Seems to be foreign idea to many since asked on another site with no reply.

Durometer reading on slicks. Wondering if any here have durmoter for reading slick compound hardness? If so at what range do you see a change performance wise.

Anybody? I plan to invest in one of these myself as a lark to see how they work.

I reckon that my 60-foots would go away as the slicks get measurably harder.

You need to test them at same humidity and temperature if you want a true comparable reading.

Make sure if you buy one you do your research on Shore A vs Shore D

Insider tip: Don't try a Rockwell Hardness Tester!!!

I think it is a waste of time and money.

quote:

Originally posted by Curly1:
I think it is a waste of time and money.

Yes it is!!!!!!!!!

I agree. It won't tell you anything. The time slip will be the only data you need to look at.

Lol on the Rockwell tester comment.

To each their own. I use them to see what part of slick is getting used most, Keep track of what point slicks start to change and what effect it has performance wise. If you know what point you start to see changes and keep up with it you might be able to swap slicks before change in performance occurs.

I don't see anything gives more info on car as waste of time or money. Again to each their own.

Wow amazing. Discussion with resorting to calling people an idiot, broke dyck driving shyt boxes, etc
... Gives me hope.

Wideopen makes a good point.....to each his own. It is data....and maybe at a performance point a correlation can be had.

One thing is certain....no Rockwell testers please....

quote:

Originally posted by wideopen231:
To each their own. I use them to see what part of slick is getting used most, Keep track of what point slicks start to change and what effect it has performance wise. If you know what point you start to see changes and keep up with it you might be able to swap slicks before change in performance occurs.

I don't see anything gives more info on car as waste of time or money. Again to each their own.

Slicks are pretty soft and Shore A is the hardness range you want the tester to be. I've used several for testing rubber over the years and one brand doesn't stick out as being any better over the other. The ones with the "telltale" work fine - looks like they've all gone digital now. I would also recommend getting the test blocks for two reasons: one, to verify the accuracy of the gauge and two, to teach yourself the technique to get consistent readings.
Rubber is always in a state of vulcanization and will get harder over time. This is especially true when you add heat cycles to it. If you can track hardness of your slicks and relate it to performance, more power to you.

Condition based monitoring of equipment and components is smart practice business wise and of course isn't a bad idea where you can use it in our sport. My concern here is that it only tells you part of the story of slick condition. Yes you CAN lose capability of the compound to be effective due to the number of runs or usually from simply aging. But often the sidewall loses it's ability long before anything compound/traction wise starts to become an issue. How can you test the condition of a sidewall? Now if you are a twice a year raceer that ends up with aged out tires, this could be a thing.

Reading the reply's. Different views, which is good thing in a educational conversation.

Since bracket racing is mostly about consistency it seems to me that every part of the car needs to be as close to the same every time it hits the track as is possible.

I doubt there is any performance gains to be found. Maybe a waste of time and money as stated earlier. At about 40 to 50 bucks and taking all of 2 minutes to check and record weekly. How much is that in the big picture of time and money involved in running a car?

Maybe coming from a mostly headsup racing background. I just like to have every bit of info I can and mabye just maybe I will find a little something that helps me in figuring out what car may do or what caused it to do on a run.
Comparison. In 1992 I was talkjing with a group of crew chjfes and someone mentioned they had noticed one who was checking vacuum on a blower at idle with simple vacuum gauge. I figured hell lets see what I can find out.
What I found on our car was that at 21" it was a in the teens, at 22" it was a 6.0_ and at 23" I would straighten my leg out and driver knew car was going to haul because It just gave me a woody( jokingly). B fore comments I rarely changed OD and almost never changed butterfly opening and idle had to same rpm for this to be worth a crap. Yea 6.0 not squat now but at the time it was a top 4 and top 1 cpl times, especially in IHRA. Again it was just information.

We use a durometer a lot on our open wheel cars, but on the dragster it would be futile. If you're changing the durometer of the tires enough on a weekly basis, or even monthly basis, you have much bigger problems. Tires are going to wear, but in this sport, the sidewalls will dictate the life of the tire more than the tread. I've seen guy with cords showing that hadn't lost 60 fts yet. But they didn't have enough power to break down the sidewalls.