mountainbiker2

Hi David,

You can never have enough front grip. Just control your right foot, add more toe in at the rear and stiffen the front sway bar. There you go. Good luck Sat. and Sun.

Steve

talon95

That was my thought too, although those changes only go so far.

if 71R >>> RS3 then spin may be unavoidable.

That pretty much tells us we don't need to test the 71R against the RS3 though. Seems like it's down to testing the 71R against the Rival S.

Xian

Kinda ^^^ true but there are limits. I agree that stiffening the front, softening the rear would be my first go-to move though the range of adjustment available may not be enough to balance out the car. I've played with harder compounds at the rear of my FWD cars and gotten them to where they're undrivably loose. i.e. You've thrown away so much steady state rear grip that the car oversteers everywhere. In a RWD car like the Vette, that would be even tougher to drive since you can't just floor it to try and drive out of the slide.

Edit:
The above was in response to mountainbiker. Talon snuck in while I was typing. Lol

talon95

I knew I suffered through that typing class for some reason.

Also, if you have adjustable shocks, crank the fronts up to keep it from stepping out on turn in (and rear down of course). Overpressure the fronts some too if needed. May still have more grip than the RS3's.

Xian

Hey now! I'm working off a phone right now and juggling my 3rd cup of coffee and a house full of kids.

On the topic of the tires, yeah you'll want to do everything you can to increase rear grip and throw away the excess front grip. Shocks, bar, alignment, pressure... or just run lower grip fronts for the weekend.

As far as testing, the RE71's certainly seem to outmatch the RS3's. I guess there's the scenario of the 275 RE71 vs a super-wide RS3 (don't they make a 305 19?) at the rear... or is that what the OP is already on?

I'll say it again, I'm conflicted on the Rival-S. On one hand I hope they're completely kick-*** and wear decently so I don't end up "needing" the Stones. One the other hand, the Rival-S is quite a bit more so I wouldn't be completely heart broken if they couldn't hang... like Sam love to say: make it simple, make it fun.

dhowdy

Unfortunately it's not a throttle control issue, Xian pretty much nailed it. If I drive to the front grip of the car, the rear end will get loose and swing around, and I can't power out of it.

I only have rebound control on my shocks. I started with rear at almost full soft, car was even worse, they are at medium-ish now. Fronts are at mostly stiff, but I could add some. I did stiffen the bar.

I am on 285/18 rears, Xian.

Sox-Fan

It's frustrating that the Japanese market does have RE-71A in 285 and 295/30 yet we don't.

http://tire.bridgestone.co.jp/potenza/re71r/size.html

I can't figure out what the TW is on them. Not that it matters if we cannot get them.

talon95

Any updates from the pro? Lugod looked fast in STU. Way ahead of AS. 60' times were almost identical though. Not sure how useful that is.

klodkrawler05

It's pretty hard to extrapolate the data out but Danny Popp and Kyle Tucker were on the new Rival S at this past weekends USCA event. They ran exhibition class due to the tires not being generally available to the public yet.

Kyle Tuckers times would've been fast enough to sweep all 3 events in his class while also turning in a top 3 finish overall time in the speedstop (which is nuts, that event always favors the AWD cars)

and Danny Popp's auto-x time? faster than the entire rest of the field by 1.6 seconds!......on a 42 second course.....Bear in mind Danny is always fast but for some perspective at the previous USCA event where he was on the old rival's he narrowly won the auto-x by less than .5 second.

Again hard to extrapolate without doing actual back to back testing but so far they seem impressive.

talon95

Thanks. That time delta is in line with what I heard from the Lincoln test last fall. Hopefully mine will ship this week. I might make it to Lincoln weekend after next if they do.

strano@stranoparts.com

You mean Rival (r1) S's?

Yeah, Danny beat the field by 1.6. I won my class against other SSR (Hoosier shod) cars by about that much each day in Dixie. The driver has a lot to do with that, but the tires are certainly better.

I still say the Rival S isn't the droid any aggressive driver is looking for on this car for autox. Though I might pick it as from what I've seen so far and know of R1S (I am about as sure as I can be without proof they are running the R1 or R1S compound on it) for track use.



Not, at *ALL* shocked David had those issues. Cause that's how much more grip I thought they had when I drove them in Dixie.

dhowdy

It's pretty much confirmed I'm an idiot for showing up on that set up. Caught enough crap for it this weekend. It's funny because I did a local event to test it out first and did reasonably well. Our working theory is that the tires weren't scrubbed in so RE-71Rs with mold release are roughly equivalent to RS3

I ended up running the hankooks all weekend because I was literally scared to drive the car with the mixed set up. I redlighted away a left course run that would have been .2s behind Glen's fastest counted run (he has a faster run on a RL too) and also ruined a run on the right course that was about .5s ahead of my fastest before the car stepped out on the final slalom. Ended up with two decent runs that I was pleased with for my first pro, but not the best and still pretty far off pace from Glen and Yom. Video for the interested: www.youtube.com/watch?v=cCHLSEY5--c

Two more bridgestones ordered as of this morning.

strano@stranoparts.com

Just be aware, even though they deny it.... RL runs come up faster all the time, around .5 give or take. It's like once you RL program take .5 away from the run time or doesn't add the .5XX+ light in I guess is more the case.

I've seen it time and again over the years. I start for Pro's all the time and constantly "oh they threw away .4 on that Redlight" or "that would have been .6 faster" etc. I don't typically tell folks that because well if they can't figure it out I'm fine with them thinking they were faster than they might really have been. But here, with a lot of you my customers it's something that I thought I should mention.

Glad you ordered the tires to make a set. At the rate things are going, we'll have you guys back on Hoosier's in no time. We can hope, especially if they wear better than A6's (and I think A7's will).

klodkrawler05

What I'm still trying to decide (not at all relevant to SCCA pointy end people) is whether the Rival S in say a 315 or even 335 size (with appropriately sized wheels) would be faster than the largest 275 offering re-71r even if size for size the re-71r is slightly faster an extra 2" of tread width on each corner seems like a big hurdle for the re-71r to overcome. But maybe its not and maybe it really is THAT good.

I felt I did reasonably well on 275/295 old rivals last year for what they were so with the 275 'stones being all that and a bag of chips perhaps the 275 square would be enough tire for me this year (and bonus I can put them on readily available TSW's from stranoparts instead of waiting for custom ordered forgestars)

talon95

Well Sam seems convinced, but in reality for most of us it's impossible to know which is better at this point. I suspect it will become clearer in a month or so. Maybe 2 months if you can wait.

klodkrawler05

yup waiting is the name of the game for me, our first local event isn't until may 10th and first big event isn't until May 17th.

dhowdy

Way to kill my high :p the run looked better to me, but I'll have to compare video to the second and see. Would mean I only threw away .2s and realistically nothing with the garbage lights I was pulling. I also had a few pretty solid 2.4s 60 foot times... lol

strano@stranoparts.com

I'm not wrong very often. I might be this time, but not often.

strano@stranoparts.com

Yeah, sorry. But better you know than not.

This isn't a driving thread, so I'll make it quick. Hankooks don't launch well to start with. But watching you run, you weren't very aggressive with when you were on the power. That very well might have been the lack of grip from the tires, at least in part. But there were times when I was watching you open the wheel wondering why you weren't starting to go, seems like you waited until you were very straight most of the time.

talon95

Didn't say you were wrong, just said I didn't know.