[tdot-zx3]

ANTHONYD,Mar 18 2005, 01:55 PM Wrote:Does the size of the area of tire making contact with the road play an important part in oversteer?

When your talking about tires and asking a question like that its difficult to answer because your dealing with whatever coefficient of friction a tire has... Which is going to change from car to car. Temperature, Slip, Pressure, Loading and obviously factors generated by size, width and surface area driving on.

Temperature wise, what your asking could happen if.... The rwd car was driving fast down a straight away say, and the rear tires were working hard while the front ones had little stress on them. The rear tires would stay heated, while the fronts would be cooler. If a turn came and instead of breaking you lifted from throttle, the front tires would be cooler until warmed from the turn, and *should* understeer until doing so. If at another turn you had to braked hard first, the front tires would heat up, allowing them to have better traction pulling the car through the turn. Basically, tires are always going to grip more as they heat up, if this setup with stretched tires effects heat in any way then possibly it could.

Slip is the relationship between the slipping of the tire and the coefficient of friction... When you brake, turn, accelerate, your tires are always slipping here and there. An extreme would be like, slamming on the brakes and you just keep sliding. Anyways ... maximum traction comes at somewhere around 5degrees of slip, thats all thats really important to know. If tires are mixmatched front and back, installed differently or whatever the changes in degrees of tire slip can affect and even cause oversteer/understeer.

Bare with me its not the most technical explination... But it is almost 3am. Ive read some great books on tire subjects and the likes... someone please correct me if my brain has mixed something up but that should be right and give you a little insight to your question.