tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8964719845369935777.post6923044267762151361..comments2024-03-27T21:23:40.339-04:00Comments on Chemjobber: What compounds soften rubber tires? Chemjobberhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15932113680515602275noreply@blogger.comBlogger7125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8964719845369935777.post-59768854235627335462016-10-08T00:05:05.409-04:002016-10-08T00:05:05.409-04:00Maybe I should ask my advisor! Maybe I should ask my advisor! SuperScienceGrlnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8964719845369935777.post-69945016914983204442016-10-07T17:02:09.641-04:002016-10-07T17:02:09.641-04:00Tire warmers are legit. They don't soften tire...Tire warmers are legit. They don't soften tires any more than a tire would soften by itself when it gets hot during the race. Warmers allow you to go all out from the start without having to heat up tires by making a few slow laps. <br /><br />Bleach softens tires well. Probably by oxidizing some of the sulfur from cross-links. I've done that to an old tire by doing a smoky burnout in a puddle of bleach. Afterwards tire cooled down, tire remained really soft and all kids of debris were sticking to it.<br /><br />It should be trivial to detect any tampering by using a durometer, especially if everyone uses standard issue tire. No need to use a chemical detection method.<br />Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8964719845369935777.post-6527639405141738822016-10-07T15:23:57.178-04:002016-10-07T15:23:57.178-04:00Cool! Thanks for the organic chem info, that's...Cool! Thanks for the organic chem info, that's a bit out of my league.Michael Bradleyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13070797961634470398noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8964719845369935777.post-40590003206606756772016-10-07T15:16:25.452-04:002016-10-07T15:16:25.452-04:00Continuing from Michael Bradley's post. Durin...Continuing from Michael Bradley's post. During the polymerisation of butadiene, the butadiene can polymerise either 1,4 or 1,2; increasing the proportion of the 1,2 polymer increases the softness of the tyre. This is done by adding something called a polar modifier to your anionic polymerisation reaction mixture.gyg3shttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08295092807711672726noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8964719845369935777.post-41012336144877201142016-10-07T13:54:49.290-04:002016-10-07T13:54:49.290-04:00A comment from Canada. I know nothing about car ra...A comment from Canada. I know nothing about car racing, but in Canada these days most people switch their tire type from a nominal "all-season" radial to a "winter tire" when winter approacheth (i.e. yesterday, in Saskatchewan). This is a newer development (probably in the last ten years, people didn't do this when I was a kid). Winter tires are mandated by Provincial law in a number of provinces and have become pretty common (and strongly recommended) in the rest. They are specially formulated to be softer, so they still have some "grab" below 7 Celsius (yes, that is +7 C), where normal tire rubber gets too hard & glassy. Based on my experience driving in all kinds of terrible winter weather, they do make a difference. Hankook (Korean) and Hakkapeliitta (Finnish) are two of the big manufacturers. According to a random patent (Ryoji Kojima, "Rubber composition for winter tire, and winter tire, US Patent #20130030111 A1") found online "The present invention relates to a rubber composition for a winter tire which contains predetermined amounts of natural rubber, butadiene rubber, aromatic oil, silica, and carbon black, and also contains a specific silane coupling agent that includes a linking unit A represented by the following formula (1) and a linking unit B represented by the following formula (2) and has a predetermined content of the linking unit B." I'm not a chemist (just a physics guy), but it seems like there are plenty of volatiles in the mx which you could easily detect with mass spec or other means. Ditto for toluene of course. Never heard of anyone in Canada sloshing that on their tires just before the first snowfall, though.<br />-Cheers,<br />Mike BradleyMichael Bradleyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13070797961634470398noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8964719845369935777.post-58308978953288612232016-10-07T09:56:54.178-04:002016-10-07T09:56:54.178-04:00I'm sure the manufacturers of chemical tire so...I'm sure the manufacturers of chemical tire softeners would NEVER lie about their detectability.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8964719845369935777.post-50444911519716626872016-10-07T09:13:22.537-04:002016-10-07T09:13:22.537-04:00I race on road courses and hillclimbs but some peo...I race on road courses and hillclimbs but some people will bake or shave their tires or have special tire blankets in upper tier racing like Formula 1 and DTM, but need to be done on-track. With tire treatments, most home brews are some organic solvents like toluene/acetone/mineral spirits or even WD40 or PB Blaster (rust penetrator) if there's no sniff testing involved with their parc ferme inspections. With regards to the over-the-counter products that you can buy at places like Jegs and Summit, I have no idea what is in there as they claim you can't smell anything but most are supposed to be used days or weeks prior to the event, so perhaps they do have toluene and mineral spirits in there and thanks to them being VOCs, they will be undetectable days later. I've always wondered what was in them, but a quick search yields zero MSDS which is very surprising and honestly.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com