Forced Induction tire / rim selection

    Certain race vehicles use different exhaust pipes depending on the condition of the track and air. If they need more down force they use pipes that are angled up more. There is a video of a TF FC breaking a header off as it leaves the line which results in the car literally rolling over from the force coming out of the head of the motor. Cool stuff!


    Tim "Ghost" Ganey
    Winfield, Alabama
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    Nothing makes a boosted Slingshot hook up other than adding a 4th wheel or having a dedicated drag radial at a prepped drag strip. Nature of the beast.

    Silly BKL. If lb per inch of contact patch were so important, people would be narrowing their tires for more traction. C'mon man. ;)

    I think the best street setup that can see rain is the Toyo T1R setup with a 20 inch 345 in the back. A lot of us run this setup and it works decent in all driving situations and conditions.

    If you will never see cold weather or rain, the Toyo R888 setup is really good too. But, the symmetric R888 is disco and it is getting hard to find the 305 sizes for the rear.

    Smaller sizes - Potentza 71-R has good feedback. Nitto G2 too.

    I run my machine with JRi 2ways almost 2 inches lower than stock ride height. If straight line traction is my only concern, I run fronts at 30 clicks from full firm and the rear at 45 clicks.


    Owner of Slingshot #263 that has some stock parts left on it. :D

    @Slingrazor is the main guy I've read who runs a 294/45R18 tire at lower pressure and claims the higher sidewall allows more flex and better traction. He mentions his setup here - Rear tire. He also addresses what he feels are the reasons for his setup in this thread - Tires...what are you running? I'm simply reporting what other owners have said they do.
    I'm NOT advocating runner narrow tires, I simply maintain the everything else being equal, a larger tire & contact patch will have a lower weight per sq in of contact patch, eventually resulting in a situation where available torque will exceed the increased contact patch, leading to an increase in the chance of tire slip. Finding that sweet spot is why so many people try so many different tire/suspension setups to figure out which tire/size setup they prefer.
    This website has a long and complex look at the effects of increasing tire contact patch size -Tire Contact Patch | Lowering Pressure Gain Traction.
    I also posted that I run a 315/35 Nitto 555 G2. According to the American Muscle website, that size was a very popular rear tire size on older Mustangs (1994-2004, IIRC), but newer model Mustangs seem to run slightly smaller tires due to fitment issues.

    Edited 4 times, last by BKL ().

    I'm sure as you say there is a sweet spot somewhere and I'm sure there is an engineer among us that might be able to help with that info but,,,,,,,,,,, for ever inch of contact patch there is a certain amount of torque that it takes to make the tire slip given an equal amount of weight on that contact patch. As the tire gets wider the weight per square inch on that contact patch goes down but the total amount of traction should go up to a certain point. The question is what is the point where the optimum amount of traction is reached taking into account the overall applied weight. Once you've reached that answer then you can better take advantage of that traction by using a tire with a soft side wall. There's a reason that drag racing vehicles don't normally run low profile tires on the back but unlike drag racing vehicles we like to go around curves in our slingshots. For that we have to maintain a certain amount of stability in the sidewalls of our tires just like those on stock cars. A person can learn a lot at a track day! jes sayin


    Tim "Ghost" Ganey
    Winfield, Alabama
    205spam412spam2868