pro3racer

i guess i'll get into this too a bit. I'm a local racer, never been to a national/big race, but plan on this year(theres your 2%, lol). i race at a small club, every now and then go to Roadrage, have been to trackside once. My plan, is to make one set of foams last one season at my lhs. I don't true them down, but after the season I keep them at my house shop until a bigger race comes to my attention. I've always raced on foams, come to think of it, i never have run rubber on carpet, only asphalt. Running foams on anything that abbrasive as asphalt is insane, think of it, look at wisconsin, our parking lots suck, haha. The weird thing is, i have never chunked a tire, ever, i've raced touring cars on carpet for 2 years, i'm okay, A-main club. I get about 3 if i don't break. Ilove to set my car up, yes, it's bad when i go a hole night on a bad setup, it's hard finish the nite, but when i get a setup right, it's a good feeling. I'm the best possible racer for the industry. I'm not really abeginner, this being my 4th year, and i don't use 1500's a speed gem motors, if that gives you a picture. I spend basically every dime i make on the hobby. It's my only hobby, and i don't have a real car quite yet, so what else do i spend money on. The hobby, it's been hard to stay in, with everything being so expensive, but i hang in there, going week in, week out, battling for a decent finish. This hobby is getting to expensive, and beginners are quiting, because setting up a car is to hard, it's to expensive, and parts break when they crash, which is often. The hobby needs to sit back, let the hobby catch up, and then start again. My main problem is batteries, they evolve so fast, you get some you like, and someone already has better ones. If you stick with the hobby, it is addictive, but rewarding. It's very easy to sell the stuff, and get a cheaper hobby though. I'm not though, i love r/c, hey, i get 6 bucks an hour, spend about 1,000 a year, whats better, lol.

RCGaryK

iTrader: (3)

It already has happened in a way with the demise of 1/10th scale pan car. These cars were definately fast, handled well, and you could slap a sedan body on it if you wanted to. So why did they die?

Follow the money again. You buy a 10L, buy the aluminum pod plates, lightweight axle and hubs, and titanium turnbuckles and you're pretty well done. You could contend in Pro 10 for around $300 before electroncs. Now look at sedans. You're going to spend at least $250 for a high caliper kit. Now add in the lightweight cvd's, driveshafts, graphite composite parts, titanium hinge pins, shock shafts, screws, etc, ceramic bearings, buy the time you are all done, you can spend thousands of dollars on a sedan...and still not be competitive! A lot of the hobby simply has to do with basic econimics, which is sad. I'd personally like to run 1/10th scale pan cars now, but the class is as dead as loamy off road tracks

petzl

I'll chime in from a noob perspective.

I started racing last year with shane and the guys at marcca. I raced on rubber until I left madison in march. I now live in georgia and just started back at Toys for Boys in Atlanta. TFB only runs 19t foam. I am not happy about the situation. I am still learning and still break something every day I run. I was getting 4 weeks on a set of sorex 24's. I bought my first set of jacos last weekend and trashed the fronts within 5 minutes. I am at a point where I need time on the track a lot more than I need the fastest setup. I would much rather be running on rubber and learning how to drive than constantly worrying about destroying my tires every time I get on the track.

I am going to have to learn how to not hit things very quickly or get out of the sport due to the cost.


Every club or LHS should run a rubber sportsman class. When we are ready to move up to the faster setups and classes we willl. Slower is faster until we can keep from being marshalled 10 times every race.

mm

Brian McGreevy

iTrader: (10)

Adrian stated why they died. You had to be a pretty darn good driver to afford to race one. You hit something it's busted. No one wants to race in a class in which they're afraid to drive their car. Even in TC mod you can get away with board taps, and they're already really, really fast.

Kevin K

iTrader: (32)

Gary....you obviously have never been to a rubber tire race or raced in one where you had to play with the inserts. There is 1000 ways to cut/grind glue the inserts and every one does something else....and lets not get started on the Rims. Its not as simple as you make it seem.....it might be in your pit area but in reality its not. But again it all comes down to the racer....if you are at the top level then YES there is a high cost of experimenting with inserts....but if you are just middle of the pack or dont really care to much then yes this can seem a little rediculous.

Kevin K

iTrader: (32)

I think most of you guys are missing another main reason the 10th pan car class died....and that was the batteries that we had at the time. They were and still are extreamly hard on the battery and with the way the motors were getting faster the batteries were not up to the task....so the class lost out. Now with the new cells it would be a great class to have back but again most of the indoor tracks around are just too small....Try to run a modified one at Trackside....let alone run a race with a whole heat of them.....there is just not the room needed to run them at the speeds they go. At a big out door track where you race gas cars the cars would be great to run on that.

RCGaryK

iTrader: (3)

I have Kevin, last year when we had to use a tire that A: you couldn't get ahead of time because the importer sat on them to make sure there were enough for the race and B: when they were in good supply they sucked so bad no-one bought them. I went through 5-7 sets of tires searching for an insert combo I was comfortable with and in the end, it wasn't all the comfortable. But with many hand out tire races using either H13's or whatever the proline control tire is, Yokomo's, or Take Offs, most people have a general idea what will get them into the ball park and will adjust from there. Besides, if you talk to a lot of the factory guys, they run different inserts then anyone can get over the counter. I know after one race Lemieux had a set of inserts he had to send back after the race because the manufacturer didn't want anyone else running them or knowing what they were.

futureal

Gary, your heart is in the right place but I think you're still using the wrong examples. You are comparing the worst-case foam scenario to an exaggerated rubber scenario.

First, I don't think anybody anywhere is going to argue that foam tire racing is suitable for novices. When you start out, speed and a twitchy car is the last thing you need.

So now, we're talking about reasonably competitive club racers who can wheel the car around the track without hitting too much. If they can get 6 weeks out of rubber tires, they can get more than 2 weeks out of a set of foams too. No one is forcing them to true the tires down too far for club racing. Start them at 2.35" or so and you loose about .02-.03" a week if properly rotated. After four weeks your tires should still be in the 2.24"-2.26" range, and certainly still usable.

You say they can crack the wheels in their foamies, and you know, I've seen many a cracked rubber tire wheel as well.

Before you bite my head off, keep in mind that I am not trying to tell you that foam tires are the greatest thing since sliced bread, I'm just trying to tell you that the cost factor is not the crux of the problem. It really, truly is not that much more expensive, except in cases like Mark's (petzl, above) where a new guy is forced to race a car that they just aren't capable of handling (e.g. foam). It is definitely more of an advanced thing.

I ran a single set of foam tires for all four qualifiers and my main at the '03 ROAR Nats, and I finished a respectable 35th-or-so out of about 100 people in Touring Stock. Afterwards, I ran that exact same set of tires a the NORRCA Carpet nats a few weeks later. Yes, my car probably would have been a bit faster with new tires, but they still worked just fine. And if they worked there, they'd certainly work for a club racer.

The greater issue here is NOT that foam tires are more expensive. The greater issue is that it is harder to get people involved in a hobby where the cars aren't realistic, the suspensions aren't realistic, and the speeds aren't realistic for newcomers to handle. The problem with pushing foam tires on everybody is, in my opinion, NOT a problem with cost, but a problem of control and realism. When I picked up this hobby, I KNEW it was going to cost an arm and a leg.

Kevin K

iTrader: (32)

Hey I think I still have that set of inserts of his.....he never sent them back....

RCGaryK

iTrader: (3)

Shane, if you have a track though that offers only foam tire classes, even for beginners, that's going to elevate the frustration factor that much faster then on rubber tires. Rubber tires have some slide in them, plus the greater rotating mass and rolling resistance mean they won't reach as high of a speed. I think for growing and maintaining the hobby, foams are a bad idea, especially for beginners.

No-one seems to remember we had foam sedan racing a number of years back, and went to rubber. Why are we going back to foam again? I think its because sedan racing has become what people were afraid it was going to: A cut-throat win at any expense super competitive part of the hobby. For those who say they want to go faster, run 19t or modified. For those who don't want their car's sliding all over the place, I say get a better setup.

Shane, in 6 years I think I have ruined 3 rubber tire rims. I went through more then that the short time I ran foam, along with more chunked tires too.

RCGaryK

iTrader: (3)

I started a seperate rubber/foam thread so we didn't hijack this one any more

Adam Hartzell

iTrader: (3)

All of these TC's were designed to run rubber tires in the first place. I have been racing them since they first came on to the sceen and we only had Tamiya and Hpi rubber tires. I for one am all for going back to rubber only. Let me stat why.

Foam is great for beginners because a foam tire car is easier to drive due to the added grip. The easier to drive removes almost all of the set-up skill though. A mod TC race is now about who can lay down the most power on the fastest line. Where is the fun in that.

I know that there is a million different ways to mount different compounds of tires and inserts but thats why we have handout tires. I know that they suck but that is where the challenge and the fun comes in. Prior to the 2003 asphalt nats I spent a ton of time tweaking and wrenching to find the perfect set-up that would be fast. That is where all the fun is. Lets face it we all get burned out if all we do is race all the time and not wrench.

And becides the realistic squeel of rubber tires on carpet is just to cool.

I know that I am a dying breed (wanting TC w/rubber tires) but I get more joy out of having to work on a set-up and having to drive the car rather than just grip it and rip it.

futureal

Are you sure you're reading my posts? We're in agreement here. In fact, it sounds like you're starting to see my point. THESE are the reasons that foam tires are bad for the hobby, not because they cost more to run. The cost is a side effect of the actual reason, not the reason itself.

In my four years of solid racing, I have probably cracked 3 or 4 rubber tire rims, but I've never cracked a foam wheel. I've only chunked a single tire, too. And our track here in Madison is a lot harsher than Trackside (metal plow discs).

RCGaryK

iTrader: (3)

cost becomes a factor, not necessarily just in tires, but also in parts. if your car is going faster, you will hit stuff faster and harder too. Therefore it does cost more due to parts brakage.

futureal

Adam: In a way, you're right about foam tires being easier for beginners, but I think there's more to it.

Part of learning to drive is going slow and making it around the track. When someone jumps into the hobby and buys all the best stuff right away, they are really doing themselves a disservice. Foam tires are sort of the same thing; you get a decently hooked up car right away, which is also probably a bit faster than you can handle.

On rubber, your car is a bit looser or pushes a lot, but it also forces you to drive slowly to make it around the track, rather than punching the throttle and hanging on. I think that, for novices, this is what you want. Make the car harder to handle, and force them to drive slower. And then, one can learn.