MonsterHobby

Hi there guy's just wondering if anyone out there knows what's the amount of sugar to be added to water to optimize surface traction for on Road Racing, any help will be greatly apreciated.

Marcos.J

iTrader: (239)

we use to use 1pound per 5gallons

MonsterHobby

Thanks Marcos that helps, btw whats your minimun weight for Touring Cars? again thanks for your help.

FAST1

The more the better.....as long it comes out of the sprayer!

1,725grams for nitro touring cars.......

tomkelley

We've tried sugar up here in detroit and it just wasn't working too well. My guess is we didn't saturate the pavement enough, or the sugar wasn't disolving well enough for it to work.

Another thing you might want to try is to introduce castor oil into the mixture. We actually tend to believe that its not the sugar thats working but the castor. It helps keep the sugar from crystalizing and gives the surface gumminess to actually allow the rubber from the cars to form a groove. Also instead of sugar we used corn syrup because we didn't have a good way of dissolving sugar with enough warm water.

Here's the current mix we use:

4.5 gallons water
1 qt corn syrup
1 qt castor oil

In Toledo their mixture is slightly different

4.5 gallons methanol
1qt corn syrup (concentrated mountain dew mixture)
1 qt castor oil

In both cases we dump old fuel in to subsitute for castor oil. Sometimes with us we mix right in with water, we've found their must be some warm water in to get the corn syrup to actually dissolve. Keep mixing up enough untill your track is well soaked. We ended up using 20 gallons total mixture and I think thats what got it to work.

It seemed to work good for us no matter if we used methanol or water, so we just decided to save some money and stick with it. Your traction won't be instant like VHT, so you will have to get enough cars on the track to wear in a groove before traction and tire wear improves.

These are some traction treatments that we have experimented with over the years with toledo. My club traditionally used VHT, but since we found toledo doing well with corn syrup/methonol/ and castor mix we tried it with some good results too. Using VHT traction is instant, and lasts long, however it leaves stain on the pavement for a long time. Using sugar, or corn syrup we found it takes a bit longer for traction to come up. In Toledo they actually spray the day before a race.

MonsterHobby

Thanks Tom That's some very interesting Info I apreciate your input. I'll be trying them in the future.

SteveG

We use plain jane sugar water on our parking lot track and it works pretty good....I think the ratio we use is 3lbs in our 15 gallon tank filled with warm water. We we use warm water because we found that with cold water the sugar does not dissolve well at all and left us with a sticky sludge at the bottom of the tank. We spray first thing in the morning and then again before the mains in the afternoon....traction stays pretty consistant all day.


Check out our track spraying rig

drfritz

we use CHEAP grape soda and use a clean push broom to spread it out even, drys faster this way also,the only problem we seem to have is when the sun goes down and the track starts to cool down, the sugar in the soda starts to attached the moister in the air and then the surface starts to get slick. Been trying to get the track owner to put vht down but does not want to spend the cash on it.

tomkelley

Hey Steve G, would you mind telling us what are the components of the rig you used to do that? I really like that setup you got. We're using garden sprayers but I think yours is pretty good.

Drfritz,

You might want to ask them try introducing castor oil (you can get by the gallon from airplane shops) into the mixture, like i said the castor allows for the sugar to keep from crystalizing, and might make your traction more consistant. The guys in toledo experimented with it alot, and we just replicated here, but what they were telling me was that it wasn't really how much sugar they put down but it was using equal amounts of castor that actually made traction more consistant.

MonsterHobby

Hey guys thanks for all your input I apreciate it, Tom the guys at the track have made a real nice spraying rig as soon as I can I will get some pics of it I'll post them. they used and home made cart that carries a 30 gal drum with a sureflo pump, a 6 foot wide spray tube and 6 nozzles.

tomkelley

Down in cincinnati they showed me a similar rig called the 'sugar daddy'. Lol, I think for theirs they used a semi truck fuel tank. I was a bit interested in it but not the size of it. I like the one Steve G showed, since the tank is about 15 gallons.

SteveG

Hey Tom check your private messages, I sent you the email address of the person who built it. You might know him on our London RC dot com forums as DanE, president of RROL (Remote Racers Of London)

MonsterHobby

Check out our sugerwater sprayer nicely built by one of the local track guys. Thanks Ivan & Egguie looks and works perfect..

we call it wet & sticky

Hagberg

How much sugarwater will be needed for a track that is 30x40 metres? And how do you apply it?

Thanks in advance

MonsterHobby

Hagberg, check out the Link titled wet and Sticky it will take you to a picture of how we apply the sugerwater btw the sugarwater helps with the traction and it keeps tire wear to a minimum plus it keeps the cars very clean after runs.