[Saviour]

Just a quick question. Should it be a drives choice?

Club or Home. Do you stick to the OOTB Standard tyre the car came with?
or
Fit the tyre of your choice depending on what track you are racing on?

I do tend to think that keeping to the OOTB std tyre is an 'OLD SCHOOL' thing.

I can understand that the motor, body, chassis etc must stay the same (Unless open class). We add weight as needed, so car stops being std at that point.
So, if we add weight, why not have your choice of tyre as well. So what if all the cars on the track have different tyres, they have different weight, different drivers. In the end, everyone will be using the tyre that seems to win all the time. But it would be fun getting to that stage. On the other hand, You may say, 'Well that car keeps winning on tyre 'A', so I'll switch to tyre 'A', only to find that tyre 'A' does not suit you driving style. So find a tyre that does suite you driving style.

Mag cars are a different bag, they go OK with the std tyre as the mag is doing most of the work anyway.

Front tyres? but we can leave that to another day.

So, You have a Track day coming up with you 1.1 Metro, do you leave the X Ply's on or save up and fit a good set of racing slicks?

Why does this poll thing not work for me?????

 

[rick1776]

Some of the best closest racing we have is when we use a control tyre in out club. We use urethane control tyres as they can not be "treated" with magic go fast potions like conventional "rubber tyres". IMHO tyres generate 80% of the performance of a slot car, the other 20% is motor and chassis. So controlling this aspect has produced close racing. When tyres are "free choice" or limited to "must race OOTB tyres" you tend to get a large variation in performance.

cheers
rick1776

 

[300SLR]

With the same pair of tyres and the same driver, one type of slot car can do about 12 laps in 3 minutes round our club track, and another can do over 30 laps in 3 minutes. To put it another way the motor and chassis ic contributing a lot more than 20% of the performance.

We often get extremely close racing without requiring "control tyres". At the races I've seen where "control tyres" are mandatory, the racing isn't any closer than racers where a wide choice of tyre is allowed.

Some sorts of solid tyre don't work well together, one type producing vastly less grip after another type has been used on a lane. So there are reasons for restricting the choice of these.

 

[rick1776]

Horese for courses I suppose. Most people tend to run similar types of cars in organised club racing. You would have to be talking about mag racing and be comparing an NSR with s 30K king fitted racing against a Ninco classic with NC1 fitted?? Or are you comparing like for like?? All of the tracks we race on are non mag wooden ones that avarage about a 6 second laps. No matter what sort of car we race in non mag configuration, there is no way it would lap the same tracks in about 2.1 seconds down from 6 s. There is usually a break even point for non mag racing where fitting a bigger stonking motor actually makes you slower.

In our club racing similar cars, be they Scaly Fly Pioneers etc the performancde gap is reduced significantly by going to a control tyre instead of OOTB. Your personal circumstances may differ from those illustrated here and if in doubt consult your physician.

cheers
rick1776

 

[Saviour]

Got to agree with Rick here. 80/20 seems about right. The biggest factor in slot car racing is Tyres. If it were full size, there would others, Camber, spring rate etc. But as Slots do not have all that, the tyre is the main factor. Putting a 30k motor in a car with std OOTB (Not NSR, Slot.it etc) tyres, your going to get slow laps. Put good tyres on and a big difference. The same the other way, 18K motor on std tyres will be slower than if it had, say.. NSR's
Me, I do not have a issue. If all 4, 8 cars on the track, all with different tyres, Hay, so, big deal. The odds are you will still get a good close race, and the Novice, may be able to keep up better. JMO
The biggest problem, is the additives, WD40, 3in1 etc. If all 4 cars are running different tyre dressing, and each car moves from one slot to the other, due to keeping the heats equal (all drivers get to race each slot). Try mixing 3in1 with WD40. That's a bigger problem than running rubber after Silicon.

 

[300SLR]

It appears the last two posts are only considering fairly basic plastic chassis cars, where relatively little can be done to the chassis so getting the tyres working well is a major part of getting performance.

While tyres are important to any slot car, the chassis and motor's contribution to performance is much more important if a wider range of types of slot cars are considered.

For example, on various non magnetic wood track, we have races everything from OOTB home set cars, through low cost metal chassis cars, up to the really quick slot cars.
Take a OOTB home set car and put on the tyres from a low cost metal chassis car and it'll do about 12 laps in 3 minutes round our club track
Put that pair of tyres back on the low cost metal chassis car and it'll do about 30 laps in 3 minutes round the track.

 

[Saviour]

Let's leave the HIGH end Chassis out of this for a moment. There in a class of their own. Most use Plastic Chassis.
300SLR, this is exactly what I'm trying to put across. OOTB - 12 L in 3 mins. So put Standard boots on and what then?

 

[300SLR]

QUOTE (Saviour @ 5 May 2011, 16:14) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>Let's leave the HIGH end Chassis out of this for a moment. There in a class of their own.
Fair enough, leave HIGH end chassis out of this for a moment.
Sounds like you don't just want to leave out the HIGH end chassis, but also the leave out the low cost metal chassis cars as well.

Doesn't OOTB stands for "out of the box"? Complete cars come "out of the box" with low cost metal chassis, and so do home set type plastic cars.

No problem limiting a discussion to low end plastic chassis cars, it might have been better to say that's what you wanted at the start.

 

[Saviour]

OK, so lets bring in Flexi's as well then, Foam tyres, 'O' rings for the front, Falcon, and G12 motors.