Did You Know - Tires Edition

Here's Why Tires Are Black

“Original tires had a lighter shade because of the natural color of rubber,” a company representative told me. “Carbon black [a fine manufactured soot] was added to the rubber compound in [circa 1917] and produced a tenfold increase in wear resistance.” 

This increased longevity is confirmed by award-winning chemical engineer Jack Koenig, who says in his book Spectroscopy of Polymers that a tire without carbon black would last “less than 5,000 miles.” Consider that most tires are driven between 12,000 and 15,000 miles a year, and are meant to last three or four years or more, and you get how low that was.
 
The Michelin spokesperson went on, saying carbon black represents about a quarter to 30 percent of the composition of the rubber used in tires today, and in addition to making them more wear resistant, the material that gives tires their black color is also good at protecting tires against ultraviolet rays that can cause cracking, and it also improves grip and general road handling.

(Jalopnik.com)

Never Skip Leg Days

(CavemanCircus.com)

This Is A Good Read

The Radial Tire Lesson for Silicon Valley 

Smartphones and computers last longer than ever. Can their makers adapt? 

In the 1980s and ’90s, technology was changing so fast that a new computer was almost disposable. You upgraded every few years. But as innovation slowed, they lasted longer, which meant fewer people buying computers.

Bill Gates was worried about this all the way back in 1991. “When radial tires were invented,” he said in an interview, “people didn’t start driving their cars a lot more, and so that means the need for production capacity went way down, and things got all messed up. The tire industry is still messed up.”

During the dot-com boom, Mr. Gates invoked the analogy again. “Every time I read about optic fibers or wireless, I say to myself, ‘Wow, that sounds like radial tires,’ ” he said. “When they got radial tires did people drive four times as much just because the tires lasted longer? No, the industry shrank.”

That fear has come true. When was the last time you upgraded your PC? Exactly. They run and run. Sales of personal computers peaked in 2011 at 365 million. Five years later, only 260 million shipped, down almost 30%. Tech companies continue to post relentless performance increases and cost improvements, except they show up elsewhere—in cloud computing, artificial intelligence and speech recognition.

It’s true that tablet computers caused some of the PC’s decline, but they’ve peaked, too. Steve Jobs introduced the iPad in 2010. Sixty-eight million were sold in 2014. Last year Apple moved barely 45 million, down a third. The company is on pace to sell even fewer this year. These tablets don’t wear out, and the new ones don’t have enough additional features or applications to entice users to upgrade. It’s a radial tire.

(WSJ.com)

If You Think About it

(BroBible.com)

If You Ain't Rubbin', You Ain't Low Enough

(SpeedHunters.com)

Wider Than The Z/28's 305's, Not Quite As Wide As The GT3 RS' 325's

The Dodge Demon's massive drag tires are just barely street legal 

Custom tires cover 18- by 11-inch wheels.

That wheel and tire combo, meant to fill out the Demon's new wide wheel arches, is frankly impressive. Lightweight 18- by 11-inch wheels are wrapped in special Demon branded Nitto NT05R tires measuring an astounding 315/40R18 at all four corners. Not only does that trump the old Camaro Z/28's 305 section tires, it makes the Demon the first production car to come equipped from the factory with drag radials, claims Dodge. Presumably, the goal with the Demon is to provide enough power and grip to rotate the Earth underneath the car rather than propelling the car itself down a dragstrip.

(AutoBlog.com)

Helpful Tips - Buying Your Car Some New Shoes Edition

8 Things to Know Before Upgrading Your Wheels and Tires

1. Where Rubber Meets Road

• All those letters and numbers on the side of the tire? Well, they mean some pretty important stuff. Take a 215/55R16 93H, for example, the smallest tire available on the current-generation Honda Civic sedan. That means the tire has a section width (the distance from sidewall to sidewall) of 215 millimeters, an aspect ratio of 55 (because the sidewall measures 55 percent of the section width), a radial construction (hence the ‘R’) and an interior diameter designed to fit on a 16-inch wheel. The 93 represents the load index, or the amount of weight the tire can support, while the ‘H’ is a speed rating, meaning it’s good for 130 mph.

2. Hub Size Hubbub

• When it comes to wheels, it’s about more than just diameter and width, and your vehicle’s bolt pattern can be the difference between wheels that fit and ones that don’t. Sure, a 16-inch wheel with a five-lug bolt pattern may seem simple, but hub sizes vary greatly depending on make and model. Picture the bolt pattern as a circle measured at the center of each wheel stud. A bolt pattern of 5×100, then, would mean five wheel studs with a diameter of 100 millimeters. Make sure you check out this number before you sign the dotted line.

5. Size Matters

• When it comes to price, that is. As the diameter of the wheel increases, so does the price, though generally in manageable increments. Where the move to a larger wheelset really sneaks up on your wallet is when it comes to tires. Unlike wheels, tires can cost a great deal as the size increases, easily pushing beyond $500 a tire, depending on make and model.

Complete list (AutoGuide.com)

Track Use

F1 tire after a race

(CavemanCircus.com)

Some Of F1's 2016's Numbers

PIRELLI’S HOSPITALITY IN 2016

• Meals served within Pirelli’s hospitality unit (including tests): 15,600
• Litres of water drunk in Pirelli’s hospitality during the year: 10,200
• Kilograms of pasta cooked by Pirelli’s chef: 900
• Pizzas cooked by Pirelli’s chef: 420
• Number of different dessert recipes prepared at Pirelli’s Hospitality unit: 50 
• Desserts eaten at Pirelli’s hospitality: 7,500
• Coffees served at Pirelli’s: almost 30,000
• Litres of olive oil used during the year: 500

TIRES

• Total number of tires supplied in 2016: 42,792
• Of these, 38,112 were supplied for race weekends and 4,680 for testing
• Of the 42,792 tires, 28,188 were slicks and 14,604 were rain or intermediate tires
• Total number of tires used during race weekends: 15,652, of which 13,844 were slick tires and 1,808 were rain or intermediates
• Total number of tires that were recycled: all
• Maximum number of kilometres driven on each compound (excluding tests):
  Hard: 759 km (Daniel Ricciardo, Red Bull)
  Medium: 3,597 km (Valtteri Bottas, Williams)
  Soft: 6,566 km (Sergio Perez, Force India)
  Supersoft: 4,598 km (Valtteri Bottas, Williams)
  Ultrasoft: 2,052 km (Nico Rosberg, Mercedes)
  Intermediate: 444 km (Jenson Button, McLaren)
  Wet: 523km (Lewis Hamilton, Mercedes)

(Jalopnik.com)

Oh Tire Tree, Oh Tire Tree

(BroBible.com)

Did You Know - Wheels & Tires Edition

Things Every Self-Respecting Car Buff Should Know

It's not the tires' size that counts, it's how you use them

• It stands to reason that wider tires give you more grip. If you as a driver don't know how to take advantage of that grip, though, or if your car's suspension isn't prepared for it, you're wasting much of a great tire's potential. Think of the tires as one part of an overall system that needs to be in balance with itself. You wouldn't use a store-bought marinade packet on a prime NY strip any more than you'd pull out the fancy China for chili dogs.

But the same isn't true of wheel diameter

• Wider wheels can enable wider tires, but larger-diameter wheels very rarely provide an actual performance benefit. And that's perfectly fine. So long as you buy larger-diameter wheels for show, not performance or ride comfort, do what you want.

(Thrillist.com)

Pirelli Is Really Trying To Push Their Brand

Trans AM Championship has a new sponsor and it’s Pirelli

World famous tire maker is associated with more than a few car brands and is being one of the world’s most recognizable brands itself. Now, after association with Formula 1, Pirelli is bringing its name to another racing championship. The one in question is the Trans Am Championship, as you can tell from the headline.

This sponsorship is not all that’s new with Pirelli because just a few days ago they announced that their lineup will be enriched by quite a few products. Some of these are P Zero products that are intended for luxury cars, sports cars, sedans and for high-performance vehicles. Most of the attention by Pirelli was focused on durability, overall safety, noise, and handling, especially in wet conditions.

(AutoSpies.com)

A Lot Of People Would Like To Know, Too

What The Hell Is Pirelli Doing In Formula One?

What the hell is Pirelli doing in F1?

“We want to do F1 because its popularity places it as the number one motorsport category and it’s seen as the pinnacle of motorsport. For our brand positioning, as a prestige brand supplier, that makes a lot of sense. It’s also pushed us in ways we couldn’t have imagined when we entered F1 in 2011.”

How does Pirelli’s involvement with F1 translate to their street car business?

“The main benefit is the increase in simulation work that goes on with our tire design, particularly in the area of structural design. We use simulation in the analysis of our new tire models and how they work with various manufacturers cars. It’s the exact same simulations we use in F1 and the road car business is going very much in that direction as it looks for decreased development times. Honestly I envisage in 10 years time that probably all types of tires for road cars will be developed exclusively in this manner. F1 helps us to be at the leading edge of that.

Using simulation for development also means when you actually put the wheels on the ground of a new vehicle, that you get a tire that is very close or is much closer too what the final product is going to be therefore reducing both times and costs.

So our involvement in F1 does have a lot of benefits that are genuine technology boosts that translate to the road car. That’s not a marketing line. I won’t tell you that you can bolt on the set of F1 tires on your street car and go faster, but there are aspects of our top of the line street tire (the Trofeo R) that we were using seven or eight years ago in GT racing.

(Jalopnik.com)

Apparently They Have A Need For Them

World's most expensive tires sold in Dubai

Dubai is known for its extremely opulent rides. It makes sense, then, that a set of diamond encrusted, gold leafed tires, certified last month by Guinness World Records as the "world's most expensive tires", would be sold in the desert mega city.

According to Gulf News, Dubai's Z Tyre partnered with China's Sentury Tire to produce a one-of-a-kind set of performance tires to "Celebrate and recognize the true worth of its range of high performance tires". Starting with a set of four Z1 high performance tires, Z Tyre sent the rubber to Italy, where artisan jewelers studded them with specially chosen diamonds. The tires were then sent to Abu Dhabi, where they were covered in gold leaf by the same craftsmen involved in building of the new royal palace there. Once back in Dubai, the tires sold for $600,000 (2.2 million Dubai dirhams).

"We've always treasured the outstanding skills and dedication involved in developing our Z Tyre range so we thought what better way to celebrate this achievement than with a record-breaking special set of tires especially commissioned for a unique buyer," Harjeev Kandhari, CEO of Z Tyres, told Gulf News. Kandhari also stated that Z Tyres is donating the proceeds from the tire sale to charity.

"In keeping with the spirit of the holy month of Ramadan, Z Tyres will donate all profits from the $600,000 sale to the Zenises Foundation, which focuses on improving access to education across the world."

(AutoBlog.com)

I've Always Wondered How They Did This

This is how you change a tire on an off-road dump truck

The heavy tire needs a strong hydraulic arm to lift it off the rim.

(AutoBlog.com)