Dirt to carpet/turf, same car?
 

Aside from tires, and a thorough cleaning, how much of a changeover is this?

I've only raced dirt, but there are some new tracks I was keen to sample during some upcoming time off.

Must one get an additional car set up for carpet?

Not quite. I've done this before, but vice versa. It's best if you have a 2nd set of shocks with different(stiffer) springs, as the shock setup will be vastly different. Otherwise you'll spend the rest of your life changing pistons and oils. You'll also need stiffer anti-roll bars, but they would probably have come as a set? Ideally different diffs as well, but you can sort of drive around that by having some kind of compromise stiffness.

You can probably drive around the rest....ish.

If it was me Id have 2 . 1 for each. or you can try to switch your setups but you will not be consistent on the track

At a minimum you'll be switching between shock piston / spring setups, ride heights, roll centers, weight placement, roll bars, ball diff / gear diff. Better to have two cars if you will be going back and forth often.

personally if the turf side of things is your one-off item to try, I would say having one car could be possible, your turf days would be perfect for cleaning the vehicle up to get ready for that, and just keep in mind the general items you know are turf specific like diffs, shocks etc.

I have raced my 4WD SCT on both turf and dirt, as others have said it would be a lot easier to have 2 cars but it's possible to change setups, not something that I like to weekly, but plan to do a complete rebuild each time as I found it necessary to change almost every single possible tuning option going from one extreme to exact opposite between surface types. The only thing I kept the same was the pistons and camber, but still needed to adjust camber because I had to switch the length of the links.... shrug

Why did you have to change the length of links, if you don't mind me asking? Also, if you can, could you explain your other changes?

I run same car dirt and carpet. Its quite the job but you def need to swap to the proper setup for which ever surface you are running on. too many variables to list just know defiantly look at set up sheets and what nots to know what to run on what surface. do research on the track before going to a new one to to see how it is.

To sum things up as best I can, the turf in our area is extremely high traction so I needed the lowest possible ride height and stiffest possible settings to prevent traction roll. In contrast, I needed to get the car to rotate faster so shorter links make the car more responsive on turf and add more traction to compensate for the ride height change, but I need the links longer on dirt to help make the car more stable and easier to control when traction fades so I increase ride height on dirt to get more traction. Same with ackermann, bump steer, wheel base, etc... generally a softer setup for dirt and stiffer setup for turf, but in some cases I needed to counteract a setting like with the length of links. Same with tire compound, on turf I go with Z3 which is the hardest pin I can find, you don't want the pins to fold over, the stiffer they are the more they bite into the turf to get more traction... then on dirt I go with M3.

Pretty good guide here to help fill in the gaps:
https://www.teknorc.com/wp-content/u...t_Up_Guide.pdf

https://cimg8.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.rct...3fd2658a09.jpg

^Thank you very much sir. Personally, I use the Xray / elvo guide. I thought increasing ride height reduced traction, not increase traction?

This is true when you are changing the height from one end of the car only, but let me give some examples to explain better:

Front/Rear

26mm/26mm = Perfect for dirt but Traction Roll on turf because higher roll center increases traction
20mm/20mm = Eliminiates Traction Roll because roll center is reduced, therefore you are reducing traction, but may also reduce steering response making the car push in chicanes
20mm/22mm = Shifts weight forward giving the car more steering, but starts to traction roll again
20mm/21mm = Not as aggressive in shifting weight forward, adds just a pinch more steering without causing traction rolls, perfect for turf setup

https://live.staticflickr.com/4441/3...6ee62fc3_c.jpg