not stretch. No need to put unnecessary stress on them.
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