They’re slicks, just like race cars use! That must mean they’re super grippy, right?
Yes, until it rains.
Yes. There’s more rubber touching the road, therefore more grip.
^/s
Drive a little more and you’ll have METAL tires which are the BEST!
I’m not proud to admit it, but that is pretty close to how my tires were last week. I finally swapped them out, but even with my employee discount i was looking at almost $700 for a set of four. Tires are expensive, and you often dont realize how bad they have gotten until it is too late. Even finding used tires is difficult these days.
That being said, going from exposed wires to fresh tires is amazing. I got in my car and immediately noticed i was sitting 3 inches higher, and it’s wonderful driving a car that actually grips the road instead of just sitting on top of them.
700$!? Where are you located that tires are this expensive? Here in Austria they are between 40€-80€ per 1 tire.
A new set of 4 tires plus alignment for my compact crossover is about $900-930 in the US.
40 Euro for a tire? Is that stolen and/or used?
I paid $700 2 years ago for tires for my SUV. SUV tires are a bit more expensive - but they’re still not cheap for sedans. I’m in the USA.
Lol. Why pay extra for an SUV? It’s like throwing money away. You can easily get sedan tires under $100.
For all those wandering if these are slick (racing) tires, it doesn’t look like it. You can clearly see the grooves worn out (bottom left) and the threads through the rubber on the left, indicating extremely worn out tires. I’m curious though as to how anyone would get their tires in this shape before a safety inspection would have made it mandatory to change them.
Many states (and presumably many countries) done have safety inspections. In the Midwest there are tons of old vehicles that would never pass an inspection out on the road
Is that because regulations are for commies, or there’s some Big Road Traffic Accident lobby profiting off people dying in shitboxes? What possible reason is there to allow such an obvious death trap on the road?
There’s a combination of anti-regulation sentiments and poverty. Rural towns in particular have a lot of old ass beaters driving around and people don’t have the income to fix or replace those vehicles. But yeah, that’s also where you get a lot of the “gub’ment can take it from my cold dead hands” types of attitudes, even (especially?) when it’s for the safety and well-being of people. Hell people fought restaurant smoking laws up until the early 2010’s, and some states still have no helmet law for motorcycles.
Wondering**
Just put them in tire warmers every morning for 20 minutes. That’ll do.
Combine with brakes worn down to the calipers on rotors directly and you’re facing the final boss on hard mode for the prize of life
This is just driving on hard mode.
/s no don’t do this, this is so dangerous.
How the fuck do the tires even pick up the road at that point 😂
Driving on the free way?? Christ on a bike
Cars on race tracks use bald tyres for more contact with the road, which gives better grip. The tread is there to guide water out so the car doesn’t slide in the wet.
Unfortunately it looks like the image is of a car with bald tyres in the wet (I’m assuming that’s why it’s shiny).
I think the car might have been parked overnight because it looks like there’s a layer of ice coating the tire. Talk about hard mode, now every street is an ice level!
Also worth noting though that the main reason race cars are able to get more grip with slick tires is because the tires are made to have a very low melting (?) point. So they heat up very quickly and also don’t last very long as a result. But that heating up allows them to literally stick to the ground. Normal car tires ain’t doing that for sure.
Man I just went down a rabbit hole and no one can agree on car tyres. It seems you’re right about special racing tyres that melt and attach to the road (after warm up laps), but no one can agree on whether bald car tyres in the dry have more grip than treaded ones (in ideal conditions). For sure, wet, snow, sand, gravel, etc. You want the tread, which is pretty much every public road since they are not swept perfectly clean and smooth. But I could not find an answer to whether bald tyres grip the road better. People say they don’t, which is why racing cars use slicks, but that’s not proof, even if bald tyres grip better they would still use soft tyres for even better grip.
I found reddit threads with engineers saying one thing and other engineers saying they are wrong. Racing forums with non-engineers saying the soft slicks are the reason for grip and bald regular car tyres have less grip. No one can back up their claims.
It’s obvious that it’s a bad idea to drive on bald tyres because the road is always an imperfect surface, but I can’t even find a hypothetical answer to the question with any confidence.
I ended up here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tire_model
In current vehicle simulator models, the tire model is the weakest and most difficult part to simulate
I guess we don’t really know the answer, that would explain why it’s so hard to find 😆
We’re also looking for a very generic answer to a (probably) more nuanced problem
Using f1 as an example (Because every series will use a different tyre) across the five different compounds used 100-110°c seems to be the range for optimal grip.
If you could get a normal road tyre to that temp it would just fall apart.
Oooo learn somethin new every day, thanks for sharing your knowledge ❤️
The knobs on tires are so that water has a way to escape when a car drives over it. A completely flat Tyre has the most traction but can’t handle rain. Every day Tires have a mix to handle all conditions. I may be wrong but I remember hearing this in a youtube video
Racing slicks at home:
Isn’t this pretty much optimal on dry surfaces? The patterns in the tires are for draining away water, and nothing else. I mean, look at F1 tires for dry roads.
But the tiniest splash of water will send you on a rotational journy into what’s straight ahead.
You’re sliding all the way to god on those bad boys
It’s time for a tire regroove! Tire shops will hate you.
Image Transcription: Twitter Posts
Redacted
I’m assuming this mean change the tire??
[A photograph of a tire on a motor vehicle. The tire is completely smooth looking and shiny.]
Memezar, @meme_zar
The fact that you’re still alive is astounding
TBH, that’s not a bad wear pattern, aside from being as bald a cue ball. The alignment, balance, and inflation are all pretty good, the tire is just completely shot. Most of the time you’ll see pretty bad wear patterns on tires that are allowed to go that far, because people that can’t afford tires usually can’t afford alignments either.
They must be somewhere that doesn’t salt and maintains its roads.
Does such a mystical place exist?
Probably somewhere that doesn’t snow or freeze over, and thus has reasonable maintenance costs. It’s mainly ice that breaks up the roads, after all. Normal wear and tear will do it too, of course, but water freezing and expanding in the cracks makes the problem exponentially worse every time.
