In reply to Nashco:
Who made those fine skinny tires, and what wheel width do you have them on.
In reply to Nashco:
Who made those fine skinny tires, and what wheel width do you have them on.
They're Continental ContiEcoContacts but a few companies make them now. I have them mounted on 15x4 wheels. More info here:
http://www.insightcentral.net/forums/modifications-technical-issues/20256-finding-tires-better-fuel-economy-range.html
Bryce
In reply to Nashco:
Your front license plate frame robbed you of about 9 ounces and 4mpgs man....
yamaha wrote: In reply to Nashco: Your front license plate frame robbed you of about 9 ounces and 4mpgs man....
Nah, I fixed that too. 
Bryce
federal makes some performance oriented itty bitty tire sizes, stumbled onto those while looking for festiva tires. Like 155/65/13's and such.
I didn't realize it when I bought it, but 145/80r12's are getting extremely hard to find.
In reply to Nashco:
I'm going to offer a counter opinion. My Locost is far, far more fun on sticky tires. On slippery ones, it's an unhappy beastie that just can't use the chassis.
However, one of the most entertaining cars I've driven on our local track was our supercharged NC Miata with good suspension on a set of over-heat-cycled and gripless Kumho XS tires.
thestig99 wrote: I've been toying with the idea of going from 15x8 6UL's with 205/50 down to some 14x7 RPF1's with 185/60 on my Miata. What I have now just seems overkill, and they weight difference between those two setups (each using Star Spec tires) is like 8lbs...
If you are doing this, I would be extremely interested in buying your 6ULs, or trading these (15x7 Enkeis) plus some cash:
yamaha wrote: In reply to Nashco: Your front license plate frame robbed you of about 9 ounces and 4mpgs man....
in the ever increasing need for better miliage.. I wonder how soon most of the states that require a front plate will jetison them? Or even better.. go with a smaller plate like pre-EU Italy used to do
Keith Tanner wrote: I'm going to offer a counter opinion. My Locost is far, far more fun on sticky tires. On slippery ones, it's an unhappy beastie that just can't use the chassis. However, one of the most entertaining cars I've driven on our local track was our supercharged NC Miata with good suspension on a set of over-heat-cycled and gripless Kumho XS tires.
This illustrates the whole idea fairly well actually. Let's say there's a continuum of traction from "somewhere just north of ice" to "oh my god I'm going to tip over". Any particular car setup should work best somewhere along that traction continuum. The Locost sounds like it's so far up there that it never reaches the tip over point, so increasing grip is always good. The Miata is somewhere farther down the line.
Look at what rally cars do. They have different suspension setups if they are on snow or gravel or tarmac. In their case, they setup the car based on grip. In an ideal world, or one where fast lap times are the goal, this makes sense. First generate maximum grip, then set the car up for it. I'm thinking that in the real world it might make sense to adjust grip based on car setup. As long as you're operating with enough grip to be safe, it might just work. My gut feeling is that is what the BRZ/FRS has done. The word is that it's not fast, but it's brilliant.
There has to be some sort of Japanese philosophy of cars that deals with this. It seems like the sort of thing that they'd think about.
^ not just the japanese. I've spoken to one of the ride engineer's on a recent F150 project that complained about too much mechanical grip (on the Limited, specifically).
The funny thing is that my best way to describe the Miata on crap tires was that it felt like the Locost 
The Locost was all over the place on the slippery tires. No turn-in, no stability, no real controllability. Give it a set of good rubber and it becomes a scalpel.
I have to say that the V8 Miata on Toyo R1Rs is fine on the street and the rally stage, but on the track it's a bit of a liability as the tires heat up and turn into grease - then the car gets really twitchy and not really much fun to drive. Switch to RA1s in the same size and the chassis wakes up.
I'm thinking power/weight might have something to do with it.
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