Cracked TE-37's

[2slow2speed]

While doing the post event inspection on my NSX today, I noticed that one of my rear TE-37 wheels had a crack close to the lip.

I had the tire dismounted to get a better view.

This particular set of rear wheels have seen about 58 track events and some serious riding of berms and a few off track incidents, so it's not unexpected for it to eventually crack or fail due to the stresses of impacts, heat, etc, etc.

I've read in the past that most race teams swap wheels about once a year.

Just one more thing to add to the checklist for those of us who track our vehicles frequently.

Ken

 

[2slow2speed]

one more picture

A view from the inside of the rim:

 

[Ponyboy]

Thanks for the info Ken. Glad you caught it before anything could happen. Are you thinking about going to something a little more robust or sticking with the TE-37's?

 

[2slow2speed]

Running GC-07's

Thanks for the info Ken. Glad you caught it before anything could happen. Are you thinking about going to something a little more robust or sticking with the TE-37's?

Hi Shawn,

I'm currently running the R compounds (RA1's) with the 17x7.5 44mm offset and 18x9.5 44mm offset GC-07's with a 5mm spacer front and back to clear the Stoptech BBK. This setup works great with my current suspension settings

Prior to switching to the R compounds I ran the GC-07 fronts with a 5mm spacer with the TE-37 (no spacers) rears with the SO-3's. (If you look closely at my avatar that was the setup that I was running when the picture was taken). This setup was also pretty good (Note that the rear TE37's were 18x9.5 with 40mm offset with no spacer)

A couple of weeks ago, I tried to run with the 17x7.5 35mm with no spacer and 18x9.5 40mm with a 5mm spacer GC-010's with SO-3's after having a RA1 go south on me while driving down to Laguna Seca (that's another long story.. LOL). The car handled like crap, the extra track width prevented the car's suspension from functioning properly and my laptimes were up substantially because I did not feel comfortable with the car .

Same thing on Friday at Thunderhill, I decided to run with the GC-010 fronts and the TE37 rears because all of my friends were running street tires and I wanted to use up the SO-3s that were on the TE37's. During the first session my laptimes were 12 seconds slower than my recent average laptimes at Thill. After mucking around with the Tein's I was able to come down to the 2:17's, that's sad given that I can do 2:12's on average and get down to 2:11's with the GC-07's running SO-3's , (For reference Andrie can do some flying laps at 2:09's with the same setup before the tires overheat... he's still faster.. hehe) What to take from this, extra track width does not always equal better handling.

I have another set of front GC-07's that I ordered from Chris (I thought that I lost one of the front GC-07's when one of the front RA1's sidewall went bye bye on my way to Laguna Seca, but the wheel turned out to be ok with only some cosmetic damage) and I will be ordering another set of rears from Chris as well. I'll have a set of SO-3's mounted on them to use as the track setup on rainy days.

So it looks like the GC-07's will be my track wheels of choice for a while. I know about several S2000's that race on S-Taikyu using GC-07's, so it must be an ok wheel for the track

Ken

Edit: Fixed some typos

 

[Ponyboy]

Hi Ken,

I'm wondering what the handling characteristics of the extra track width were like? And if it couldn't have been dialed out so that you could keep the extra traction. It'd be interesting to see if you could increase the track but still keep the stock proportion to maintain the "feel" but increase the overall performance. I dunno...just thinking aloud.

 

[2slow2speed]

Hi Ken,

I'm wondering what the handling characteristics of the extra track width were like? And if it couldn't have been dialed out so that you could keep the extra traction. It'd be interesting to see if you could increase the track but still keep the stock proportion to maintain the "feel" but increase the overall performance. I dunno...just thinking aloud.

Hi Shawn,

The front of end of the car seemed to have bite on initial turn-in but the car had a tendency to understeer and push like crazy through the rest of the turn.

I lost quite a bit of time by having to slow down going through turn 2 (long left sweeper on camber), 3 (another long right sweeper off camber), and 5 (off camber right sweeper) along with turns 14 and 15 heading to the front straight. by having to reduce speed to be able to get the car to follow the line .

I softened the front suspension on the Tein's and it made things a bit better with the car being able to have a bit more front end bite, but it did not feel quite right.

I did not bother making any changes to the front sway bar settings which was set to stiffest. My guess is that softening it a bit should have helped as well.

Ken

 

[MJK]

Did Volk replace or repair this?

 

[2slow2speed]

Did Volk replace or repair this?

The wheels were track wheels as such I did not bother to get them replaced/repaired. Given the total number of track events I am just happy that they lasted as long as they did. If you want to play you gotta pay