If they are bias ply take a tape measure and get a pair that are the same size and use the same compound on both size. When we ran our stock car on road courses we used the same tires we did on ovals but either ran the same harder compound on both sides (Watkins Glen), or reversed them and put the harder compound on the left and softer on the right (Lime Rock) and they worked fine. Radials generally don't have as much variation so stagger isn't as much of an issue but with bias tires you can end up with quite a bit. If you buy mail order and don't get to measure them ahead of time and find you end up with a set where you have a lot of stagger put the two closest in size on the drive axle and put the other two on the non driven axle where the difference in size won't matter as much. Also when measuring unmounted, uninflated tires measure close to the shoulder as that will be more consistent than measuring near the center.
In reply to Wall-e:
Good advice. We are using takeoffs. All same size and compound, but i need to confirm they actually are.
alfadriver wrote:
One of the vintage racing tips I was told was that Hoosier dirt tires make excellent rain tires on an Alfa.
That's true. The BMW CCA guys I know run Hoosier "Dirt Stockers" as their full-wet tires. They're supposed to run DOT-R tires in those classes, so I'm not sure how they get away with it.
In my case, I don't need to have a DOT-approved tire, so full-slicks are technically OK.
In reply to Dusterbd13:
Our spec tires used to be McCrearys. They had three compounds and one size. As soon as they opened the trucks we'd start hunting for sets with a tape measure and durometer. You could find several inches of stager and it wasn't uncommon to get "hard" tires as soft or softer than "soft" tires. The teams close to their warehouse would spend a day picking tires as they came in which was a bit of an advantage over those of us that had to sort through what wa left at the track.
