Grooved 10in Hoosier

[mmalinowski]

Hello Everyone,

My team is interested in purchasing a set of 10in, LC0 compound, Hoosier tires and having them grooved for intermediate/damp track use. I have tried contacting people in Hoosier's road racing and circle asphalt departments and asking for contact information to someone who would be approved to cut a pattern in their tires, but I have been unsuccessful.

I am very interested in discussing how to go about determining the specific groove pattern to be cut on a tire for a desired application, as I am unable to find any literature on it outside of how to cut grooves / sipes in tires intended for dirt use. I imagine that it is a fine compromise between moving the water underneath the tire, the tire's temperature and its wear rate.

I was wondering if any of the teams out there who are using custom grooved 10in Hoosiers would be kind enough to share their supplier's/groove cutter's contact information with me?

[Will M]

Good question.
We always got ours cut at competition.
Be warned, there is always a big line.

-William

[Zac]

Honestly you really aren't going to change the tread pattern's ability to evacuate water too much no matter what your design looks like. A boring lug pattern vs the swoppy design on the discontinued Goodyear intermediates will have roughly the same performance if the void volume is the same. The trade off you're trying to balance is having enough void volume to starve off hydroplanning but not so much that your mechanical grip goes to heck.

As far as getting a vendor to carve it up, any race tire distributor should be setup to do it. Comp tire is located at MIS so even if they don't have a trailer setup they should be able to help you out.

[Adambomb]

Originally posted by Zac:
Honestly you really aren't going to change the tread pattern's ability to evacuate water too much no matter what your design looks like. A boring lug pattern vs the swoppy design on the discontinued Goodyear intermediates will have roughly the same performance if the void volume is the same. The trade off you're trying to balance is having enough void volume to starve off hydroplanning but not so much that your mechanical grip goes to heck.


I saw an article in 4 Wheel and Off Road magazine a few years ago that looked at a bunch of different tread patterns. Their conclusion was that there really wasn't much to be gained in a gee-whiz tread design. For what it's worth, these tires have a tread pattern that is Parnelli Jones' initials, and I hear they work great in the mud.

http://www.offroaders.com/tech/AT-MT-Tires/images/pj-zoom.jpg

The overall findings were that the most important factors are, as mentioned, overall void ratio in the contact patch and overall perimeter in the contact patch (although I'm sure that can even be broken down into lateral and longitudinal components).

Vee pattern tires seem to work fairly well in water; not knowing anything else I'd go with that while considering void ratio based on compound and temperature and trying to get more effective perimeter/"biting edges" while avoiding chunking.