cheap track tyres

[sambb]

for track guys that are running 16's and are happy to go to a 50 profile, get on these quick:

YOKOHAMA 205/50R16 ADVAN A050 HIGH PERFORMANCE RACE TYRE *SOFT* | eBay

just had a look and they'll be a 612mm versus 590mm stock rolling diameter.

there's also these for those on 15's:
195-55-15 1955515 85V YOKOHAMA ADVAN A050 G/S R SPEC RACE TYRES BRAND NEW | eBay

These tyres at 195 will have the same tread width as a street 205 and match almost exactly the stock rolling diameter.

[sambb]

well I just pulled the trigger on a set of the G/S soft compound 195/55/15's. They'll be mid 2014 build date which is a bit long in the tooth, but so are my 205 width mediums and being soft compound these will out grip those for sprint events. pretty happy to get a set of R specs for $500 bucks. For what I do i've always thought that the car was over tyred with 205's so it'll be a good little experiment to see how the 195's go. If its a fail i'll just put the 195's on the back and get a set of 205's for the front.

[kaanage]

I've set faster times with 2nd hand 195/55R15 Hankook V221s than 205/50R15 Yokohama A048s at Phillip Island and Sandown so those you bought should be good. But then my PoD is hugely underpowered vs most PoGs here

[sambb]

ok thats good to hear. Really all I can do is try it and see. The idea for this came from running in a pretty dedicated RS Cosworth Sierra at a tarmac sprint that only had A050 205 softs all round. I was astonished by how much grip he had with such small tyres and big hp. For the hillclimbs and sprints I do (on 205 mediums so far) I'm usually oversteering on early corners because its three wheeling on a single stone cold rear tyre, and then just bagging up the inside front on corner exit. I really think thats a tyre temp/tyre compound issue more than anything and the soft compound regardless of width will help there. To get early grip I was running some pretty low pressures on the 205 mediums sometimes as low as 25 psi which then hurt handling further through the courses.
Basically what I'm expecting is that the 195 softs will grip earlier than the 205 mediums due to the softer compound - what I'm hoping though, is that they give me better power down traction by actually coming up to an operating temp and having a slightly bigger rolling diameter. Being narrower they should build heat quicker when leaned on so I should be able to run more conventional cold pressures which will hopefully make them feel sharper too. we'll see

[seangti]

I've got a set of 225/45/17 A050's in soft sitting in the garage for next year very good prices for the smaller sizes. No idea how many events I'll get out of the softs... As for being 2014, wouldn't be concerned as long as they haven't sat in the sun. And being a little harder they should last longer anyway

[sambb]

I'm not too worried about the 2014 thing really. I'll just do the national park 1000 and scub them in properly 2 weeks before they are first used in anger which should do the trick. Sean because you do longer run times and in hot QLD and they might take a battering, I'd mark inside each rim and make sure that they move fwd/back on the car at each event, ie. so the same front left for instance doesn't keep going back on in the same spot while the left rear does comparatively nothing. Half way through the season you can swap lefts for rights on the rims too to give you some fresh shoulders. A friend of mine spoke to the main distributor in nsw about soft A050's and he said 8 full blooded laps would be the limit of the softs and that breaking that up with some cool down laps is a good idea too.

The sierra cosworth guy I co drove with said he'd get over a year out of his 205 softs - thats doing every hillclimb he could attend (5 min run time per event) and five tarmac rally sprint rounds over summer (16 km at each rally sprint event but each run no longer than 2/1/2 minutes). I thought that sounded pretty good.