Whatever happened to......
 

The mini-cone tyres that were being tried and tested a while back? Did they prove to be better than mini-spikes?

The GRP ones? they were more consistant during wear and didn't rip apart, but they arn't the national tyre this year.

I'll be using them at all the regionals this year :thumbsup:

They are available direct from the Mirage website or all good model shops. They arn't the nominated national tire but you can still use them at regionals and club meetings ;)

/end shamless plug :lol:

I'll be using them at all regionals this year too :thumbsup:

G

There might be a couple of other compounds available in a few weeks also.

I will be running them at regionals this year.

dont think Mid West will be as we have nominated tyres ...:thumbdown:

They are a good tyre, but cos they came out at the end of the outdoor season their testing was limited before indoors (and mini pins) came along.

I intend to use them outdoors a lot at regionals this year!

Is the general opinion that they are better than the shuey yellow minispike?

But has your nominated tyre been decided yet? :confused:

G

not yet G , but i very much doubt it will be chosen.
i think the norm of BB & Schuy's

They perform similar on the track, but have a far better moulding to recent yellows, and wear more consistantly.

They tend not to clog as easily in the wet either because of the textured surface.

I think Wraggy will be spot on ... schumy Minis and BB Minis.

Can't believe that some regions don't have nominated tires ..... make slife so much easier and cheaper as you know what you need early on ..... better for the shops too as they don't have to stock tires they won't sell.

There is a valid point here about the quality of the mould on the Schumacher tyres, everytime I buy some I find myself checking many pairs to get a good one, most of the moulds are not true, which is not on with the price we have to pay for them. Like the look of these GRP tyres.

Because it gives one company a monopoly of the market with tires which are not good enough. Some are pre-worn out the packet, others rip apart in use. I also had blues marked as yellows last year to.

Don't know about other regions but in the NE nearly everyone uses common tires that the shops stock so thats not a problem.

I'll be using GRP's because they are cheaper, and I know that they will be the same everytime I open the packet, and they come with foams which is an added bonus :thumbsup:

I know one driver was going through two sets of tires a run at nationals, he would have to buy two sets, and pick out the two good tires. :thumbdown:

schumacher are apparently releasing yellows under a new part number which is a new mould version (same design, just new mould). Not sure if they are allowed for nationals as they are a different part number to the original tyre, and i don't think they are out in time for the first one in April.

Well things like this should be allowed to be accepted even after the nominated part number has gone through, the current ones are just costing us more money than they should.

A few drivers noticed used the GRP tyres at southport towards the end of last season, and as previously stated, they seemed to provide more grip on all sections of the track and that they wore better than the pic n mix schumachers

However when the cars were coming off the concrete section of the track and onto the straight, just as the throttle was being applied, they caused the cars to "fishtail" and spin out. Swapping back to Shumachers removed this problem.

Don't know what was causing this, either the rubber inserts or the "pile" of the astro turf may have been the problem. It may even have been the tyre itself.

As far as i know, nobody used the GRP with foam inserts as a test.

I will probably use the GRP's at Southport this year and will experiment with the inserts to see if the problem goes.

Having said that, the straight is being replaced with new astro very soon, so the problem may well go then as well.

i agree, but it would leave schumacher with a big pile of unwanted yellows from the old mould i guess? they may be allowed, not sure yet, have to wait on some offical word

The nominated national tyre is a 'Schumacher minispike' not a part number.

G

Surely this 'new tire' is gonna screw the shops over big style as no one is going to want to buy a new 'old' tire :thumbdown:

Possibly, imo schumacher should recall the current ones, they should take the hit, not the shops.

How many people will really know the difference, to be honest last year i just mounted up the new tyres i never checked to see what the tyres looked like.


Were they really that bad?:eh?:

yes Lee they were !! :thumbdown:

Who makes the decision about the regional tyres? is it at the AGM?

Gotta say i'm kinda with you on this one mate, i saw some that were bad and even ran them myself but they weren't noticiably bad on track - I agree that at nearly £8 a pair they should be perfect and you have every right to complain but i don't think it would make that much difference personally....... I think the only thing that would really be noticable is when the tyre shreads into 3 pieces as i did hear of that happening but it didn't to me so i can't complain really.

Seem to have opened a bit of a can of worms here.........:eh?:

It's a fair call that some of the yellows from last year really weren't that great. I gave them some grief over it and i'm sure i wasn't the only one. I was assured that it was being sorted, as someone has mentioned with the moulds. I'm not sure about the part numbers and all, i didn't ask.

The GRP's i saw did indeed look well moulded, but then you'd expect that for a brand spanking new mould, and this should also be the case with the Schumacher's soon (I hope!!). I haven't run any GRP's personally, but it looked to me purely by watching others run them that the wear rate looked a little high, but then some say it doens't effect grip. Haven't tested them personally, but can't help thinking it must. Otherwise we wouldn't bother putting new tyres on! When both companies have new moulds, it's fair to compare.

Here I have to disagree - if GRP hadn't released a new tyre then I doubt that schumacher would have built a new mould, they would have gone on charging us a small fortune for an inferior product because they could. I for one have decided never to run a schumacher tyre again

Good luck with that, it's your choice.

You may be right, you may not. Truth is none of us will ever know. However, what i will say is that last time the tyre form got really bad (around 3-4 years ago i think) Schumacher did do something about it and they spent a fair bit of cash over hauling the mould, and initially they were very very good. There was a small decline after maybe 2 years, then there was last year when i totally agree they weren't really good enough.

Will GRP produce the same vollume of tyres and build completely new moulds every 2-3 years?? who knows, I certainly don't and it's not fair to speculate. Let's hope they do! then maybe they will never have any quality issues in any tyre that they sell. :o

It's a fact of life that moulds wear - just have a look at any of the components for an Associated B4. When i built my origional kit, the bits just fell together. I haven't built a recent kit, but from what i understand the dremel/file/sand paper needs to be kept to hand to make the bits fit. It's a fact of life unfortunately.

I have. You understand right mate :thumbdown:. The front arms are - comparatively speaking - a poor fit now until they've had some fettling, but thats a story for another day (or thread)!

In the regionals its GRP all the way for me. Its about time Schumacher had some decent competition as theyve had it far too easy for too long.

This lack of competition has resulted in some shocking tyre production from Schumacher, just so they save costs. But the consumers being the ones to suffer who end up suffering.

Once (if) GRP are legal at the nationals next yeat it will be interesting to see how Schumacher react