At 01:16 PM 1/13/03 -0800, Elizabeth Lyle wrote:
>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
=========================================
Back in the really old days (mid 60's to early 70's) we, in the
Washington/Baltimore area, ran "Big Bob" recaps.
'Best I remember, they were all on bias-ply carcasses. The BB recap rubber
was real soft and gooey. Unfortunately,
so were the sidewalls! I wonder if there are any other veterans of that
era still around?
Vince Bly
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