Rain Tires

[Conor]

Everyone knows that buying two sets of wheels is very expensive. Have any teams competed with only one set of wheels and switched to their rains when necessary? The reason I ask is because I saw the Goodyear truck at competition last year, but I'm unsure of whether they were there to help people switch their rubbers or just for promotion reasons. It'd be nice to save some money on wheels...

[Conor]

Everyone knows that buying two sets of wheels is very expensive. Have any teams competed with only one set of wheels and switched to their rains when necessary? The reason I ask is because I saw the Goodyear truck at competition last year, but I'm unsure of whether they were there to help people switch their rubbers or just for promotion reasons. It'd be nice to save some money on wheels...

[FryGuy]

The goodyear and hoosier are both on site and have tires for sale. They will also mount and balance them. The only thing to look out for is that their inventory is subject to availability so they do run out of certain sizes/compounds. I remember last year goodyear was taking slicks and cutting treads by hand because they ran out of rain tires.

[Garlic]

I'd highly recommend getting a set of rain wheels.

In Detroit the rain can come quickly, and the wrong tires will kill your chances to score well. It takes time to change tires over and get them on the car, and it's time you may not have to spare.

If money is tight get some cheap heavy wheels for your rain tires. If you have time you can always swap the rains to your good wheels, but have an out if time is tight.

[Conor]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by Garlic:
I'd highly recommend getting a set of rain wheels.

In Detroit the rain can come quickly, and the wrong tires will kill your chances to score well. It takes time to change tires over and get them on the car, and it's time you may not have to spare.

If money is tight get some cheap heavy wheels for your rain tires. If you have time you can always swap the rains to your good wheels, but have an out if time is tight. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

Money is already tight that we've had to compromise to a set of steel racing wheels vs aluminum wheels. Buying a second set is just going to be too much money for our team. Boy it'd be nice to have a rich program... hooray for steel wheels. As long as tires can be re-mounted at competition, we can just pay attention to the forecast and plan accordingly. It will help that we're only a couple hours from Detroit...

[Biggy72]

If you're running 4x100 on 13" rims you can always get a set of front wheel drive steel rims. If nobody in the club has them for snow tires or anything you can always pick up a set from a junk yard.

[JHarshbarger]

Whatever you do, I highly recommend finding a extra set for rain tires or just have rain tires mounted on your wheels until you are sure it is going to be dry. More often than not, it rains in Detroit at the competition (which I assume is the competiton you're going to). Last year we lost our chance to compete in the first two dynamic events because it took about 3 hours to get our rain tires swapped on to our wheels, plus the $20 it cost us. We're definitely going to have wheels for our rain tires this year. They may not be nice wheels, but they'll get us through those two events.

[Parker]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by Biggy72:
If you're running 4x100 on 13" rims you can always get a set of front wheel drive steel rims. If nobody in the club has them for snow tires or anything you can always pick up a set from a junk yard. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

The problem with using these steel wheels, as well as most other OEM supplied wheels is the fact that most teams will build an upright that is made to fit inside a forged rim. Most OEM wheels have a different (read smaller) inner profile.

[Conor]

I think we'll probably do our best to find some crappy extra wheels, but we're running a 4x110 bolt pattern because we're using ATV hubs in the rear because we couldn't find a place that cuts internal splines so we could custom make our hubs. Funny how one problem opens an entire case of others. Either way, if we can't find an extra set of rims, we'll probably just mount the wets until the weather clears up. Atleast we can still compete with the wets mounted.

[Biggy72]

The front wheel drive rims have quite a bit of offset, and then if they don't fit all you need to do is put wheel spacers behind it to push it away from the hub. This may mess with the scrub radius some, but you can still get it close.

[JerryLH3]

If you're running ATV hubs, Douglas wheels are cheap. They should have what you need, at least in 10", as that's what we use. We had Douglas wheels last year. Pretty? No. Did it get the job done? Yes.

But as Joel already stated, we only had one set of wheels so we missed two events. I'm not sure why we only had one set of possibly the cheapest wheels available. Oh, well, it's our fault.

[Conor]

Jerry,

Thanks for the heads up, that's very appreciated. We're running 13"s and actually found some relatively cheap steel 13"s with the 4x110 pattern we're looking for at www.diamondracingwheels.com (http://www.diamondracingwheels.com). I haven't called the company yet, but the pricing looks pretty good.

[Biggy72]

If you don't need much in the way of backspacing generally this place has the best deals I've ever found for steel wheels, but it looks like you will have to call them to find out if they've got a 4x110 bolt pattern. http://www.petepaulsen.com/

[Aaron Bailey]

Just get a set of heavy, crappy wheels for the rain, you can only go so fast in the rain http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_smile.gif

[Conor]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by Aaron Bailey:
Just get a set of heavy, crappy wheels for the rain, you can only go so fast in the rain http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_smile.gif </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

"You can only go so fast in the rain".... Haha, I never really thought about it like that... but very true, very very true...

[Parker]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by Aaron Bailey:
Just get a set of heavy, crappy wheels for the rain, you can only go so fast in the rain http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_smile.gif </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

Says who? Murphy? http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_razz.gif