What is the major performance gains or losses between 2.0g wheels and lighter 1.4g to1.6g wheels in league racing. Are the lighter wheels finishing faster, do the heavier wheels offer more inertia/decreased deceleration rate on a 42 foot track making for a faster finish, are the lighter wheels durable enough for league racing, etc. What are the pros and cons and what do you prefer? Thanks.
League Racing - 2.0 vs 1.4
- Thread starter Falcon777
- Start date
For a racer that knows what they are doing, any reduction in weight is an advantage.... As the tread gets thinner you have to reverse the rear wheels to get maximum speed.... so maybe that is a CON if you have less experience, but you wouldn't have to reverse any the wheels you mentioned... They aren't light enough yet...
Thanks 5kids! Are the lighter wheels, will all things being equal, faster than the heavier wheels or do they seem to peter out toward the end? Makes since that you would have to reverse the rears on1g wheels since the inner tread area whorls not be meaty enough to support the weight and G force in the transition.
For me, lighter wheels are always faster, even a small reduction in weight makes a difference. I take an identical set of light <1 gram wheels and run one set regular and the other reversed.... the reversed is faster for me... I can tell the non-reversed are flexing during the transition. It really depends on how thin the vendor is cutting the tread area to determine when you must reverse the rears. What feels very flexible to the hand may not flex enough to be an issue when racing. I mean you only have a small amount of weight on the wheel (maybe 2 ounces max plus g force) and you are only flexing half the wheel (from OD to bore). So there is a sweet spot when you need to reverse, but I can't really tell you what number that is at because they are made different. The faster wheels, like DD4H wheels, you have to flip because most of the weight is taken from the OD to make the wheel the fastest. THe lever arm from the OD to the bore is longer so removing that weight makes the wheel easier to turn, less energy. Some other vendors <1 gram wheels are slow because they take a lot of weight off at the hub which does very little for speed.
The equations for the motion of the car require a lot of data on the wheel.
Of the 14 variables used in the equation, 7 are directly related to the wheel. You can have wheels that weight the same but have different moments of inertia. OVERWHELMINGLY, it is the moment of inertia that you want to get low to make a fast wheel. As seen in other posts, the heavy wheel ( I.E. higher inertia, slower slow down from top speed) might sound like a good idea, but the light wheeled car is so far ahead, that it takes over 450 ft to catch up to the low inertia wheels.
Of the 14 variables used in the equation, 7 are directly related to the wheel. You can have wheels that weight the same but have different moments of inertia. OVERWHELMINGLY, it is the moment of inertia that you want to get low to make a fast wheel. As seen in other posts, the heavy wheel ( I.E. higher inertia, slower slow down from top speed) might sound like a good idea, but the light wheeled car is so far ahead, that it takes over 450 ft to catch up to the low inertia wheels.
It wouldn't seem like to me running 2g wheels reversed would matter unless enough material was removed from the tread area reducing their MOInertia while still weighing 2g but is that even a possibilty? Like Scott said the wheels have got to be much lighter than 2g before they need to be reversed. Soooo since street stocks run no lighter than 2g per the rules where's the advantage?
This is where pre 09 bsa wheels might have an advantage cause they are so beefy, especially around the hub area.
From my testing there slower, for the SS class. I may have to try and flip the rears on a SS and see if it has any aero advantage.
down4derby said:
G
