Today we had an auto cross event in Gainesville, FL. I have a 99 civic with azenis. for some reason they seemed to work less and less each run. At first they were great but *** i ran they seemed to get less grip i ended up doing a 180 turn in the slalom's. how can i keep them working better?

 

Spray them down with some water after each run to keep them cool. Many autocrossers running Azenis in hot weather bring spray bottles with ice water to events for this purpose, because the Azenis are known to get "greasy" once they reach a certain temperature. Keeping them cool will keep the grip more consistent.

Or you could replace them with R-compounds if you aren't in STS

 

im in SM what tires are R-compound

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by GreenEX &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">Today we had an auto cross event in Gainesville, FL. I have a 99 civic with azenis. for some reason they seemed to work less and less each run. At first they were great but *** i ran they seemed to get less grip i ended up doing a 180 turn in the slalom's. how can i keep them working better?</TD></TR></TABLE>


This is not intended to be insulting at all, but your assessment of your experiences with your tires would suggest that you are a relatively inexperienced autocrosser. If this is the case, you may simply be overdriving the tires and/or misinterpreting their loss of grip as something wrong with the tires and not the driver. Keeping the front's cool with water can be helpful, but refraining from over driving them will go much further toward keeping them sticky.

 

You are correct! &lt;/ed mcmahon&gt;

Common novice mistake is to overdrive the front tires, especially on a FWD car. Slow is fast....

 

Kumho Victoracers, V700 and V710

Hoosier A3S03 and A3S04

There are other r-compounds but these are the most popular.

 

Another thing as you are tuning tires..

Check air pressure between each run..you may have to bleed them down. As your tire heats up it gains pressure and you lose contact patch..causing it to slide around.

In theory you will be able to find an optimum cold tire pressure that will work and you wont have to touch them...but that takes a long time..and it varries with air temp.

Either way..tires are where it all happens..you have to be able to manage them using air pressure (bleeding adding) the cold water trick...etc.

Jon K
http://www.seat-time.com

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by travis &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">


This is not intended to be insulting at all, but your assessment of your experiences with your tires would suggest that you are a relatively inexperienced autocrosser. If this is the case, you may simply be overdriving the tires and/or misinterpreting their loss of grip as something wrong with the tires and not the driver. Keeping the front's cool with water can be helpful, but refraining from over driving them will go much further toward keeping them sticky. </TD></TR></TABLE>

yes i am new at autocrossing but that day other people were having the same problem. Also like i said at first they gripped well but after a few runs it got worse. if it was overdriving the i would have also done it at first.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by GreenEX &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote"> if it was overdriving the i would have also done it at first.</TD></TR></TABLE>


Actually, overdriving produces the same pattern of heat and slip in tires as you are describing. I find that if I'm trying to catch someone on the track and I'm simply asking too much from the front tires they will reward me with a progressive fade over a couple of laps until they are gone. It's not an immediate thing and it can certainly show up in autocrosses (esp on Azenis).

 

oh ok thanks for that advice ill try do bring water and learn to try to not oversteer

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by Geratol &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">Kumho Victoracers, V700 and V710

Hoosier A3S03 and A3S04

There are other r-compounds but these are the most popular.</TD></TR></TABLE>

I'm not sure about that last statement, but I don't autocross; I do road courses, where these are not the most popular R compound tires.

Other R compound tires include:

Hoosier R3S03 and R3S04
Yokohama A032R (soft compound and hard compound)
Toyo RA-1
Michelin Pilot Sport Cup
Pirelli PZero Corso
Hankook Ventus Z211