Hi Guys, I took my F430 to VIR for the last two member days and have picked up so much rubber on expecially my rear tires that I now have a thumpy, out of balance feeling ride. My tires have about 5000 miles and I hate to replace them, and I hate to not bring this car to the track. Is there a trick to cleaning them other than smoking the tires. I just can't bring myseft to do that. Thanks for your help. Woody Byrd Cary, NC
Stay on the line next time? j/k You could always do like the big race teams do and scrape the tires after every session. get a hairdryer and heat up the rubber then get a scraper and just scrape off the marbles. Time consuming yes.
Street tires on the track do not get hot enough and their compound is too hard to have pickup issues from debris on the track. What you are experiencing is graining or marbles from your own tires. Chances are your tire pressures were too low when you lapped the car which led to the damage on the tires. To correct the problem, bump up your tire pressures (you must always do whis when lapping anyways) and go lapping again to clean the tires off. It takes a decent amount of speed and agression to clean off a set of tires. You may also want to look into going into a parking lot and doing some hard circles to help clean the tires a bit. With race tires my warm up laps look like an exercise in car controal but let me tell you, when the green flag drops, they are READY for action.
I don't think some statements here are true. Street tires will pick-up rubber when hot. It is easy to get off on your next hotlaps. You can take it off with a torch and a putty knife but it is hardly worth the effort. You will be surprised how long it lasts on your street tires when street driving but it will come off with time don't sweat it. Nex time try to stay more on line on the track and when coming off track to the pits drive the cleaner part of the pits until the tires cool a bit so you pick-up less crap. Also check the inside of the wheels as hot rubber will get thrown in here off the track and will stick too and throw you off balance.
Sounds like it's just your own tire material that got smeared around. I'd say do a quick burn out in a safe area. Or find a twisty road where you can get the tires warm and get the debris to come off.
Check to make sure you didn't get debris that's stuck to the inside of your wheels. Oftentimes, you'll get rubber from other tires stuck in their, causing an imbalance -- it's an easy fix.
