Here's what rally tires look like in case you haven't seen them.
See those ridges around the sidewall? These are about 3/16" tall and their purpose is to prevent punctures when you're sliding sideways on rocks. The sidewalls are super thick. They're about 3/8" thick at the thinnest point. These tires will make your tire mounting guy hate you and it's not unusual to need triple digit pressures to seat them on the rim. Race pressures are mid 20s.
The tread is tall, sharp, and soft. They're super hairy when they're brand new.
If you look at about 10:00 on the first picture you'll see that the tire is marked 14/62-15. That means 14cm tread width, 62cm overall height, 15" rim. In "conventional" sizing this is something like a 185/65-15. That size sounds pretty wimpy for a race tire, doesn't it? Dirt tires are narrower, taller, and use smaller rims than a pavement tire for the same car.
stimpy wrote:I bet those sound great on the street!
Surprisingly, they're not that bad. They don't sound like mudder tires on 4x4s.
Chase Race wrote:See those ridges around the sidewall? These are about 3/16" tall and their purpose is to prevent punctures when you're sliding sideways on rocks. The sidewalls are super thick. They're about 3/8" thick at the thinnest point.
Here's why:
This tire stayed on the rim and lost no air:
I heard this tire make a "PFFSSHT!" sound, but it sounded like it just broke the bead momentarily and didn't lose all of its air. I'm checking into this:
Chase Race wrote:I heard this tire make a "PFFSSHT!" sound, but it sounded like it just broke the bead momentarily and didn't lose all of its air. I'm checking into this:
The driver said that the tire stayed on the rim but was down about 10psi at the end of the stage. Amazing.
