Okay gang, it's official now, you can stud your own sport bike tires and come out and join us next season...
I built the rear tire while in the SOAR booth at the January Toronto Motorcycle Show.
I had the tires mounted on the bike for display in the SOAR booth at the London Motorcycle show.
Here are a few of the quotes I heard those two separate weekends...
"I've been ice racing for years and...
"Ha, those won't work"
"Those are gonna bend"
"They will break off"
"Those are gonna tear right out of the carcass"
"Are those race tires? The carcass is going to crack up in the cold temps"
"You'll spin the tire on the rim"
"You need a bead locker"
"You're gonna tear the valve stem out"
"Ice tires are all about stud pattern" - This one I'll agree with.
"Building ice tires is an art" - Maybe it is, guess I'm an artist, who knew?
It was my first day out on the ice with my homemade ice tires and I think it went well, I learned how to improve the studding for my next set.
Still have all my studs, tubes are fine, no holes in my rad or cases from a thrown stud or scratches on my swingarm.
I didn't feel like crashing on the first test day so I didn't push it through the turns but you can see from the vid that I was going like 50 Km in the turns of their oval.
On the straight speed runs I had it up to 160 Km/h, 102 Mph on my speedo at 2:32 of the vid.
This vid is a split screen of a helmet GoPro and video camera.
Here's the video...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQuujwos_Lg