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In Reply to: "Scuffing" ... posted by D///Mill on June 12, 2000 at 15:36:36:
Like I said, most of the rubber you find on your car is YOURS, not someone else's. It gets thrown off in "chunks" if you get your tires too hot (common with street tires).
On my formula vee it is just amazing what the tires go through. I spun in turn two at SIR and ended up in the drag strip "run off". Just before I re-entered the track I looked over my front tires to check for traffic. I was amazed at the way the tires looked. There was a very shiny gloss all over the tire. Like I drove through molasses or very black shiny oil. In reality when the tires come up to temperature you are driving on a thin layer of liquid rubber (or very close to it). When I have a good run my tires look like gum erasers that have been well used.
Street rubber is a bit harder and with the grooves in them will chunk due to uneven heating. This is why we shave racing DOT tires, to make the heating more even and to make chunking less frequent. My Z3 track tires chucked more when they were new (Yokohama 032R) because I did not shave them. Now that the tread is almost gone they hardly ever chunk. I do some scuffing with these tires but it is to re-build heat between sessions with students. If I get stupid and drive through gravel or go off track with hot tires I just have to live with it for a few laps (and hope no one is following too closely).
Why am I so "down" on scuffing? Well in racing we can only do it on a pace lap or on full course yellows. Why? Because it is DANGORUS! People who don't know what they are doing (and some who do) run into each other when scuffing. At lapping events we do not encourage it at all. For most it just looks cool. On pace laps I don't do it because it does nothing for me. Once I have heat in the tires I will do it to keep it there, if I can.
-Karl
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