After my first DE, I'm interested in making relatively easy changes going forward that will make my car even better on the track.

What do people here think of replacing Michelin PS2s with PS Cups when the PS2s wear out? (8k on them now.)

I read the reviews on TireRack of the PS Cup, but the reviews weren't very enlightening.

Any really positive or negative experiences?

 

Race tires on the street is usually a bad idea unless you are only traveling a very short distance. They will not last very long mileage wise for sure. The most significant ding is that they are so soft that they will throw every little gravel, pebble, sand grain etc onto the paint and destroy the finish around your wheel wells. The softer compound will also hold junk and let it work deeper into the rubber and make the tires more prone to dammage than a normal road going tire. I used the sport cups on my racecar for a while and found them to be very durable as a race tire. They are not as sticky as the Hoosiers that I am using now but had a good life span. I also am not familiar with the life cycle of the Sport cups but they # of times that the Pilot sports can be heat cycled and maintain good grip is fairly short. About 17 heat cycles on my Viper was the life span of the Pilot Sports. Lap times would fall about 1s on average after the 17 cycles were completed. Race tires are very sensative to how they are stored and used/ heat cycled. If you want maximum performance out of your race tires you probably need an extra set of wheels to mount them on so that you can season them properly and get the maximum number of heat cycles out of them and extend the life of your rubber investment. Good luck. My advise is if you want to take it to the next level and start using real race type tires you need to get another set of wheels and plan on towing your car and wheels to the events. Use street tires on the street the lack of grip keeps your speeds more sane on public roads anyway.

 

Have them on my turbo. They are awful when cold, amazing once warmed up. They are like glue to every small piece of debris on the road. As long as its not raining, I say get them.

 

i have a set of 235/305 pilot Cups w/ 1500 miles for 1/2 price if you want to give them a try.

http://i35.photobucket.com/albums/d1...oro/ooc002.jpg

 

Cups will not heat up in AutoX fast enough. Also the 19" cups are not the real Cups rubber compound anyway as are same rubber as a PS2.

 

After 2 sets of cups for the track I am moving on to Hoosiers for thedry and I will run my PS2's in the rain. I find them great in the dry warm days, but anything else they aren't great. They are also expensive, if you want a good streetable R Comp that works well in wet and dry, I have heard that the Toyo 888 is a good solution. I haven't tried it, but I am sure some one will chime in with more feedback.

 

NorthVan, you won't be let down by the Hoosiers. The amount of grip is amazing! Hope you find them to be so as well. They have a pretty strict protocol for making them last well though. Two sets of wheels minimum to make it work best. They want you to go out and slowly work into full pace laps. Take 4 laps to work up to pace then two or three full speed laps. Then Pull the wheels off the car and set them on their sides for a full 24 hrs. This really extends the life of the tires and keeps the grip from falling off for a long time. Make sure you store the wheels in a dark climate controlled area as well. Best to black bag them if you can too. This stuff really makes a difference in laptimes. More of a diff than all the HP and suspension mods combined in alot of cases.

 

The only concern that I have is that I have seen that the number of Heat Cycles will determine the life of the tires (not the tread depth). I have three sets of wheels, so I would not have a problem with the proper break in procedure.

 

That is exactly correct! The number of heat cycles will determine when the tires are functionally useless before the tread wears thin in most cases. I have 3 sets of wheels, and use the third set for rains. You can have the guys at Hoosier take your older practice tires and groove them into intermediates and get your rains cheaply too! You can have a set of practice tires that are older and a set of fresher tires that are really fast for when it counts. The best tires should be used for qualification. If you don't break in the tires properly they don't hold up. I had a set that I ran through in a weekend once due to a destructive track surface and my lack of preparation on break in. I was really late getting to the track and had no time to get prepped so I put on the new tires, and just left them on the whole weekend (long story). They were shot at the end of the enduro on Sunday. Too expensive to do that again!

 

So once you break in your Hooisers, how many heat cycles do you get out of a set? How many hours?

 

you might want to look at the nitto NT01 "if" you insist on driving them on the street. the advantage here is that they come with more tread than any other race tire I've seen but have a good design so they don't chunk. (making them about the most streetable non-street tire)

I run PS cups on my E30 track car and love them, but even if money was no object, they're just not for the street.

 

I don't know exactly how many cycles you get out of the Hoosiers. I think it depends on how well or poorly you are driving, ambient heat, setup, track surface, Length of sessions, and much more I suspect. The Hoosiers last pretty well if you break them in properly. I can get 2 weekends out of a set no problem before they start to fall off on laptimes. I think that some people do better than I do. I usually do a Friday test and tune then Saturday and Sunday racing in a weekend. If you figure 3 hrs/ day (2 one half hour sessions AM and two or three PM seems normal) and 6 days use... roughly 18 hrs of track time and 30 cycles is the lifespan I have seen. This is based on 5 sessions/day and 2 weekends. I use a Hot Lap timer and can watch my laptimes as I go. The tires will start to go away and it feels like you are driving harder (car is sliding more) but the laptimes get longer. This is the point that the tires are beyond their prime or just simply too hot at the moment. Sometimes you can go out for another session on tires that slowed down considerably when really hot and improve on previous times, usually once they have gotten to that really hot and greasy point they will never be the same at maximum grip. That is why the newer tires are better to qualify on. You may need to over drive sometimes in a race to get the job done, not good for the lifespan of the tires. Ultimately that over driving makes for slower oveall laptimes too, thus the less grippy tires are usually fine to race on. My Pilot Sport Streets on an 01 Viper were good for 17 cycles so the Hoosiers do better than those.

 

Thanks for the feed back. I have heard horror stories of the tires only lasting for 3 or 4 cycles. I guess those are on Cole Trickle's car!

I am looking forward to the first full day on the R6's