report on the Yo' Mama A032 R tires at the track (long)

[Larry C Leung]

Tess,

The 032R's are not full race tires (BTW, the race compound isn't what
avoids chunking, it's the shallow tread depth) but intended as a
compromise. Yo'Mama hasn't kept up with the DOT "R" program like Toyo,
BFG, Kumho and to a degree Goodyear and Bridgestone, so the best track
tire they have (maybe, haven't shopped for them for years) is still the
A008RS1, a forgiving and predictable, but not as fast as other R compound
tires (but they last longer). Having no experience with the A032's, I
can't say what happened there, but  thought you chose them as a
compromise tire (i.e. better wear, but somewhat less grip and response).
It seems that you may have needed to shave the tires b/c:

1) complaints of lack of response (the butterball comment)
2) chunking

BTW, was the temperatures rather warm?

If you choose to go with another set of A032s, two things I'd recommend:

1) get them shaved for dry high speed track use (just beware, they will
be bad at track speeds in the rain). This will improve response and wear.
2) if you buy from TireRack, get them heat cycled, really worth the
effort in reducing your wear problem.

HTH!

LL - NY

On Sat, 14 Jul 2001 20:50:49 -0700 "Tessie McMillan" <tessmc at drizzle.com>
writes:
>... and it ain't good! &:-) One of my Alfa friends coined the term 
>"Yo'
>Mama", and I really think it fits. This is so disheartening, because I 
>am a
>die-hard Yokohama fan. I drove an '87 911 Carrera for five years, 
>mostly on
>Yokohama tires (A008, A008RSII). I have the Yoko AVS intermediates on 
>my
>Alfa Spider. I thought the Advan A032R would be fabulous for my '88 
>80
>Quattro, but instead, they are like driving on butterballs! Which 
>isn't so
>bad, per se, except that it's not really the effect I'm going for 
>here.
>*Definitely* makes things more tricky in the turns, and under heavy 
>braking.
>
>I'll spare you the minute-by-minute report, but suffice it to say that 
>I
>drove my new tires at our Alfa club track event today at SIR. I 
>started
>high. I lowered by small increments. When I lost steering input I 
>lowered
>the fronts more. Since I thought it would be a hot day, I started at 
>42 and
>never went below 39 on any wheel (although I tried a heckuva lot of
>combinations in between.) But I still ended up chunking my right front 
>tire
>during my second session, so I had to stop in the middle of the day, 
>sweat
>over a hot floor jack, swap my right-side wheels and then tweak the
>pressures all over again. In the end I gave up, and left the pressures 
>at a
>spot that made the tires drive like butterballs again. (I just 
>pretended I
>was driving a go-kart.)
>
>-----> I mean, the whole point of the R compound tire was to avoid 
>chunking
>another tire! I've gone through so many sets of street tires (each set 
>good
>for one track day) <------
>
>Now lest you label me a doofus in the tire tech area, I'll share that 
>there
>were several of us at the event running these tires, and ALL of us 
>had
>trouble. One of my friends, who drives an almost-race-car Alfetta 
>coupe
>(Alfa Romeo, evenly-balanced 4-cylinder RWD with transaxle), told me 
>his
>tires were handling like cr*p. We diced together all day, and he had 
>the
>squiggles almost as badly as I did in some places, although I don't 
>think
>his car was pushing nearly as much as mine. He tried tweaking his 
>pressures
>up when I went down -- although he had started in the 30s and I in the 
>40s.
>And with the butterballs, well, I didn't think increasing pressure 
>would
>help me.
>
>So if you've driven with these tires, I'd be curious to hear about 
>the
>conditions under which you drive them. How much does your car weigh?
>Anti-sway bar, yes? Autocross vs. track? If the track, do you have 
>any
>serious elevation change, or is it all flat? SIR is counterclockwise 
>(the
>way we run it), has elevation change, and has turns that just wear the 
>right
>front tires down to the bone.
>
>Tess
>in Seattle WA, U.S.A.
>p.s. - about that Swedish thread: what about bringing some... er...  
>thing
>Swedish to Seattle, too? &:-)
>
>Som lugna vatten
>Lugna vatten
>Som lugna vatten i mig  (Frida - Djupa andetag)
>