Seize the storm

*Yawn*   The dull sleep of winter is finally waking to new life of spring.  

Work

 This writer has been pretty busy over the winter months – mainly with work.   There was a (business) trip to Daytona for the Daytona 500 which was pretty neat.   Not that talk will be at length about work, but we’ve combined forces to make this a really good release of the next version of software.   The gears will be switched as we transition to a new development product that will split my time with two projects.   There are some new leadership responsibilities that accompany this role and  the impact upon chasing is still under question.

Development

I played a minor role in Swift Mobile development and am anxious to see that to its fullness.   Photo Ops is currently undergoing a major rewrite.   Most likely, the version will be incremented to 2.0.   It will have the option of running through it as a wizard or going with the original dialog approach.   There will be a few enhancements as well.  

Small Success

I did manage to win in a photo contest – a photo I took of Shawn McDonald at a concert last fall will appear in the inside cover of his new album, Scattered Pieces: Live.   My name appears on the inside cover!   Shadowlands is probably my favorite song on the new album – I definitely recommend you go check it out.

Free Time

Most nights are consumed with the regular schedule of life – the usual TV programs, gaming (Battlefield 1942 & 2142), church nights, personal developments (Photo Ops).   Then there’s the much more fun activities like talking walks with the wife when the weather is warming, visiting the parents, and playing with their springer spaniel, Dolly.   The warmer weather will also  lead to another season of church league softball.   It’s good to finally awake from the slumber.

To the New Year

Thank you to the readers and visitors for sticking with Carpe Tempestas for the winter season.   I look forward to some good chases, beautiful pictures, and valuable information in this 2007 season.

Why the change?

Due to most likely cutting corners on the part of some tire place, my wife had all the wrong size tires on her car (it was that way when we bought it).   A Honda Civic LX Sedan must have 185/70R14 tires however 185/75R14 were what my wife was rolling around on.   Concerned about small differences on your tires?   5 on the middle number doesn’t seem like much but most tire experts recommend staying within a 30% boundary on this magic calculation about tire sizes.   That little difference (of five) causes that boundary to be at 33%.   Every tire place I have called and every person I have talked to state that the difference  is really too close for comfort.   These differences can cause problems in transmission, struts, and gear ratios – plus the obvious that your speedometer will be off.   If any readers are tire experts and want to chip in their two cents, please feel free to register and leave your comments, they will totally be welcomed!

Popularity of Comparison

I regularly get hits to my site from people searching about the comparison between the Michelin HydroEdge and the Goodyear Assurance TripleTred.   So I give you the ultimate resource for your comparison.   As time goes by, I will use my website as a first-hand review of each of these tires.   The only variant of the TripleTred will be that more of the driving will be done by my wife.   I will do my best to link the posts together as I do not know when exactly I’ll have new reviews posted.

So let’s get down to business!

The HydroEdge so far…

I’m approaching my second oil change on the Escort since putting these tires on.   They’ve been wearing at a normal rate says the guy where I get my service done at.   I commented in my initial post of some weird shimmying – this has long since passed.   I haven’t noticed anything like this at all since that first day.

Pros- The water-channeling of course is the biggest positive.   Treadwear seems to be wearing well – it better be if it’s a 90,000 mile warranty tire.   I’d have to say the handling is pretty good – I have never lost traction while turning and haven’t sqwak’ed my tires very often which only happens once in a while because I drive a stick-shift and accidently let out the clutch too fast.

Cons – Rocks, rocks, rocks, no amount of picking can get all of the rocks out of the channels of the tires.   Even if you do spend the time to take the rocks out, the next time you drive it you’ll pick up more.   It doesn’t matter which channel – the center, the outs from center, or the side chutes; they all pick up rocks and pebbles.   This directly affects the amount of water that can be channeled and the efficiency that it is ejected.

Price – $112 a piece for 185/65R14

Pictures at  zero miles…

Pictures at 6500 miles…

TripleTred

Their look is pretty cool.   The channels are shaped differently so I’m eager to find how this affects rocks getting into the channels.   I’m definitely not going to expect any miracles.   I probably won’t get the chance to test these on high amounts of water until next year.   Also, I can’t give any pros and cons yet because not enough time has been given to ascertain a good judgement.   You definitely can’t beat the fact that they are less expensive.

Price – $105 a piece for 185/70R14

Pictures at zero miles…

Penny Test History Comparison

 
                                        HydroEdge                                                                                                             TripleTred

Legend:

Black – Zero miles (Brand New)

Cyan – 6500 miles

General comments about these tires

Regarding water-channeling – this doesn’t give you the right to drive through the biggest puddles at a high rate of speed and expect it to channel every fluid ounce of water out of the way and give you a solid connection with the pavement.   It was designed to handle a maximum amount of water-channeling.   It was also designed to channel that maximum amount of water at a certain speed.   I wish I had these limits for you.   If I end up finding them, I’ll put them in here.   If you’re curious as to how I deduced this, it’s pretty much simple engineering and fluid dynamics.   Depending on how fast the tire is moving, it changes the angles of the channelers of water from the center.   If one were to design an “ultimate” tire, it would be that the channels change their angle depending on the speed of the tire and amount of water coming through.   So far, I know of no technology or material that can accomplish this.   If you hit a puddle that exceeds the maximum amount of water that can be channeled away from the tire, you will lose a little speed.   The tires are doing their job but you are pushing them too hard.   At some point, it becomes like you trying to fill your gas tank with an I.V.  hose.   It just doesn’t have the capacity to channel water efficiently.

It does seem as though the TripleTred has a little bit more tread to begin with.   However, the initial treadwear is pretty fast and slows down after the first couple thousand miles.   My pictures may be off a bit – I don’t have a nice camera that I can manually focus in on the penny.   I’ve taken many pictures while attempting to get the penny in focus.   I don’t think anyone really cares about how long the tread lasts – if it’s in the warranty, then we don’t have to worry about it, right?   I will still continue to document this as I still think it’s an important issue.

Winter is coming and this will be the first time both sets of tires will experience winter conditions.   As soon as we get some wintry weather, I’ll be sure to get the cars out on the ice & snow  and see how they handle.   A review will soon  follow.

More about my “research” that I did.   I read through many reviews at TireRack and other tire sites around the internet.   Consumer Reports says that the TripleTred barely edges out the HydroEdge.   So the TripleTred is supposed to be the better tire.

One factor that was common with both tires in reviews was the noise.   I don’t know exactly how I’ll do it, but I’d like to do some testing on the highway of the tires at different speeds and measure decibel levels, both inside and outside of the car.

Update 12/21/08

After a couple blizzards have rolled through the midwest, I have had a great opportunity to test out the tires on VERY packed snow/ice.  The winner – the TripleTred.  I’ve found it to maintain better traction on cornering and acceleration.  My only disclaimer is that the Hydroedge tires are on a stick shift car – but even then, I’ve lost traction when cornering.

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I have done a lot of work on the website of late for a number of reasons:

1. To keep me busy
2. To appease the readers
3. To increase the quality of the website

Photography Sales – The most important change was the addition of the Photography Sales section.   I’ve done my best to present the most customer-friendly source of revenue for the website and chasing.   I realize it still needs some more work on the front end but this will have to wait for now.   At least now you can purchase, buy,  or otherwise  aquire  any picture, photo, print on the website.   I’m an amateur photographer at this point but I think I have some really beautiful pictures that someone might like hanging on their wall.   I’m working to get pictures not just of storms and clouds but landscape, scenery, seasonal (summer, fall, winter, spring), and any other kind of photography.   I will use the Photography category to publicize those pictures.   The chasing stuff will remain under the chase logs but by all means, those are available for purchase as well.   Note: All of the sales and transaction of money is done through Paypal because security is a big concern of mine.

Weather Station – The next change I did was updated the weather section on the top right.   The old one wasn’t getting updated very often thus making my website look out of date.   This one does a bit better and is under active development for improvements.

Subscriptions – Another important change on the website is the ability to subscribe to new posts.   There’s more information in the Subscribe Here page about that.   Basically if you’re interested only in my photography posts, you can subscribe only to that topic and be notified automatically of new posts in the photography category.   Just another way I’m trying to deliver what you want from my website to you as fast as possible.

Bandwidth – Already this month, I’ve used almost 40% of my bandwidth.   It’s good that the website is so popular, but just today I reduced the number of posts that are visible on the front page to three posts.   This should help save on bandwidth dramatically.   The next step would be to remove all title photos from posts.   After that – eek, hopefully it won’t come to that.

Things to come:

T-shirts – I have some really good ideas for t-shirts and have some of the designs on paper.   This will keep me occupied over the long winter months of no storms.   More than likely, this will be something done through CafePress.

Polos – You may have seen me wearing the Carpe Tempestas polo in the pictures of my Sept. 16 chase.   I will be getting price lists up for these as well.   These will be done locally – here in Brookings, SD.

———     NEW: I did get T-shirts, hoodies, and polos put on the website, click here for the details. ———

Uncluttering – I may have to reformat the website and make some of the Pages into posts just to save some room.   If it ends up being too cluttered with the new additions, then I’ll look into this.