My track chewed up my tires!
09-15-2017, 11:36 AM
#1
My track chewed up my tires!
Wow. My buddy and I have been racing on my track for years now, and usually our race season runs late Fall to early-late Spring, depending on rainfall. Summers are just too hot and dusty. Well, here we are in September, the heat has passed and the racing itch is back. With Temps barely reaching 80F, we decided to have a race day.
Usually the track is moist on race days and we get great traction with our Proline Caliber M3 (soft) tires, and they last almost a whole season. That's running twice a month from November-May. Twelve race days, and usually 5-6 battery packs, per car.
But the track has been sun-baked, and is hard and dried out as decomposed granite soil can get. The traction was AMAZING! Our lap times were reduced by 1.5-2.0sec per lap or better. A good average lap is around 42 seconds. We were breaking into the high 30s, like 38.72. And very little dust. We were havin' a blast. But after 4 or 5 battery packs, we noticed out tires were getting worn out! These were almost brand new tires! We usually switch over to the short course trucks after running 4-5 packs thru the Hyper TTs , but we decided not to after looking at our tires. We ran a couple more packs on the TTs and called it a day. Holy crap! Our tires were SHOT after ONE DAY of racing on the bone-dry track, when they usually last a whole SEASON! Yeah, we had grip up the wazoo, but the track surface was like 120 grit sand paper and just wore the tread off! Guess we're gonna have to wait for rain, or find another tire style that can stand up to the abrasive surface. I doubt even a Medium compound Caliber would do much better. What, maybe TWO race days? Egad. I had no idea the track could chew up my tires like that.
Usually the track is moist on race days and we get great traction with our Proline Caliber M3 (soft) tires, and they last almost a whole season. That's running twice a month from November-May. Twelve race days, and usually 5-6 battery packs, per car.
But the track has been sun-baked, and is hard and dried out as decomposed granite soil can get. The traction was AMAZING! Our lap times were reduced by 1.5-2.0sec per lap or better. A good average lap is around 42 seconds. We were breaking into the high 30s, like 38.72. And very little dust. We were havin' a blast. But after 4 or 5 battery packs, we noticed out tires were getting worn out! These were almost brand new tires! We usually switch over to the short course trucks after running 4-5 packs thru the Hyper TTs , but we decided not to after looking at our tires. We ran a couple more packs on the TTs and called it a day. Holy crap! Our tires were SHOT after ONE DAY of racing on the bone-dry track, when they usually last a whole SEASON! Yeah, we had grip up the wazoo, but the track surface was like 120 grit sand paper and just wore the tread off! Guess we're gonna have to wait for rain, or find another tire style that can stand up to the abrasive surface. I doubt even a Medium compound Caliber would do much better. What, maybe TWO race days? Egad. I had no idea the track could chew up my tires like that.
09-15-2017, 06:52 PM
#2
LOL... welcome to my world!
We are very fortunate to have a club that has been watering the track lately which really keeps our costs down on tires, but they don't typically water on big race events and it's very common to burn through a brand new set of tires after only 1 race day... and most pro's will run a brand new set for every round of racing just to be that much more competitive!
You'll definitely want to experiment with a different set of tires for varying track conditions, based on the soil I see in your pic would probably call for a harder compound and a web style pattern instead of a pin to get longer wear life.
We are very fortunate to have a club that has been watering the track lately which really keeps our costs down on tires, but they don't typically water on big race events and it's very common to burn through a brand new set of tires after only 1 race day... and most pro's will run a brand new set for every round of racing just to be that much more competitive!
You'll definitely want to experiment with a different set of tires for varying track conditions, based on the soil I see in your pic would probably call for a harder compound and a web style pattern instead of a pin to get longer wear life.
09-16-2017, 04:06 PM
#3
Those tires are just getting broken in. LOL 
A to think I use to take a Dremel tool get the same effect! That is one good thing about some clubs allowing the use of bald tires on clay tray. I was dumbfounded about the concept of slick on slick to get traction. A set of Holeshots, or whatever M3 compound tire you could find, would last the whole season.
EXT2Rob, you may know that medium compound tires are my RC's saving grace. Definitely not enough choices out there for general RCing.
A to think I use to take a Dremel tool get the same effect! That is one good thing about some clubs allowing the use of bald tires on clay tray. I was dumbfounded about the concept of slick on slick to get traction. A set of Holeshots, or whatever M3 compound tire you could find, would last the whole season.
EXT2Rob, you may know that medium compound tires are my RC's saving grace. Definitely not enough choices out there for general RCing.
10-10-2017, 02:25 PM
#4
Yeah, so, I'm seeing these tread-less slicks for running on clay. Is THAT what I should be getting if I'm running on my track during the dry, hard-packed summer? I don't wanna chew up another set of Calibers (that'll probably be my last, since they're being discontinued.) (I've seen them on amazon going for as much as $128 a pair! )
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