Toyo R1Rs - they're quite good
Discussion
I finally got all the last jobs on the TVR done over the weekend, and had first chance to drive the car in anger since early November. Really happy with everything, but the new R1R's deserve a special mention for just being so goddamn awesome.
For those who don't know, R1Rs are the same rubber compound as 888s, but theres a bit more tread to deal with standing water etc. To give you an idea, the rubber is so soft that when they were sitting indoors, you could push your thumb into them and leave an imprint!
On the old T1Rs, a standing start was a very tricky thing - very narrow window between bogging down and slithering nowhere ina cloud of vapourised rubber. Warm R1Rs will pretty much take everything you can throw at them once rolling, and will perform that fantastic slip-then-slingshot trick when given the beans from stationary.
I didn't get chance to find out where the limits of lateral adhesion lie, but I can confirm that they must be pretty bloody high, as I comprehensively failed to unstick the car within the realms of what's reasonable on the road (and that definition can be taken quite loosely).
I'll also give an honourable mention to the new discs and Mintex 1144 pads, which in combination with the new tyres seem to be able to achieve stopping power which is verging on painful. I had the Pagid Rs19s (the yellow endurance ones) on before - don't know whether the compound was too hard for the weight of the car, or the discs were past their best, or maybe I never bedded them in properly, but they never really got their shoulder behind the stopping effort. With the new ones properly bedded in now, it really is a revelation in just how quickly one can shed big speed.
Perhaps there's an element of rose-tints, as it's been a while since I drove the car, but the guys at X-Works have really done a cracking job with the rebuild - everything feels so fresh and new - even stuff like the action of the indicator stalks feels like it's been tightened up.
Overall, I'm a very happy bunny - if it hadn't been so some f
ker throwing a plantpot through the Jag's windscreen, it would've been a perfect car weekend!
For those who don't know, R1Rs are the same rubber compound as 888s, but theres a bit more tread to deal with standing water etc. To give you an idea, the rubber is so soft that when they were sitting indoors, you could push your thumb into them and leave an imprint!
On the old T1Rs, a standing start was a very tricky thing - very narrow window between bogging down and slithering nowhere ina cloud of vapourised rubber. Warm R1Rs will pretty much take everything you can throw at them once rolling, and will perform that fantastic slip-then-slingshot trick when given the beans from stationary.
I didn't get chance to find out where the limits of lateral adhesion lie, but I can confirm that they must be pretty bloody high, as I comprehensively failed to unstick the car within the realms of what's reasonable on the road (and that definition can be taken quite loosely).
I'll also give an honourable mention to the new discs and Mintex 1144 pads, which in combination with the new tyres seem to be able to achieve stopping power which is verging on painful. I had the Pagid Rs19s (the yellow endurance ones) on before - don't know whether the compound was too hard for the weight of the car, or the discs were past their best, or maybe I never bedded them in properly, but they never really got their shoulder behind the stopping effort. With the new ones properly bedded in now, it really is a revelation in just how quickly one can shed big speed.
Perhaps there's an element of rose-tints, as it's been a while since I drove the car, but the guys at X-Works have really done a cracking job with the rebuild - everything feels so fresh and new - even stuff like the action of the indicator stalks feels like it's been tightened up.
Overall, I'm a very happy bunny - if it hadn't been so some f
ker throwing a plantpot through the Jag's windscreen, it would've been a perfect car weekend!I paid £780 for the full set.
In theory they're like the 888s in that you're not meant to run them in sub-zero conditions. That's largely fine by me as the car generally stays tucked up in the garage if there's ice and snow on the ground, and becasue the garage shares a wall with a house and is fairly well insulated, it never gets *that* cold in there.
In practice, I think the sub-zero warning is a US-inspired ar$e-covering excercise. My brother runs 888s on his Westfield and have never had any problems either driving or storing in sub-zero conditions (although they're pretty slippery when its really cold). I think you'd only really have a problem if you were moving the treadblocks around a lot when they're *really* cold.
In theory they're like the 888s in that you're not meant to run them in sub-zero conditions. That's largely fine by me as the car generally stays tucked up in the garage if there's ice and snow on the ground, and becasue the garage shares a wall with a house and is fairly well insulated, it never gets *that* cold in there.
In practice, I think the sub-zero warning is a US-inspired ar$e-covering excercise. My brother runs 888s on his Westfield and have never had any problems either driving or storing in sub-zero conditions (although they're pretty slippery when its really cold). I think you'd only really have a problem if you were moving the treadblocks around a lot when they're *really* cold.
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