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I need some advice please. I recent ran in the National Corvette Museum's sponsored High Performance Driving Event (awesome time by the way) at Carolina Motor Sports Park. On the outer edge of the driver's side rear tire, the tire has 1/4" pieces of rubber either coming off the tire, or hanging off tire. This problem is all the way around the circumference tire. This same problem is on the inner edge of the rear passenger car tire. These missing pieces are almost evenly spaced apart (about 1"), however, the direction of the "cut" is opposite from the direction of the wheel spin. These small missing pieces do not go as deep as the warning bars, but about 1/2 way between the top of the tread and the warning bar. I have 6K miles on the car.
Does anyone have any clue as to what's going on and why the rear tires have done this? Do you think this would be covered under warranty Any advise is appreciated!
If you tell the dealer you were out on a track- no warranty.
If you don't tell them, likely they'll figure it out themselves- no warranty.
And perhaps lose the warranty on other things like engine and tranny.
Best bet is to have a good tire shop look at it and decide if you need replacement. Likely OK to keep driving.
Sounds like a classic case of chunking which surprises me a bit...even the base model tires are reasonably good in high performance events unless they are underinflated and heavily over driven (beginners sometimes overdrive at events like this)...
Chunking describes the problem perfectly. While the tires were not underinflated (30 psi cold & 38 psi hot), it's probably related to my first track event.
Question - is the tire safe to drive and do you suspect the chucks will continue to get larger?
38 hot is NOT enough for a street alignment. One quick visit to the racing forum section would have gotten you more prepared for the event.
An aggressive drive on track events will damage the outter edge of tires with a street alignment. You need around 42psi hot to protect them as much as possible, while a little negative camber in you alignment (even -.75 or so) to really optimize tire wear and handling.
The new C6 Z06 allows up to -1.5 degrees of negative camber within factory tollerances, and that would be a good balance for a street/track car.
38 hot is NOT enough for a street alignment. One quick visit to the racing forum section would have gotten you more prepared for the event.
An aggressive drive on track events will damage the outter edge of tires with a street alignment. You need around 42psi hot to protect them as much as possible, while a little negative camber in you alignment (even -.75 or so) to really optimize tire wear and handling.
The new C6 Z06 allows up to -1.5 degrees of negative camber within factory tollerances, and that would be a good balance for a street/track car.