GH was mostly correct in his recollection of the Crewe recap. Fellow named
Bill Wilkerson owned the company which recapped aircraft tires and as a
sideline started doing "race" tires on street carcasses. Still have one of his
hats somewhere. I used to run heads up with another Porsche driver locally and
when I tried the then legal Wilkersons the diff was 2 seconds. Problem for
Wilkerson was that people took the tires to Summit Point to do drivers ed
events and the tires came apart. This despite Wilkersons warning that the tire
should not be run more than 2-3 minutes when hot IIRC. He decided it was not
worth the liability for misuse by customers. And yes, he could change the
compound at will. We will never see this again.
Vern
This was discovered by some members of the Porsche Club, and for a few years
the hot lick for autocrossing in PCA was a Michelin or Pirelli carcass with a
"Crewe recap". They were *really* sticky in the dry, pretty much useless when
it got wet, VERY heavy, and not very round. Some people actually drove long
distances to events on them, not an enjoyable experience. :-( When
R-compound radials
appeared from BFG and Yokohama, which offered similar or better levels
of performance without the drawbacks, the recaps disappeared, at least
among the autocrossers.
GH
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