Will Street Driving Heat Cycle an R-Comp?

brkntrxn

Inappropriate Motorsports
Established Member
Joined
Oct 21, 2003
Messages
3,865
Location
North Carolina
I searched and did not find a good discussion on this topic, so I am starting a thread.

What is the general consensus on occasionally driving your R-comps on the street, say back and forth to work? I have read where Tire Rack, BFG, internet forums, etc. recommend driving you car on the street to get the temps up to 200 or so degrees in order to perform an initial heat cycle on your R-comps.

However, if speeds are kept to normal 65-70mph on the interstate, will the temps get high enough that you will effectively perform a heat cycle on your tires? Especially if we are talking a December - January day?

I have had slicks in the past that heat cycled out before (not from street driving) and I want to drive my track car to work every now and then. However, I do not want to put extra heat cycles on the tires unnecessarily and at the moment I do not have a set of street tires.

Just curious on the general opinion. The specific tires in question are 275/17 and 315/18 Nitto NT01s.


-Kevin
 

wheelhopper

Active Member
Established Member
Joined
Jul 14, 2005
Messages
6,640
Location
Southern MD
My intial thought is that it would be fine. Probably would not do any more harm than driving on Nitto drag radials, then burning them up at the drag strip. I did that many times and never had a loss of grip at the drag strip.

I probablywould not do it on an R comp that had a 50 or less treadwear rating though.
 

David Hester

New Member
Established Member
Joined
Nov 21, 2002
Messages
1,072
Location
East Tenn
Daily driving does cycle your tires.
Think about it. Street tires wear out, too.
Oils and such that keep them soft is squeezed out, even if you don't get them hot.
Will you notice a difference? Not all at once, but over the course of several months, yeah. They go away. I have a set of 615's I'm too lazy to swap back to Coopers on the Roush. They had gone away the last event I ran. That with less than 1000 street miles. True R coumpounds are even worse. Now I'm just going to wear them out on the street and get new ones in the spring...
Another thing. The rubber compound is meant for summer heat. They don't like cold. Turn into bricks near freezing.
I don't think Tire Rack does Nittos', but if you look at the fine print on ALL the summer performance( Kumho, Goodyear, Yokohama, etc.) tires they say don't use near freezing. R compounds, even more so.
We had a SARRC race at Road Atlanta last February. We won't try that again.
 
Last edited:

brkntrxn

Inappropriate Motorsports
Established Member
Joined
Oct 21, 2003
Messages
3,865
Location
North Carolina
Good points, gentlemen (I use that term loosely :) )


Greg,

With the other (safety) money I am about to spend this afternoon, I am dead certain I could add in another thousand or so and get a used set of rims and some NT05s or something. It comes down to laziness more than anything. I just don't want to go through the effort of swapping wheels/tires and brakes as much as I did with the Cobra. I guess I could go back to driving the 01 vert on nice days....
 

gcassidy

One more lap!
Established Member
Joined
Nov 27, 2003
Messages
9,649
Location
Silver Spring, MD
"No! No! Don't force me to drive the Cobra!!"
2.gif
 

Users who are viewing this thread



Top