This is the bs of scca. What I can’t deal with. I have to race in 6 weeks. It would be nice to have a fire in my shop to set up the car and go test. But no the scca can’t make a decision on radial or bias. And the they will have to make them. Total s—- show. Make a choice. I own a biz I could not hang customers out like this. And we are customers of scca. They act the federal govOriginally Posted by DaveW
Might want to fix that. . . don't put that out in the atmosphere.
I have not seen any proposals either but from what I am hearing the Bias would be at a significantly lower price than the Radial. But then again who knows what will really come out because all of this is happening behind closed doors and things tend to change when the SCCA leadership gets involved. The reality is we need a good solid hard tire for a reasonable price. AR's go for $590 a set. I have no idea what the Hoosier will go for but even at $100 more that is a deal. Now if the price creeps up to the $800's then someone is sticking there finger in the pot.
As a side note I'm not sure if anyone remembers but there was a call by LaRue at the beginning of the year to form a committee of FC racers to help save the class. Well some of us answered the call and have been having meetings for the past year to try and come up with ways to preserve the class we feel so passionately about.
The ideas spawned were not entirely to create rule changes but more so to create ways to improve attendance. As you can see from this year there were some changes and rules became a bigger focus like the 20 pound weight gain for zetec's 6 weeks prior to the runoffs. Not a great idea in my opinion, but I still went to the runoffs anyway. We also got good ideas like the FC page on Facebook going to help promote the class to get new interest in the class. We also got Frog to do the Thursday diatribes focusing on a 2021 Runoffs push. Now we have this tire thing going which feels like a rule and while it is its also supposed to help promote attendance in the class. So you can look at it any way you want. Rule change or a way to help save the class its everyones choice. but for me I don't care which way we go, I am going to race either way.
Brian
Bob,
Since no one has run of on a bias 60 compound tire I guess its hard to say which has the better longevity and it does not appear SCCA is going to go through a testing period to determine that.
I get that your series was based on radials but why not go with the cheapest best option to start. Grow the class and then after the 3 or whatever year cycle for the manufacturer then determine if a radial makes sense. If the class ends up failing in two years and looses National status I don't think it will matter if we are on a Radial or not.
Also if we are limited to one set per weekend starting at Qualifying you would only have to put the car on the scales once a weekend. I am sure anyone with scales will end up doing that even with Radials so that point is pretty much moot.
Brian
I started getting at the economics question back in post #69. Got into it a bit deeper in personal notes to Chris Scharnow, CGOffroad, and Beer Budget.
What response did my question get here? Effing crickets.
Heck, there's a board to improve FC? Who's on it, and where are the discussions?
Will there be a grace period prior to the transition to the spec tire?
Out in my backyard this evening and packing for Sebring Turkey Trot.....was looking around...... couldn't find a single solitary frog that was wearing socks.
Maybe I can get my Wife to knit some tiny three toed purple ones....question is...... two or four ?? Does anybody know how many socks a frog needs ??
Maybe that will get more frogs to come out instead of staying in garages............
OK OK ....the stuff is kicking in
I've said this more than once, but here it is again...
That is not my experience. When I last ran bias tires (GY), each of the 1st few times I ran a set, they would grow in diameter. And the tires that reached higher temperatures grew more than others that didn't get as warm. That growth, especially the unequal growth side-side, required another trip to the scales after each of the 1st few sessions to adjust the weight balance, ride height, and tire pressure to what they should be. And if you wanted to switch tires side-to-side, you had to do it all again. The radial has eliminated all that repetitive, time-consuming, work.
During typical FRP weekends, with up to 4 sessions/day, there is just no time for a team with 1 or 2 total crew including the driver and no scale pad to do all that w/o neglecting (or forgetting) other important tasks. So in my situation, I would likely be guessing how to adjust the above parameters w/o going to the scales.
I would really hate to go back to doing all that monkey business to save a few $ in initial purchase cost. My time is valuable and worth at least $100/set to me. Plus, in my experience, radials have always worn better than bias tires, so the actual cost per mile of use would likely be equal to or less than that of bias tires.
One other thing I forgot to mention - the radials are so consistent in size that even scaling when you put on a new set (as Brian mentioned) is, IMO, not necessary. That would certainly be more necessary with bias tires since even with just +/-1/2" circumference variation between tires, the radius could be different side-side by 1/(2xpi) or ~0.16". If the rate at the footprint is 500 lb/in, that means your weight balance could be off by as much as 80 lb if the fronts and rears are off in opposite directions.
Last edited by DaveW; 11.25.20 at 8:48 PM. Reason: added last paragraph
Dave Weitzenhof
You know there are a lot of engineers here - and engineers do complex cost-benefit analysis as a major part of the day job. Question is, were any of these folks involved in the process? Doubtful. So in my humble opinion, the "quantification" of the decision process should have started with something like this:
First of all, can we define the top and bottom of the market and the performance requirements? I’ll take a stab.
Following a couple of standard engineering practices, throw out the top and bottom of the market as outliers. One can assume that the top of the market can pretty much afford anything they want. The bottom of the market doesn’t participate enough to matter, although reducing costs may increase their participation.
I’ll define the top of the market as the pointy end of the runoffs grid, and the bottom as folks who run less than three events/year. So if we make some assumptions that a weekend consists of six sessions (cycles) and a test day four sessions (cycles). Assume a 30 minute session on a medium speed track of 2.5 mi length with about a 2 min/lap time. Three minutes for the pace lap and three minutes for the in lap gives 12 laps at speed +2 or 35 mi/session (cycle).
If we define the high end user as someone who runs six weekends/yr and six test days that’s 30 sessions/year and a bit over 2000 mi.
If we define the low end user as 3 weekends/year + 2 test days that’s 14 sessions/yr and about 500 mi.
I don’t think it makes any sense for the 3 weekend guy to be buying two sets of tires, so if we target that as 1 set/yr and say 15 cycles we have a target. The high end guy ends up buying 4 sets for the year. Make sense?
So now the question is, how do you compute the “cost” of a tire, taking into account that if you don’t have a spec rule and a tire usage rule you have to keep the performance sufficiently consistent such that the mid-level participant is not encouraged to buy another set.
If one were comparing multiple manufacturers you would want to penalize a manufacturer by raising the cost commensurate with the falloff in performance.
I think in this you can derive some durability goals. We know how much the tires cost now, so the question then becomes, how much of a savings matters? 30%? 50%? Of course to each participant the savings isn’t the actual cost of a set, but the total number os sets purchased over a given period of time, and some other considerations, like having enough consistency to not require testing, as well as not requiring thousands of dollars worth of changes in the cars to fully utilize the tire.
You can quibble with my assumptions, but at least it would be a discussion, out in the open.
Now the details in this are harder than they look. There are several different aspects of each consideration. Obviously, from several comments here, If the tire is extremely under-optimized for cars that cant' achieve optimal camber, then that's OK, because we're all slow (and evidently, unlikely to go faster unless we buy something else). But heck, a few more entries will satisfy the desire to keep the class active in the SCCA's system.
It's kicking in.....so..... wow! something involving engineering and what?...no math formulas published at the same time! ..now really
AMEN! Have people forgotten what we went through in the first years of Pro Formula Mazda on those abominable Goodyears?
Every event, my first "engineering" task was to mount and measure 12 sets of tires for our 3 cars and make usable semi-matched sets out of them. And every set had a different 'nominal' size, so every car went to the platform every time we either heat cycled a set, or mounted a new set ... yikes, who wants even a fraction of that ++++ all over again?
Ian Macpherson
Savannah, GA
Race prep, support, and engineering.
you guys keep bringing up goodyears. News flash - Goodyears SUCK for consistency. Nylon carcass instead of the kevlar used by others.
they are cheap and have decent compounds, but they suck at consistency
All you have to do is wander around the Hoosier truck at the track- all the bias tires waiting to be picked up have the circumference written on each tire, none of the radials do....just sayin.
----------
In memory of Joe Stimola and Glenn Phillips
There would be a date set out into the future for implementation of a spec tire rule to permit competitors to run through their existing tires and for production ramp up (if necessary). Have a great Thanksgiving. John
Bias tire circumference variation is not specific to any one manufacturer. I just used GY as my example because that's where I have had LOTS of personal experience. It's a fact of life that it's almost impossible (with a reasonable cost) to make bias tires within such a small bias angle tolerance (less than 1/10 degree) that the circumference would be controlled within +/-1/16" (even with Kevlar) as is pretty standard with a radial. It's the presence of the circumferentially-stiff belt that makes that repeatability possible.
Dave Weitzenhof
So are you saying that the spec rule might not apply to next year's early races?
Mark- I can't say for certain, but would point out that B-Spec is adopting a spec tire in 2021 and I believe they are utilizing a May implementation date.
Well, I've already been thinking of excuses of why I'm going to be slow after my layoff. Maybe I'll just use the spec tire anyway.
I would like to propose the implementation date be based on a number of races in each division, like after the 3rd race as an example. That eliminates the variance in the schedules around the country. Based on the Bspec being May, some divisions are almost done by May and one hasn't even started.
Last edited by Speed Sport Engineering; 11.27.20 at 11:28 PM.
Nothing new to report after talking to the guys at the Hoosier truck today at Sebring
Jason Isley
SCCA Board Of Directors, Area 11
BOD Member, Southern Pacific Division
jisley@scca.com
(951) 741-6501
Peter Olivola
(polivola@gmail.com)
Came back to this thread looking for anything definitively new, and realized I forgot to ask this:
from post #135 on page 4:
"Front – Hoosier 20.5 x 7.0 – 13 60A compound - Part Number TBD Rear – Hoosier 22.5 x 8.0 – 13 60A compound – Part "
does the "R" missing from the size designation not tell us the tire will be a bias ply, or was that already pointed out and I missed it??
Ian Macpherson
Savannah, GA
Race prep, support, and engineering.
That was mentioned above as an unknown - and still uncertain.
When does the next Fast Track come out?
Should be out in ~1 week, I think.
Dave Weitzenhof
Just read some FasTrack stuff at SCCA.com that seemed to be Dec. & Jan. combined.............crickets
Lee H Hill, III
SCCA Board Of Directors, Area 3
Chairman, Southeast Division
lhill@scca.com
(813) 245-9332
Peter Olivola
(polivola@gmail.com)
Three weeks to Homestead, and still no specific details? Or did I miss something?
Ian Macpherson
Savannah, GA
Race prep, support, and engineering.
12/11 minutes:
https://www.scca.com/pages/cars-and-rules
Translation - it will be a mid-season change and whoever has been running the chosen tires will have the advantage.Thank you for your letter. The Club Racing Board will present a recommendation to the Board of Directors when the details are
finalized.
Peter Olivola
(polivola@gmail.com)
The FC spec tire ruling has been announced. (above)
The decision has been made to go with the bias ply Hoosiers. I lobbied for the radials because of their more precise diameters (circumference within 1/16"), but now that the decision has been made, I think the bias tires will be fine, and they are obviously the lower cost option. Also, the folks with older cars will not have to worry about the greater negative camber that the radials would have required.
They will be required as of 5/1/21.
Dave Weitzenhof
Are the specs obtained through the normal dealers or is there a different order process?
Those part numbers are currently shown as 25 compound - so be careful what you order!
I guess it'll all appear here:
https://www.hoosiertire.com/tires/circuit/
Since the spec compound is R60 I very willing to buy any new sets of R35s that folks don't think they would use up by May.
Well that's sure a kick in the nuts.
Why May 1st? CenDiv doesn't even have one race to help use up tires from last year.
Last season was expensive enough for me and now I've got nothing but a whole stack of black radial air fresheners. I'm sure glad i like the smell of tires.
Dont quote me on this but the FE2 Front tire is what we would be running for our rear and I bet Hoosier does not have any R60 compound tires built for the front yet. So my guess is its going to take at least a month or two to ramp up production.
Brian
It's going to be interesting to visit this thread in a year to see how the spec bias ply has done absolutely nothing to grow the class.
Chris Livengood, enjoying underpriced ferrous whizzy bits that I hacked out in my tool shed since 1999.
The SCCA Board of Directors has approved a recommendation by its Club Racing Board to adopt a spec tire for the Formula Continental class in all events (including Regional, Majors and Runoffs) beginning May 1, 2021. All cars will utilize Hoosier bias ply tires (R60A compound for dry, W3 tread and compound for wet), with a limit to the number of tires a competitor can use on a given race weekend.
Following an extensive participant survey, direct feedback from racers and collaboration with promoters of professional racing series, the decision was made to utilize a bias construction versus a radial construction, with the Club Racing Board citing that some existing chassis would require costly modifications to optimize a radial.
In 2021, a set of dry tires will retail for $730, plus tax and shipping, with a set of wet tires priced at $800. Pricing could fluctuate based on raw material costs in the future. Like in the Formula F class, to keep the price of tires as low as possible, no contingency payouts will be posted at SCCA’s request.
The language approved for the 2021 General Competition Rules is as follows:
In GCR, section 9.1.1.B.10. add as follows:
Effective 5-1-2021
"g. FC shall be limited to the following tires (tires must be used in their designated position - front/rear - on the car):
Dry:
Front – Hoosier 20.5 x 7.0 – 13 R60A compound - Part Number 43164Rear – Hoosier 22.0 x 8.0 – 13 R60A compound – Part Number 43285
Wet:
Front – Hoosier 21.0 x 6.5– 13 W3 - Part Number 44185Rear – Hoosier 22.0 x 8.0 – 13 W3 – Part Number 44196
- FC shall be permitted a maximum of four (4) dry tires and four (4) wet tires for all Regional, Major and Super Tour events; eight (8) dry tires and eight (8) wet tires for Runoffs. This rule shall be effective beginning with the first (1st) qualifying session of the event. It is the responsibility of the competitor to ensure that their tires are declared, marked and logged by Tech in advance of their use in on-track session(s).
- Use of an undeclared tire shall automatically result in all times being disallowed in that session or loss of finishing position in that race.
- If a tire is damaged during a qualifying session or a race the competitor may replace the damaged tire with a used tire upon approval by the Chief Steward without loss of time or finishing position. Second or subsequent damaged tires may similarly be replaced upon approval by the Chief Steward, however such shall result in the loss of grid position in the subsequent race or session; the competitor shall start at the back of the grid. "
Sell some of those air fresheners to folks on either cost. At least recover some of your money and they'll have plenty of opportunities to use them up well before May 1st.
Keeping it from shrinking farther would be good thing, no?
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