any one switch from slicks to et street drag radials go faster

My mother went from BFGoodrich Drag Radials to Slicks and she lost a tenth and over a MPH on her '63 Plymouth... But her car only does mid to occasionally low 12's! Best of 12:20 on Mickey Drag Radial...

Michael

FASTER and QUICKER ...roger that

'effen it can hook at the starting line

almost a full .500. From ET slick to ET radial same day testing on my old cuda that ran low 10's....Phill

how about your MPH ?

A bud told me that he gained SIX mph on a 12 flat drive-out car.

Every car is different, But bottom line is a radial will be faster, but can be more tempermental when it comes to track prep. If it hooks, it will run hard. Every stock / super stock racer in the country knows this.

Dustin's got that right.......I run MT ET Street radials and Hoosier bias slicks.
My faster times have been on the Radial tires.
BUT......poor track = poor launch (spin) but if they hook it'll be a hard run.
The slicks are more forgiving with track conditions.....poor track means slower times but usually CONSISTANT slower times. With a good track.....still won't beat the radial.
The whole thing I've found with the radials is that if they spin you'll be back peddling to tame it down because they'll keep spinning. So I guess what I'm saying is that if you have a superbly prepped track that you always run on, stay with a radial. If not...I'd personally run the bias slick for consistancy over best ET.
I just bought some new Hoosier bias slicks......first shot in the new season will be on them. Hope I don't surprise myself.

lets say you hook on slicks and hook on radials 60 foot times on radials should be lower. lets here some 60 foot times

My car ain't no rocket, so I'll tell you that it's ran a 1.48 on the 295/65R15 MT radials but only a 1.54 on the 29/10.0 Hoosiers. Both dead hooked but were on different race tracks so it might not be a fair comparison. But I can tell you that I've never "FELT" the car hook hard with bias tires...with the radials you FEEL it and you know it's gonna be a good run.

thats what i was looking for my best 60 is a 1.56 love to be in the 1.40s

1.36 60' in street trim

phill is that on moter or nos

After trying unsuccessfully to get my car to work on slicks, I put on a pair of 295-65 drag radials after one of the tech guys at M/T recommended them to me. Runs much better on the radials.

I've been a best of 1.32 sixty foot and 9.54 at 140+ mph on the radials, footbraking and naturally aspirated.

The best I've gotten from it on bias ply tires is a 1.43 sixty foot and a 9.94 at 138+ MPH. Given the conditions I ran that in, the bias plies will MPH slightly better b/c they grow. Radials don't grow much, if at all.

In the bias ply tire's defense, I only have 8.5" wide rims and was running a 29.5x10.5 stiff sidewall M/T slick with tubes. I had to run 18 psi in them to keep from folding the tire up. With a wider rim I think it'd do a lot better.

The radials are faster when the track will hold them.

I recently ran into some major traction issues, but learned a valuable lesson about how important the front suspension is to making a small tire car work. It's all fixed now and runs like it has for the last 4 years.

I was just talking about this very topic with some friends Saturday. It got me thinking.... My 10.5 slicks are screwed to the rim and I run inner tubes. What do you do with drag radials? Do you screw them to the rim too or is that not needed?

Like Chip mentioned, I bet the guys that go faster with radials either have a rim that's too narrow or the sidewalls are dead......

Think about it........If neither tires spins, why would one be quicker than the other? It's, obviously, the sidewall........If radials were so great, you'd see them in Stock Elimantor (yes, I know a lot of them run a radial slick)........

So, to have the same ET with slicks (which is typcially more desired because it is the more forgiving tire), the sidewalls need to be stiff, which means 2" wider rim than tread width along with the correct, higher, air pressure.........and tubes help stiffen the sidewall too.........and you're not going to be able to run slicks to the cords like so many people do.........

We'd actually change the tire pressure in 1/4-1/2LB increments on Top Fuel cars to control how fast the car gets up on the tire and to control tire shake........If the track is really good, we'd lower the tire pressue 1/4-1/2LB so the sidewall wasn't as stiff so it would sling out and get up on the tire quicker to keep it from shaking.......If the track was bad, we'd raise it 1/4-1/2LB to stiffen the sidewall to prevent shake because we couldn't hit it as hard with clutch because it could blow the tires off....... 1/4-1/2LB doesn't sound like much, but with a tire that big, that's quite a bit of air.......

Even weather effected how much tire pressure we ran.......Bad air meant lower pressure because power was down, so it would get up on the tire easier/quicker........

a radial will not expand like a bias ply at the top end ,where a bias ply will grow, get taller, and lower your gear.

A radial will not grow, maintaining the circumference of the tire through the duration of the run.

That is why a radial will be faster.

i agree - the hit of the two tires are different - you dont roll over a radial, which will slow down a bias slick

I talked to a rep at Hoosier a few years ago about this. Track prep is the key to using a radial slick. For a plain old bracket car,he said just use the bias....