PJK3

i've had a LOT of success doing the flip. and readily recommend it to other owners. in fact, i just flipped my fronts a couple weeks ago.


usace - here if this helps any...

tire jockey said, "Don't flip it's a waste of time."

PJK3 (mechanical engineer) and Xviper (all around super car guy) said, "Flipping is well worth the money and time."

who you gonna trust?




(btw, no offense intended to anyone... the above statement was purely meant as a joke.)

foolio

to flipping tires. Extends my front tire life by 10k miles.

This article recommends it as well:
http://features.evolutionm.net/article/evomfeatures/46

LATEOTT

The wear pattern on the tires is reversed, which is the part that contacts the ground, the contact patch. That is the whole point of doing the flip, to put thicker rubber where it was not before.

In some ways it may improve grip after you do the flip, but it things like breakaway may be more sudden. The point I was trying to make was that handling characteristics will change when you move rubber from the inside of the tire to the outside of the tire...and owners who do this should be aware of it and drive accordingly. Maybe at this point the tires should no longer be considered "performance" tires. It is a crutch to get more miles out of the tires. (And a very good idea!)

Race Miata

I've had tire unmounting done about 2 dozen times and have also seen/heard good/bad experience from my buddies. It comes down to that it doesn't matter if the tire shop has a top-class mounting/unmounting machine. The machine can work only as good as the operator does.

At one big local tire shop, the guy put a couple of deep gashes on my BMW Nardi race wheels while unmounting the race tires (225/45/15 on a 7.5" wheel). His excuse was that the race tires have stiff sidewalls and are hard to unmount. I told them I've had 9 sets of race tires of various brands and sizes unmounted and have never had a single scratch on the wheels. I never go back to that tire shop.

At another big local tire shop chain, a "new" guy tried to unmount the 235/40/17 race tires from my BMW 17x8.5" wheels and somehow managed to wedge the tire iron between the wheel and tire and got stuck. One tire guy said that my wheel was a special one that required some "reverse drop whatever..." unmount method. It took all 5 tire guys at the shop to try figure how to free the tire iron for like 15 minutes while other cars are waiting for tire service. I wonder what the people waiting for tire service were thinking when they saw 5 tire guys gather around the machine (1 tire guy was even standing on the machine). At that point, I was almost sure that they were going to damage the wheel. I talked to the manager in a nice manner, "I'm afraid it'll take too much effort to unmount my tires so once they get the tire iron out I'll take the wheels and tires to another tire shop." The manager insisted that it should be OK and one of the more experienced tire guy came over and admitted that the new guy screwed up big time. They finally got the tire out of the wheel. There were some scratches on the inside wall of the wheel shell but at least that's not visible when the tire is mounted. At the end, the experienced tire guy finished my tire service in no time (at least that's what felt like to me anyways, and forget about that reverse-drop shit).

For the few sets of race tires on my delicate 13x9" 3-pc race wheels (the wheel shell is only 4mm thick) for the miata, I went only to the shops where the owner/operator go autocross and/or road racing and have experience with delicate race wheels. They didn't mind me watch their nice work. Yes, race tires have stiff sidewalls. But when the job is done right, the tire iron NEVER EVER touches a wheel lip. The wheel lip should NOT be used as a fulcrum to pry the tire loose. The tire unmounting machine provides that fulcrum. Yes, it takes a bit more prying force when using the "arm" provided by the machine as a fulcum to pry loose the tire and rest the bead on the arm itself, but who says tire unmounting can be done by a wimp. Long deep gash can only occur when the tire guy uses the wheel lip as a fulcrum to pry the tire loose, continue to leave the tire iron wedge between the tire and wheel, and proceed to rotate the tire to let the arm from the machine slash the tire iron thru' the whole rotation.

Eluded

The S02's don't grip as well past the half way mark which sucks. When they hit the wear bars the car's freeway manners go severely downhill.

usace

Oh, I know you guys are right... heck, I'm a mechanical engineer myself. I never thought Mr. Tire Jockey was correct, it's common sense that flipping will change the wear from one side of the tire to the other. He was adamant as the professional tire guy that he was right... hard to argue with stupidity I guess. It was only because he seemed unwilling to do it that I left... with the thought that I'd just get it done elsewhere. Problem is, like my other post explains, every time I've had tires mounted they end up damaging the rims. So, the more times I have this type of stuff done the more messed up the rim becomes. This place was at least halfway decent with their tire mounting, even though their knowledge was below par. I've been to pretty much all the tire places in my area now.

burnmacs

On this I can speak from experience on another car. I had a Supra with BFGoodrich KDs on it. After about 5k miles the rears had worn the inside halfway to wear bar due to camber so I had them rotated since I really didn't want to have to replace them prematurely. I had to take it easy for a little while after that since I my straight line traction had become noticably worse as well as the limit of the car being less graudual. Who knows, I could have been

The proper solution ended up being a new alignment spec that some of other memebers developed that actually ended up being better for road courses as well as tire wear. Then the Fast & Furious came out and destroyed that community.

Mike

PJK3

*nods*

i understand that point... i really have 1 guy that i trust to do mine. if he isn't at the shop that day, i go back later.

so far, i've gone through several sets of S02's and flipped my Fuzion's once, and nary a scratch on either the OEM or AR1 wheels.

Mr. S2k

I recommend you try the inert gas mixture - SECUR PNEUS or similar.
It has many advantages compared to air.

More here: Secur Pneus
(Please read this first!)

Our biggest bus company in Slowenia uses this gas. And one of its employees said to me that they make many more km with this mixture. I forgot the number but it was impressive. You have to know that they make more than 200.000 km per bus per year.

I can

PJK3

gotta love those claims w/ no substantiation...


if i was a tad bit more motivated (and it wasn't so late) and if i had my thermodynamics book at home, i could probably use your numbers provided and some estimated temperatures, and probably even tell you close to what gases they may be using...
it's an interesting claim, but until i see some substantiation that it somehow improves our tires... it remains just a different gas w/ different properties in your tires.