School me on Baja T/A "project" tires

[Cleave]

Maybe I should've been more specific, when everyone asks about DOT vs. Non-DOT for use on their truck, most are worried about if it's safe to run non-DOT race tires, from a safety standpoint, race tires will hold up better than DOT tires for anything you throw at them, and just like any tire they will cause your vehicle to handle differently, so you obviously have to get used to the new handling characteristics

Of course they don't meet DOT ratings for tread depth or markings, but we all know they have less tread if we've seen one, and markings on the tire don't change the safety characteristics of that tire, and DOT has no criteria for tread pattern, only tread depth

I'm sure that if these tires can handle 250-1000 miles of the most grueling races on the planet, they can handle the strain of being daily driven 25-100 miles a day

 

[Boss Hoss]

I find that difficult to believe for big multi-national companies like BF Goodrich.

I think the real reason is that race tires (whether it be on or off road) use different rubber compounds and tread patterns that don't conform to DOT standards for passenger vehicles in daily use for all different weather conditions. Race tires are used for short durations in specific conditions....DOT approved tires need to conform to a wide variety of criteria over a longer service life.

Ahhhh we have someone on the right track here –no pun intended. Our young friend thinks that the non DOT tires are “from a safety standpoint, race tires will hold up better than DOT tires for anything you throw at them” is so far in the weeds he cannot see the sunshine above. Actually QUITE THE OPPOSITE IS TRUE!!

Continued heat cycling, operation at less than ideal air pressures, driving on -40 degree or 150 degree pavement for 24 hours at a time etc etc etc is much harder on a tread and the carcass over 40 or 50 thousand miles than running a couple of races….. Extensive testing is done to qualify a tire in order to be DOT certified--in fact if the PO PO pulls you over and notices your tires he can keep you there until you change them if you are on a public road. Worst part if you are in an accident--good luck with the lawsuit.. Insurance company will leave you high and dry and if you kill someone you just may go to prison.

The child will gain wisdom at some point I just hope he does not kill himself or someone else by his thinking lol.

 

[Cleave]

I can see your logic on heat cycling, but tires are heat cycled during races much more than in a drive to your job and back, and they're cycled at a much greater variation in temperature

I'm not completely sure why tire pressure came in since that's true for any tire and there's no reasoning in saying you can't run factory spec pressure in race tires

Who drives for 24 hours at a time frequently? Who drives for more than 1 hour at a time frequently? Which BFG Baja race tire is going to last 40-50 thousand miles?

Do you always avoid questions? I would still like to know what the manufacturers told you about why their race tires are not DOT approved

 

[jackrook]

I can see your logic on heat cycling, but tires are heat cycled during races much more than in a drive to your job and back, and they're cycled at a much greater variation in temperature I'm not completely sure why tire pressure came in since that's true for any tire and there's no reasoning in saying you can't run factory spec pressure in race tires Who drives for 24 hours at a time frequently? Who drives for more than 1 hour at a time frequently? Which BFG Baja race tire is going to last 40-50 thousand miles? Do you always avoid questions? I would still like to know what the manufacturers told you about why their race tires are not DOT approved

Some projects aren't dot approved. Generals aren't dot approved.

slowest member of WCPR

 

[Boss Hoss]

I can see your logic on heat cycling, but tires are heat cycled during races much more than in a drive to your job and back, and they're cycled at a much greater variation in temperature

I'm not completely sure why tire pressure came in since that's true for any tire and there's no reasoning in saying you can't run factory spec pressure in race tires

Who drives for 24 hours at a time frequently? Who drives for more than 1 hour at a time frequently? Which BFG Baja race tire is going to last 40-50 thousand miles?

Do you always avoid questions? I would still like to know what the manufacturers told you about why their race tires are not DOT approved

My God Man--hope you have a rich Daddy.... You have no idea--have you read what I have been posting? Jezzz the heat cycling that causes embrittlement is one in the same that the race tires use to get the tires to achieve optimum performance. Try one of those tires in an everyday summer environment here and they will be as hard as Chinese arithmetic and then guess what—when winter gets here they will be as slick as snot on a door knob and be very easy to puncture because of embrittlement. HOWEVER you need to research and find out what goes on during qualification testing of a tire but you already have made your all encompassing statement.

In short---the race non DOT are designed to operate within a very narrow operational and performance window. They do not have to last for 30, 40, 50 or 60k miles. They will not operate on public roads where one could blow out and cause death and destruction. Sorry to have been a little hard on you but jezzz you are dumb to say what you did with no research or experience in the matter.

 

[SDHQJASON]

There is so much bad information in this thread it is making my head hurt.

Do NOT buy Non-DOT Tires for a truck you plan on driving daily. They were not designed for it and never will be.

Race tires do not meet or exceed DOT standards and they never will.

Race tires do not have a harder compound than DOT tires.

They will NOT last as long or wear as well as DOT Tires.

etc, etc, etc...

 

[Cleave]

For the average person a tire on their vehicle is half cycled once per vehicle startup, they start at ambient temperature and due to friction are gradually raised to about 120-130 degrees max, during a normal drive they then vary plus or minus 5 degrees from that temperature, when the vehicle is parked the tire then returns to ambient temperature over a course of time so long that it is not a complete "heat cycling" for the tire

On a race vehicle a tire is cycled from ambient temperature to about 200 degrees, from there the temperature can cycle up and down over 100 degrees above and back down to that 200 degrees, and the cycling is much more rapid than the half cycle experienced by passenger vehicle tires

You can raise and then lower the temperature of something by 100+ degrees without damaging it's structure if you complete that cycle over a few minutes, but if you raise and then lower the temperature of that same object by 50 degrees over the course of less than a second, it's structure will be compromised

Under the circumstances of race tires vs. street tires, the race tires are cycled 100+ degrees over the course of a few seconds repeatedly for hours on end, the street tires are cycled on average about 40 degrees over the course of a few minutes on average once every 12 hours, the principles of heat cycling are the same no matter what the compound is, the effects of heat cycling experienced by passenger vehicle tires are minimal to non-existant, the effects of heat cycling experienced by the race tire will be exponentially greater than those experienced by the passenger tire

Finally, the comparatively insignificant heat cycling of passenger vehicle tires up to 120-130 degrees allows them to become porous enough to absorb oils from the road but not so porous that they lose their own oils, improving tire life, basically hydrating the tire, embrittlement is caused by tires becoming sunbaked, which causes the oils in the tire to leave it, dehydrating the tire, dehydrated tires are just like dehydrated humans, allow the dehydration to progress past a certain point, and the tire/person will die

 

[Jordan@Apollo-Optics]

For the average person a tire on their vehicle is half cycled once per vehicle startup, they start at ambient temperature and due to friction are gradually raised to about 120-130 degrees max, during a normal drive they then vary plus or minus 5 degrees from that temperature, when the vehicle is parked the tire then returns to ambient temperature over a course of time so long that it is not a complete "heat cycling" for the tire

On a race vehicle a tire is cycled from ambient temperature to about 200 degrees, from there the temperature can cycle up and down over 100 degrees above and back down to that 200 degrees, and the cycling is much more rapid than the half cycle experienced by passenger vehicle tires

You can raise and then lower the temperature of something by 100+ degrees without damaging it's structure if you complete that cycle over a few minutes, but if you raise and then lower the temperature of that same object by 50 degrees over the course of less than a second, it's structure will be compromised

Under the circumstances of race tires vs. street tires, the race tires are cycled 100+ degrees over the course of a few seconds repeatedly for hours on end, the street tires are cycled on average about 40 degrees over the course of a few minutes on average once every 12 hours, the principles of heat cycling are the same no matter what the compound is, the effects of heat cycling experienced by passenger vehicle tires are minimal to non-existant, the effects of heat cycling experienced by the race tire will be exponentially greater than those experienced by the passenger tire

Finally, the comparatively insignificant heat cycling of passenger vehicle tires up to 120-130 degrees allows them to become porous enough to absorb oils from the road but not so porous that they lose their own oils, improving tire life, basically hydrating the tire, embrittlement is caused by tires becoming sunbaked, which causes the oils in the tire to leave it, dehydrating the tire, dehydrated tires are just like dehydrated humans, allow the dehydration to progress past a certain point, and the tire/person will die

If you want to run a non-DOT tire, go for it. For every other person out there, you are opening yourself to some very, very serious liability and God help you if you get in an accident. It doesn't have to even be caused by a tire failure. You rear end somebody, or even you get T-*****, any lawyer with half a brain will be able to throw that little tid bit out to the Judge about you running Non-DOT tires and you'll be sunk. If you want non-DOT tires, have them on a set of wheels that's used specifically for off-roading that way you minimize any of your potential liability. I'd hate to see somebody from FRF get financially ruined because they ran a non-DOT tire because they read this thread and thought it was OK.

 

[Boss Hoss]

For the average person a tire on their vehicle is half cycled once per vehicle startup, they start at ambient temperature and due to friction are gradually raised to about 120-130 degrees max, during a normal drive they then vary plus or minus 5 degrees from that temperature, when the vehicle is parked the tire then returns to ambient temperature over a course of time so long that it is not a complete "heat cycling" for the tire

On a race vehicle a tire is cycled from ambient temperature to about 200 degrees, from there the temperature can cycle up and down over 100 degrees above and back down to that 200 degrees, and the cycling is much more rapid than the half cycle experienced by passenger vehicle tires

You can raise and then lower the temperature of something by 100+ degrees without damaging it's structure if you complete that cycle over a few minutes, but if you raise and then lower the temperature of that same object by 50 degrees over the course of less than a second, it's structure will be compromised

Under the circumstances of race tires vs. street tires, the race tires are cycled 100+ degrees over the course of a few seconds repeatedly for hours on end, the street tires are cycled on average about 40 degrees over the course of a few minutes on average once every 12 hours, the principles of heat cycling are the same no matter what the compound is, the effects of heat cycling experienced by passenger vehicle tires are minimal to non-existant, the effects of heat cycling experienced by the race tire will be exponentially greater than those experienced by the passenger tire

Finally, the comparatively insignificant heat cycling of passenger vehicle tires up to 120-130 degrees allows them to become porous enough to absorb oils from the road but not so porous that they lose their own oils, improving tire life, basically hydrating the tire, embrittlement is caused by tires becoming sunbaked, which causes the oils in the tire to leave it, dehydrating the tire, dehydrated tires are just like dehydrated humans, allow the dehydration to progress past a certain point, and the tire/person will die

Just for the record here sent this to one of our engineers here who got a nice chuckle out of this. Almost every single point made is incorrect especially the part about embrittlement lol (process actually starts when the tire comes out of the mold and is exposed to the atmosphere to be technical). The carcass as it is correctly referred to gets subjected to temperatures in excess of 150 to 160 degrees especially if under load (one reason air pressure is critical because the carcass is the load bearing structure and low pressures means flex over a smaller area fyi). Go out on a hot day and shoot a laser thermometer on the black top in Texas when the ambient is 110 lol it is over 150 couple that with rolling friction you are so far in the weeds my young friend it is embarrassing…

Poor kid is spending way too much time trying to convince people 1+1=5 ----- no matter how what kind of stories you make up it is still wrong.

 

[Ramrodthrusterpuppy]

There is so much bad information in this thread it is making my head hurt.

Do NOT buy Non-DOT Tires for a truck you plan on driving daily. They were not designed for it and never will be.

Race tires do not meet or exceed DOT standards and they never will.

Race tires do not have a harder compound than DOT tires.

They will NOT last as long or wear as well as DOT Tires.

etc, etc, etc...

If you want to run a non-DOT tire, go for it. For every other person out there, you are opening yourself to some very, very serious liability and God help you if you get in an accident.

Poor kid is spending way too much time trying to convince people 1+1=5 ----- no matter how what kind of stories you make up it is still wrong.

^+1 to all of the above.

Sorry, Cleave....your assertions are just flat out wrong.