None MB: Road legal rally car tyre question

[blackscooby]

Our Peugeot Rally car runs "F2" tyres for some of our events.
Question is are they road legal ?

OK they don't exactly look 100% legal now do they !
They are E approved. Do have wear indicators within the tread patterns.
They DO NOT say "not for road use" or anything motorsport.

They are supposedly road legal for link stages.... whatever that means. Surely road legal is road legal.

Manufactor quotes this
"Tarmac rally stage 'moulded slick' designed to meet FIA international regulations that require a minimum 17 percent tread pattern. Road legal for link sections"


I certainly wouldn't like to be caught out in a rain shower in them, on an event if you get it wrong and it ends up wet you might as well park up and get the flask of coffee out

Anyone know their ins and outs of the tyre law ?

 

[glojo]

I certainly wouldn't like to be caught out in a rain show in them, on an event if you get it wrong and it ends up wet you might as well park up and get the flask of coffee out

Anyone know their ins and outs of the tyre law ?

I certainly don't know the legal answer, but I would respectfully ask, "Where does common sense come into this?"

Reading your question makes me think you are a dedicated, sensible person with lots of this commodity, so please do not think my 'common sense' remark is aimed at you. Surely if your saying the tyre is not safe to use in slightly adverse conditions then it should never be on a vehicle using our public highways. What would happen if there was a slight downpour and the driver lost control and collided with a number of pedestrians?

Thank goodness you are concerned and hopefully have not used these on public roads.

Regards,
John

 

[blackscooby]

No not used on the roads, more of a legal stand point.
Dry weather grip = MUCH MUCH more than any road tyre you could ever imagine.
Wet ~ NONE. Well I guess none (no channels!) but it's only ever been pushed off a trailer in the wet and a hieve of activity to fit a set of rims wearing something more appropriate.

It's a point of legality more than anything else.

Cheers
Mark

 

[Doodle]

Given that it's e-marked, it should be fine, from memory even if the lack of tread pattern is questioned, pointing out the marking should suffice. A friend of mine runs similar tyres on the his 205 GTI 1.9/6 rally car, and once demonstrated, this was accepted by the police.

I'm sure someone with knowledge in an official capacity will confirm this shortly.

 

[Bobby Dazzler]

Manufactor quotes this
"Tarmac rally stage 'moulded slick' designed to meet FIA international regulations that require a minimum 17 percent tread pattern. Road legal for link sections"

I wonder if the text can be read in two different ways?

Judging by the nature of your post I'm guessing you've read it as being akin to:
"These tyres are only road legal for travelling between stages, and should not be used for road use in other circumstances".

However there is a second way of interpretting the same text:
"These tyres are road legal. Being road legal they can be used for travelling between stages in addition to on the stage itself."

Disclaimer: I know nothing about the legality of tyres for road use. I just read it twice and got two interpretations from it!!

I hope someone else can better advise.

PS Can your tyre dealer help? If not try these guys. They do competition and road tyres - and are a helpful and knowledgable bunch:

http://www.bmtr.co.uk/

 

[blackscooby]

Thanks folks,

BD ~ Each time I read it the interpretation is different !

I might ask a neighbour tonight who should know about these things... drives a colourful T5 with lights and stuff on the roof

 

[Bobby Dazzler]

I might ask a neighbour tonight who should know about these things... drives a colourful T5 with lights and stuff on the roof

Maybe the blokes I chatted to a few years ago on the road between Alderly Edge and Holmes Chapel?

I got pulled over on the way home from an office Christmas party. Apparently the registration number they had searched on was not being returned as valid from their checks. They assumed that the registration had been doctored to spell something. Once I verified that it really did spell that word with absolutely no doctoring it came back OK. Phew.

Incredibley nice chaps, and we stood chatting for a while. Sadly it didn't stop my colleagues coming past in a mini-bus seeing me with a Volvo behind, and the blue lights flashing!!

 

[blackscooby]

Resolved. 100% road legal despite the looks of the tyre.

 

[GrahamC230K]

Not uncommon to be honest. I know of plenty of people with Caterham type cars and also Evo drivers that use slick looking road legal tyres with only a few cuts in.

Yes prety useless in rain, caution is required. Yes lethal in the wrong hands as is any car really. I think Johns overreaction is a classic.

 

[blackscooby]

We always have at least 2 complete sets of tyres. One set being wets (normal road tyres) and our so called slicks above. Now at least if it's dry we can attend an event on them... taking wets in equipment car.

 

[glojo]

Yes prety useless in rain, caution is required. Yes lethal in the wrong hands as is any car really. I think Johns overreaction is a classic.

Where I used to live we used to have rally cars roar by at night and strangely enough, sometimes it rained.

For someone to say a tyre is road legal, but pretty useless in the rain is concerning. "prety useless in rain, caution is required. Yes lethal in the wrong hands as is any car really".

Reading scoobydoo's comments I would suggest to actually use the tyre in the rain is 'not the wisest of moves'. If it starts raining just after you have started a longish stage, or you are simply driving between stages and it starts raining then will you park up? If that makes my comment a classic, then so be it.

I certainly wouldn't like to be caught out in a rain shower in them, on an event if you get it wrong and it ends up wet you might as well park up and get the flask of coffee out .

Would you really park up? Hand on heart?

In my opinion it compares to driving in thick fog at the maximum speed limit. You could argue it's legal, but it sure as heck aint sensible.

How many of us change tyres before they get down to the minimum legal requirement?

Why do we do this?
Regards,
John the classic

 

[GrahamC230K]

You just have to nurse the car home if caught in an unexpected shower.

 

[blackscooby]

Where I used to live we used to have rally cars roar by at night and strangely enough, sometimes it rained.

For someone to say a tyre is road legal, but pretty useless in the rain is concerning. "prety useless in rain, caution is required. Yes lethal in the wrong hands as is any car really".

Reading scoobydoo's comments I would suggest to actually use the tyre in the rain is 'not the wisest of moves'. If it starts raining just after you have started a longish stage, or you are simply driving between stages and it starts raining then will you park up? If that makes my comment a classic, then so be it.

Would you really park up? Hand on heart?

In my opinion it compares to driving in thick fog at the maximum speed limit. You could argue it's legal, but it sure as heck aint sensible, and that's another classic that you can quote from me.

How many of us change tyres before they get down to the minimum legal requirement?

Why do we do this?

By all means use tyres that have no or very little grip in the wet on a closed stage, or a race circuit, but surely even Graham230K might have a tiny smigeon of consideration for other road users and not use them on our busy public highways in the wet?

Classic!!

Regards,
John the classic

Most of our events are single venue things, therefore if I get the tyres wrong I've fooked up. My fault just have to tread carefully. Have got caught at a venue in the wet and standing water is not your friend, infact it's evil ! No sypes, no ability to do anything with the water. You cannot stop it on those tyres in the wet... nooooo way. Regular road tyres expel litres of water per second. Those will not.

It's the usual case that I'm at Oulton park or something 10 mins from home, if dry I'd drive home on them, or at least I will now I know that they're road legal. We've always got a car / trailer full of bit / wheels etc. One of our jobs once finished for a day is to swap the pads over. You cannot use competition pads on the road, it's just not possible. Fine if the disks are glowing, bloody scarey when trying to stop the car on cold disks.

In the dry these tyres amazing to the extreame, you hear gravel being picked up from them just on what looks to be grit free tarmac.

Make road tyres look seriously rubbish on dry tarmac.

 

[Doodle]

I still had trackday tyres on the DC5 when the heavy showers came in October/November, and frankly they were no worse than normal road tyres with 3-4mm tread on them. In fact, if you kept the heat in them, they were very effective indeed.

While I certainly wouldn't want to run the tyres in winter, for summer usage where rainfall is more limited, I don't envisage any grip problems whatsoever.

 

[blackscooby]

I still had trackday tyres on the DC5 when the heavy showers came in October/November, and frankly they were no worse than normal road tyres with 3-4mm tread on them. In fact, if you kept the heat in them, they were very effective indeed.

While I certainly wouldn't want to run the tyres in winter, for summer usage where rainfall is more limited, I don't envisage any grip problems whatsoever.

I wasn't at the trackday last Nov, but the car was. Wet in the morning and damp in the afternoon. Once they had some heat into the tyres they were fine apparently. Take some getting used to. The hotter the brakes and tyres got the better the car performed. In the morning the wheels were that hot in the wet with road tyres on that it changed the colour of the alloys, the Brigestone SO3's were hot enough in Nov for them to steam nicely from the tyres once back in the padock !

 

[glojo]

I still had trackday tyres on the DC5 when the heavy showers came in October/November, and frankly they were no worse than normal road tyres with 3-4mm tread on them. In fact, if you kept the heat in them, they were very effective indeed.

Hi Dolphin,
How I envy you on those track days. What would these tyres be like without getting heat into them? Normal road use might not be quite as exhilirating as high speed driving around an enclosed circuit.

Regards,
John

 

[Doodle]

Even for normal road use, they were fine - I got caught in a downpour on the M20 on the way to Belgium in October. Provided it isn't too cold you can still get enough heat into them to get them working nicely.

However, once the temperature dropped a bit as winter started, they never got warm and were fairly unpleasant to say the least, hence why I swapped them out for a set of GSD3's

Once the good weather returns, they'll be going back on...