Tyres, grip and why Mikey won.

stretching them on wider rims certainly wouldn’t hurt either. I haven’t had them tuck yet, but i know what you’re talking about with the shifting sensation.

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Yes, Kinematics can do that for you. :slight_smile:

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Relatively new. They’ve only seen the outside in my garden and a few km in Brussels. Next to that two more times at two other kart lev events for I’d say about 10 or so laps.

I was running them with 12s8p 40t on focboxes before and they just kept overheating.

At this event I could finally not worry about it. Pretty satisfied for now with the dv6 pro and lipo setup.

But yeah grip here was key for winning and I had all of it. Skills too :wink:

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Interesting read for sure!
As someone who mostly race against the spandex 2 wheelers in town (I win every time :dancer:). Where the conditions are mostly shit. gravel, sand, wet leaves, snow, water, salt, dogs, cigarettes, chewing gum. You name it we def have it. How is your experience regarding the looser stuff. As that is what I normally loose traction on.

In my simple mind I feel like a wider & smoother wheel more easily skid across the surface. While a narrower wheel with a more aggressive thread pattern although less grippy but it doesn’t seem to skid on top of stuff as often.

Maybe more so at what point you want to move towards a more aggressive thread profile and how you deal with tire width.

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With the short track races we host in New York, I’ve always had issues with traction on 8" kendas. Not on acceleration (I wish I had that much power), but on sharp turns.

I picked up a set of Newbee rims because I wanted to try stretching the kendas, but that ultimately didn’t give me a whole lot of extra traction either. It was noticeable, but it still felt sketchy on the really sharp turns. Strangely enough, I was only losing traction in the rear, so I tried putting the Qind 200x75 fatty tires on the back, and it has worked wonders. With a significantly larger contact patch in the rear, I was able to do full lean turns.

Since I was still using kendas in the front, I still had a very sharp turning radius and the difference was almost negligible. I was able to not worry about maintaining traction and I was only limited by the maximum lean of the trucks, which was awesome as I was able to lean very hard. I don’t know how this may change on a slick gokart track, but my experiences are on plain ol tarmac.

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You mean on a race track in general? That’s interesting and I thought you’d want soft in front for grip in turns especially with it having less downward force when accelerating. (I’m guessing maybe you end up with more control and the front starting to slide out a bit before the rear you can adjust and stay up. I have no idea)

Why think about efficiency when going for grip and don’t know why u mention it above

I plan to heat tires as much as possible or maybe try some type of polyurethane softener to see if I won’t just spin snd lift when accelerating

Grip efficiency. duro hardness , contact patch size, loading, temperature and road surface are all factors that determine if a tires grip potential is being utilized.

Board loading for me is front 70% 30% rear. More load requires a harder duro to hit the desired tire grip efficiency window when lateral force is applied. A soft tire requires less load Force to make it to maximum grip efficiency than a harder compound tire. Remember that at a point the optimal grip to weight ratio falls off as you add weight.

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interesting how grip and weight aren’t linearly correlated and an ideal grip efficiency could be figured but in our situation with skate races having no power limit we have access to limitless torque to overcome the weight and it seems the more weight the better until no more grip is gained, if there is such a point.

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The grippiest and most fun wheels I have are without a single doubt my chunky 125 airless rubbers, and it’s entirely due to the extremely wide, and only ever so slightly curved, contact patch.
The corners I can pull on those fuckers are insane. I don’t race, but on a track race, I definitely wouldn’t rock anything else, except maybe stooge wheels cuz they’re super wide as well.

They’re super soft? U got a pic?

I plan to get one of these abs see how they do with pu:

Claims of both increasing grip and tire durability sounds too much to be true.

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They’re pure unobtanium unfortunately, lemme pull em out…

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I’ve literally ridden them in a hurricane and still hit like 25mph.

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I imagine they don’t roll well, I mean not efficiently, but if ur not pushing and going for max grip who cares

Changing from 100mm hyperdrives to these cut my range by around 60%
Massively inefficient, but best ride I’ve found. I bust em out here and there, can’t get more so I don’t wanna wear em out too fast, and don’t like murdering my range all the time either.

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Be ideal if those tire softeners work with pu and end up with a super soft surface and more rigidity underneath. I think they’re nasty chems though

I’d tape off the sides and only hit the contact patch. I’ve been wanting to do the opposite with rit dye, could make some sexy wheels. Black hyperdrives with purple edges or some shit.

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There was a dude rocking the Stooge BRP wheels and he wasn’t doing very well either. In fact, he preferred to run a different board. Not sure what tyres he had on the other one.

Edit: The size of the contact patch on those beasts was one of the things that got me thinking about pressure and grip incidentally. I couldn’t try them myself sadly cos he had regular bindings and I’m goofy. Not the first time I’ve missed out on a test drive, as you can imagine.

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Goofy gang goofy gang goofy gang! The wider the contact patch, the less likely to LOSE grip, I think. And with rounded edges like my airless, I can’t confirm, but it really feels like when I turn hard on them, Im using an entirely different contact patch then when I’m going straight.
I want some rounded stooge wheels now.

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There is no optimal tire/wheel for all track surfaces. A smooth shiny concrete surface that is CLEAN can be very grippy, if it is dusty the dirt has no where to settle and becomes part of the contact patch. A narrow hard tire will perform better cutting through the dust an forcing a cleaner contact patch much as a lugged tire does in compact dirt.

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