My own preferred setup is to use bias ply racing tires on cars like yours.
I ran them on my '61 midget with great results.
The bottom line difference between bais ply racing tires and radial tires is
the range of slip angle that the tire will support before it gives up and
starts to lose grip and send you into a slide or spin. The bias tires feel
like big soft nerf balls under your car,when you start to reach the limit,
while the radial tires are far more knife edge. My money voted for the
Dunlop Formula Ford front tires when I had the Midget. These are a modern
technology/compound tire with a genuine all weather tread that fit the car
well and give quite good life. Traction and feedback are excellent, as is
availability (you can sometimes get used tires from the FFord guys who think
that new tires are faster - a fallacy, but one that can work for you
sometimes). Other choices are the Hoosier vintage tires, but they seem to
have a notional rather than practical tread pattern from a wet track point
of view, and are quite a bit heavier than the Dunlops.
Last choice would probably be the Dunlop 4.50L 13 tire that is now the
regulation tire for cars like yours with VARAC, at least. The only real
problem with it is low grip - everything else is fine, but why run a low
grip tire when others are available, unless the rules say you must...
Cheers, Brian
At 12:08 PM 3/2/99 -0500, you wrote:
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>I've got a '58 A-H 948cc sprite racer I bought 8/98 with a bad set of
>Hoosier 170/50/13 bias tires on it (car is an old Midwest Council car that
>hasn't been raced in years). In 9/98 @ Elkhart Lake Vintage Festival I saw
>alot of cars on bias tires, but also noticed a number of smaller production
>racers with radials.
>
>My question is: should I stick with similar sized bias tires or can
>street/shaved radials be used effectively? '99 will be my rookie season in
>vintage racing so getting a good footprint on the track from day one is as
>important to me as upgrading the brake system, among other things.
>
>Thanks, Greg
>
>VSCDA, Grp. 2E, #517
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