<VV> Corvair tire pressure

[Bill Hubbell]

I can't help thinking that all this talk about sway bars, suspension tuning, 
radial tires, slip angles, etc. would make a great Communiqué article. 
Maybe one of you engineer/racing types out there will volunteer to write 
one?

Bill Hubbell


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Jim Burkhard" <burkhard at rochester.rr.com>
To: "Virtual Vairs" <virtualvairs at corvair.org>
Sent: Thursday, March 02, 2006 11:19 AM
Subject: Re: <VV> Corvair tire pressure


Yeah, the 40/60 --> 20/30 numbers sort of work out, but
that's just coincidental.  Tire pressure measured in psig
isn't going to have any sort of direct relationship to a %
weight distribution.

Remember too, that the reason GM was calling for such low
pressures in the front (wasn't it 15 psig F & 26 psig R?)
was to get the car to understeer more (i.e. fronts lose
traction earlier, not gain traction). The thought was that
"in the hands of Marion the librarian, it is better to
understeer than oversteer". Hence, get the front to slip
long before the rear by way of underinflated front tires.

Jim Burkhard

Clark Hartzel wrote:
> Remember that in the 60's we didn't have radial tires.  If you put 30 
> pounds
> of air in a nylon bias ply tire on the front of a Corvair, you might only
> have an inch or so of contact pattern touching the ground!  My way of
> thinking is you want at least 4-5" of fore and aft contact to match the 5"
> of width on the ground.  The 40%-60% weight distribution divided by 2 is
> 20-30 so 20 pounds front and 30 pounds rear is pretty close to the
> recommended pressure.
> Clark Hartzel


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