Tire Choice

[DJKO]

Hey guys, this is regarding how you guys choose what tires to get.

What are the main aspects when choosing tires? This seems very obvious such as wear rate, temp effect and stuff, but how would you determine which ones to get?

[DJKO]

Hey guys, this is regarding how you guys choose what tires to get.

What are the main aspects when choosing tires? This seems very obvious such as wear rate, temp effect and stuff, but how would you determine which ones to get?

[ben]

I did my tyre seminar for the UK "Learn to Win" event last week, but I probably should have covered this area in more detail.

In short, it would be very expensive to buy a selection of possible tyres and test them all objectively to assess things like grip level and wear rate.

If you do buy a selection and test for these things and explain why you made your final selection, the design judges will score you highly.

In reality you are more likely to pick either Hoosier, Goodyear, or Avon tyres based on a survey of what other people run or cost/supply factors.

A competitor benchmarking exercise is fine in terms of design judging, but the questions we'll ask will then be focused on how you managed your testing to understand the tyres you have and how you adjusted the suspension to get the best from them.

A pragmatic design judge should accept an essentially arbitrary intitial choice of tyres due to the expense involved in tyre testing

Ben

[PatClarke]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">A pragmatic design judge should accept an essentially arbitrary intitial choice of tyres due to the expense involved in tyre testing </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

Not quite arbitrary Ben. We understand that teams cant test everything and build a car too.
What we want to hear is a cogent argument for the choice made.
Regards
Pat

[Ben C-M]

Get the TTC data. $500 dollars gets you data on most of the tires that are used by teams. The biggest problem with tires is that knowing anything about them (wear rate, temp effect, grip levels) requires you to have driven on them, or relying on other teams who probably haven't compared them back to back. The only reliable data that's available to FSAE teams is the TTC data. It will allow you to at least have some qualitative data to base your decisions on.

The problem with the TTC data is that it isn't going to tell you how quickly they wear, what their operating temperature is, how many heat cycles before they are useless, how many 'quick' laps they have, etc. Ultimately the decision is should be reconsidered every year, especially with a number of new tires that have recently, or are soon going to come out.

[Samo Simonian]

Hello all,

We are currently also doing our tire choice. I agree with Ben C-M that TTC would definitely help on the choice of tires. Even if you can't make a completely founded choice, it will at least give you an extra opportunity to learn working with tire data.
I also totally agree with Ben 'Dunlop'. Take up enough time in your planning to test the suspension set up. A well done tire choice is important. Getting it on the road and learning how to do that is vital. We saw that in our testing time, especially last year, it makes a world of difference.
If you decide to stick with the same tires next year, this would also give you a head start (if you have actually learned something). I don't know if one year is enough to really get everything out of one tire. You might end up getting a worthless amount of data after several years just because you didn't go to each tires limits. Not saying that you shouldn't look into it every year though.

Pat, where would you draw the lines for a cogent/non cogent argument?

Samo Simonian
Chief Suspension
DUT Racing 2006/2007
www.dutracing.nl (http://www.dutracing.nl)

[Jersey Tom]

Tire data is the way to do it *right*. And you'd design your suspension around it from the get go. This is the first year we've done it.

Otherwise... just pick an FSAE tire (Avon A45, Hoosier R25A, Goodyear D2692..) and go with it. TESTING is key. Find your best setup. Learn about that tire. Knowing what tire is potentially 'best' is worthless if you dont know how to use it. So learn your tire, tune your car and your static setup.

The next year, assuming your car is 'the same', you can try a different tire and see if its better.

Its either extensive testing, or extensive numerical analysis coupled with extensive testing.

[PatClarke]

Hi Samo,

I just looked in my thesarus for alternate meanings for 'cogent'.
The results were..
Convincing
Forceful
Strong
Well argued
Logical
Rational
Coherent
Sound

So, pick any of them to describe your argument and I will be happy.

Regards
Pat