bridgestones -- low tires pressures good and other comments

[Jo Rhett]

A while ago I recommended 27 front, 25 rear tire pressures for the  
Bridgestone tires to someone on this list.  They worked well for me, I  
beat my best lap times at every track I tried them on, including a  
1:50.2 at Infineon ;-)  And tire wear was perfect.  I got a WERA race  
weekend and 6 track days out of the tires.

However, our local Bridgestone guy has been testing and recommended  
that we run much lower pressures, so I tried 25 front, 21 rear this  
weekend and Thunderhill (which is notoriously abusive on tires) and  
had very similar results -- I beat my fastest time ever there by over  
a second, and tire wear remained fantastic.

Some other comments from him:

* Slicks are harder than DOT tires.   A Slick medium is the hardest  
Slick, and seems to be exactly equivalent to a DOT Hard.
* The tires seem to work best at <=30psi hot.  30psi front, 29psi rear  
seems to be perfect.  Keep adjusting the temp until they are at 30psi  
measured in the hot pit immediately after leaving the track and then  
check the cold pressure when the tires cool down at the end of the  
day, and use that as your cold tire setting.

So we switched me to a Supersoft front and Soft rear slick and they  
worked well.  On my superstock bike I'm using Soft front and Medium  
rear.

** and keep in mind Thunderhill abuses tires.  If the tire had been  
too soft, I would have torn it up.  When pirelli didn't have a soft  
rear, I ran a supersoft rear at Thunderhill and tore it down to the  
cords in a single day.

-- 
Jo Rhett /  velociRaptor Racing
#553 WERA / AFM
#53 SMRRC