Race Tire Setting

[Morris]

Thought I'd start a thread about Race tires and how they need to be set up.....

This is how we use to set up the car before each race.... Right or wrong.... it worked for us.... I'm sure things are different today.... with all of the new technology introduced in the last 10 years...

-- Fill the tires and measure the circumference of the tires .... get the fronts to match each other and the rears to match each other.... set the smaller one out in the sun for 30 minutes and it will grow to the size you need...

--Now that the fronts and the rears match....set a ride height... usually you'll want 3/4" rake to the chassie front to rear.

--Now put the car on scales and weight each corner and figure what you want on each corner... remember weight transfers diagonally.... Also keep in mind how many right hand turns you have and how many left hand turns you have.... this will influence the corner weights....also have a driver in the car when doing this.... or a bag of sand....and sway bars must be disconnected...

--Set your Toe and Camber .... this is just a static setting.... you will change this at the track.... Castor is always built in or adjusted to as much as you can get..... 5 degrees is good..

--Remove the air and install nitrogen.... I think they have devices that will vaccum out the air and replace it with Nitrogen ....
Nitrogen doesn't have any moisture in it..... tire won't grow from the moisture in the air...

--Run the car as hard as you can and come in and get tire pressure readings and Tire Temps.... if it's a mostly right hand corner track ... do the left front first then the left rear then the right rear then the right front....
Those temps and pressure will tell you what to change.... cross weights .....raise one corner or the other to add temp and weight.......

--Change the sway bar settings based on the front to rear temps...

--Change the starting pressure .... maybe you came in and the temps were to high in the middle of the tire...

--Temp across the tire will tell you what to do with the camber.... also a Radial tire like alot of Neg Camber..... Bias not so much...

There's lot's more involve to talk about but this will get folks thinking about how to approach a set up and what to do when they get to the track and interrupt what the tire temp tell them ...

Just some thoughts and I'm sure there's many more folks that can add alot to this...

Morris