ATTENTION UK TIRE MANUFACTUER’S

[Lindsay]

Originally Posted by Cockerill

Does anyone think I have been out of order here by starting the thread or what I have said.

So far I have had only support and not one person comment that what I am saying is wrong/out of order.

By the way not only does it affect nationals, but also those doing regionals. The problem definitely won't be sorted for next weekends NE regional.

No be we may be all using GRP.
Yes you have my full support on your thread [ but I could be accused of being bias]

[Wraggy]

Originally Posted by Lee

I agree pidge was awesome (not bad for a reserve) and if he was on the hard green then pidge has proven that you can polish a turd

thats not nice reffering to Pidge as a Turd

[Lindsay]

Originally Posted by Doomanic

How or when the shops pay for tyres is immaterial. It is not viable to hold thousands of pounds worth of tyres in stock "just in case".

My tyres for Kiddy were all new stock from the distributors, delivered/collected last week.

There was a notable difference between front and rear for sure, but has it occurred to anyone that it may have been the rears that were too soft?
The rears I have in stock don't seem much different to pinks, but the fronts are definitely softer than blues.

Whatever the outcome of any investigation by the supplier, I hope it is sorted before Oswestry.

Incidentally, I only had one pair of fronts returned at the weekend and I gave the chap his money back.

WILL YOU ACCEPT TYRES THAT ARE GLUED ON WHEELS

[losixxx]

NO...

REASON BEING what do we do with all our old wheels/inserts and not exactly enviromentaly friendly getting a new set of wheels for every pair of tyres! i re-sue my wheels several times, keeps cost right down

[James]

..............................

[Kopite]

Originally Posted by Wraggy

thats not nice reffering to Pidge as a Turd

LOL!! Interesting to watch the 3 legs of the A. To be fair, people were screaming up to Pidge, but then just not getting past him due to some seriously accurate and smooth driving from the gay boy.


...dare i say that Mossy's Cat looked pretty damned awesome, especially in the second leg!!

[Yardeeee]

My issue I had with BB tyres was that some of the rear greens were too soft... I am not so sure whether it is a case of the fronts being too hard, and whether the big difference between front and rear is caused by the rear softness.
some of my new BB green rears felt rather pink and I ran a set like that in leg 1 and 2 of the A on the saturday (2wd, at this point I wasn't using BB fronts) and my car was pants... leg 3 I switched back to a harder pair used earlier in the day and it was fine.

The variance in compound front to rear will have a big impact on balance regardless, and if the fronts and rears are labelled as the same compound they should be. Having said this, I had only 1 problem all weekend with the BB tyres as mentioned previously and will remain on the fence in this situation.

[Cockerill]

I've had a reply form Dave Duggan from CML.

CML had no idea of any problem with the compound or mis-packaging of BB tires. They have had no complaints about the tires previous to this thread, therefore have not know about this problem, however long it has been going on. CML do not make the tires, they are just the distributor so they will be taking the matter up with their suppliers.

I have asked when they expect the situation to be sorted out, hopefully before the next national.

Now all we need is the 'new' yellow mini-spikes from Schumacher in case its dry.

PS I have edited/deleted some of my posts that were too much. I am not out to slander/slag off any specific company, just improve the tires for our nationals so everyone has an equal chance.

[jimmy]

Hi guys, can I please ask people to only post the FACTS and from their own personal experience. No talk about conspiracys or other assumed shennanigans.
It's in no ones interest to upset the RC community (us racers) so please remember that before posting your thoughts.

[millzy]

[QUOTE=Cockerill;115931]Does anyone think I have been out of order here by starting the thread or what I have said.

So far I have had only support and not one person comment that what I am saying is wrong/out of order.

pm sent tom

[neiloliver]

I just read this very long thread from start to finish and now I feel i need a hug.. how depressing

If some tyres have been wrongly bagged then I hope the companies in question do the decent thing and swap them out.

Does anyone ever conduct shore hardness tests on tyres? someone must have this facility at their work? or college?

I would expect that the manufacturer must be able to show that a batch of tyres falls between certain specification limits, even if they dont do it all the time, they should be able to get it done if there is a question over material?

[Chrislong]

I have heard reliably that there is no specified specification for the rubber nominated as a compound. Therefore green could be anything, blue could be anything. etc... doesn;t make it right tho in my opinion..

Neil i think you are onto something. Id like to see manufacturers have a shore hardness specification for there compounds with stated tolerences.

This to me, does sound extreme - but if it restore confidence and means we get what we expect, then its good. As at the moment its the racers who are loosing out. Sure, few, if anybody will test them, but if anything like this does raise its grizzly head again then there is a measurement for the test to be conducted.

There are emails behind the scenes, and hopefully a resolution, so I am not going to run away with accusations or presumptions, that isn't fair on the vendors, the distributors, the shops or the people who represent the racers.

Chris

[DCM]

but the tyre compound is more complex than just shore hardness, but then it would be a good indicator of compound. I know Greens and Yellow Schumachers are different rubber completely, one is synthetic and other is natural and have distinct smells.

[racingdwarf]

I think thats a good point, what is green compound ballistic buggy or yellow schumacher? I think we have to expect the compound to change a little from batch to batch after all these are only rc car tyres, we are dealing with small companys selling to a very small market place there are not to many other places in the world use these tyres.

I think if you find two diffrent tyres in one pack thats not on and you should return them as for £7.50ish both tyres should be the same.

What we should get tho is tyres that are the right shape, have the correct amount of spikes and both tyres should be made of the same stuff. NOT what we have been getting in the past few months!

[Chrislong]

Hi DCM, you might need to explain to me, I appreciate you are likely to know far more than me on the subject of materials, but I am a fast learner, so please do...

What I meant is a spec from each manufacturer for each compound within. So:
Schumacher green =
Schumacher yellow =
Schumacher Blue
BB Pink =
BB Green =
BB Blue =

So we'd have 6 different values. But with a single acceptable tolerance of a set (sensible) value. This would be accross the mould tho, so a yellow Minipin is equivalent in shore to a yellow minispike (unless this cannot be done due to thickness or shape of the rubber?)

What are you saying? That the shore value cannot be measured? I am not talking about comparing Greens vs Yellows, but Schumacher Greens vs Shumacher Greens. It doesn't matter what the 6 individual values are, as long as each batch of tyres within can be quality checked against the specified shore rating.

This would be very good, as it stops all this shananigans and if a fault is discovered - the buck stops with the vendor. But with this means that this fault may never ever re-occur! and if this is not possible, then my idea is void from the beginning.

It may be a bit extreme, bit like measuring the bend in bananas.... but it does matter.

Chris

[Lee]

I think the shore rating would be very hard to measure, the rubber is so thin and the spikes are too small to be consistent. Possibly we could get a data sheet from each batch which would actually give a percentage of whatever goes into making the tyre. The vendor must have these other wise they would not know how to make the tyre. If someone then suspects there is a fault then the tyre can be tested to see what it contains, this is the difficult bit, you would need a gas chromatograph, not something that could be done at the track but still very possible to get a result in an hour, from the tip of a spike

Like has been said its not just soft or hard tyres its the actual composition that affects its performance.

[glypo]

I think you are underestimating massively the complexity of material testing. You can't measure properties using tyres, you need test samples. This needs to be done within the companies themselves.

When tyres are made, test samples are also made using the same rubber. These compounds are of suitable size to use in material testing machines. A durometer (to measure shore hardness) is just one of many pieces of test apperatus required. The modulus, and also (perhaps surprisingly) the yield and tensile are quite important to in tyre dynamics.

Therefore the proper practice is to mould the testing samples, check their material properties and make sure they are in suitable tolerance with their own defined standards. This is also done at the end, and at any number of intervals that is felt appropriate during the batch. If any are found out of material tolerance, all tyres between that and the previous point should be scraped and the the problem rectified and the process continues.

This is how it should be done, and as you can see there is very little you can do as a consumer. Or anyone else, like shops for that matter. I will admit I've never used a durometer (shore), but when I've tested rubbers and soft polymers it has been using the appropriate version of the Vickers and Rockwell tests. However I'm sure the same limitations apply with the shore hardness, that you will need appropriate test samples and not the final product (tyre). Even things like environmental temperature and humidity can affect the materials, so tests need to be done under control conditions in the factory.

Who knows, the companies might already be doing this, but there could be mix-ups else where, such as in packaging as mentioned previously. Either way self testing tyres is not practical or possible, and would undoubtedly cause more problems then it solves. You wouldn't be able to get data from the companies to compare against either, the material properties define the compound, which is data sensitive to the company. If you were a tyre company, you wouldn't want the competition knowing your compound would you?

Therefore I would suggest people urge the companies to take into account better quality control if they are having problems, rather than self testing/regulation. And by the sounds of things one company is listening at least, with Schumacher developing this new tyre to improve quality. The BRCA is everyone's organisation, and perhaps even the threat of a change in control tyre could be enough to persuade a company to improve their practices.

[RogerM]

Jason, I could not agree more. Thanks for saving me the effort of typing a similar response to this thread.

I think that voting with your feet, or at least the potential threat to do so, is the only way of focing change in this sort of debate.

Lets also remember though that mistakes do happen and you should not judge people / companies by their mistakes but by their corrective actions to solve the problem.

[Chrislong]

Thank you Jason, that is very good information.

[Lee]

Just going slightly off topic here....... but if people knew that there would of been a problem with the BB tyres, ie blue available but no green fronts, would they still of been nominated as one of the control tyres? If the answer is yes then there is no problem but if the answer is no then why are we not using a better alternative?