A lot of us will be moving from high bite or mid-high bite to "outdoor" and while outdoor can be high bite, it rarely is. What are your thoughts on RM vs. MM for outdoor racing this season with the gigantic steps MM setups have made on most all platforms? Throw down you opinion here.

For me, I tend to think that RM is still the way to go. Been loving MM this season indoors but don't think it'll be the way to go (yet?) for outdoors.

Honestly with this mid motor thing it really comes down to what is your driving style and what fits you there is some guys that still use Rear motor indoors im going to try it actually.

Outdoors if its not high bite go with RM just more grip less tuning.

I think a lot of people are going to throw different tires on their MM cars from the indoor season, make no other changes, then complain their car is terrible outdoors and buy a different car.

My car is set to RM for both indoor and outdoor because I don't have much racing time and I prefer the ease of driving the RM.

Most in my region shelf the 1/10 stuff and run 1/8 scale outdoors.

With the advances in mid motor and the brass goodies for almost every brand it might be doable. Look how far MM has come in 2 years. 2013 reedy all but a couple cars were RM on west coasts clay, the clay people loved because how much bite it had, now you won't see a RM car on almost any indoor clay track.

midmotor has always been the way to go. A few years ago I convinced a couple locals to try xfactory cars, 2 weeks later regretted it :P on our loose almost sand surface running step pins they were still 3/4 of a second faster then the b4/xxx-cr they ran previously. Mid motor is the way to go, have the right tires and work on set up, it'll be better.

i would say a mid-motor car set-up right could be faster... it really up to track layout too if it does not have slow turn (were it hard to put power down) mid should be faster. mid also have a more neutral fell so if the rear is trying to slide it much easy to save. there only a few ways to get forward/on-power grip mostly weight so a mid-motor car would probably need more weight to keep up. also with rear side grip (in the turn grip) there are many way to get side grip but the best is more narrow contact tire. so i would also think a mid would need a more skinny rear tire so it's does not try to spin out as much. if done right i can almost bet the mid-motor would be more easy to drive and jump!!!

I think the forward traction discussion is dead. I've seen mid cars run the fastest laps on very loose surfaces. This coming from a guy who still runs RM.

What gives you the idea that a narrower tire can yield more side-bite? I am not aware of a situation outside of snow/ice where this is possible.

This guy knows whats up

big thing may be the way the car does MM versus another companies vehicle doing MM. some may be better at it than others as far as how it will handle in the rough.

I got a durango here That I could try mid motor, I think a guy in our area once was liking the new V2 one mid motor on loose stuff.

ok try this if you think skinny tires dont work... if you have a 2wd truck that can run same tires on front as rear... stick a rib on the rear i bet it lock you rear end in place at speed.. but good luck trying to get to speed. also this the same reason why a double dees(on truck) will make side grip than a hole shot even at a harder compound. on a 2wd buggy it is harder to tell cuz the tire are already narrow. the width of a tire plays a big role in side grip (not just in ice). this is main reason why a 1/8 buggy slides less than a 1/8 truggy 2nd reason is off-set of the tire also plays a big role in side grip if you run less off-set you will have a ton more grip (any one that try a old xxx losi rim a old associated t3/t4 pin would know). this is why easy to find more grip in a 1/10 buggy vs 1/10 truck where you would need to add a lot more weight to = grip.

None of that helps you explain your point and a lot of it is wrong.

There are several tire treads that are available in 4wd front and rear. With a little creativity with hex adapters, you could run equivalent 4wd fronts on the rear of a 2wd buggy, where I guarantee you will lose a significant amount of side bite compared to the rear of similar design. Hint - this is the same as adding weight.

Adding weight does not add traction. It increases pressure, which is not the same thing. Weight is the load that the available traction must manage. This is why there is a minimum weight in all powered sports and never a maximum weight.

The width of the tire does play a big role, but going narrower will result in less side bite. This is why with most cars, the wide tires go on the back (heavier + power), and the skinny tires go on the front (lighter+less/no power).

wow you guys derailed a thread into an argument in 12 posts good job

mid motor for life.

All I can say is that I race at the same track 95% of the time. Its outdoor and most of the year (6 months) its ultra high traction sugared bluegroove. Spring its medium bite bluegroove, and winter its low traction wet. The track temps have a huge range from the 20's in the winter to the 100s in the summer. The high desert is an interesting place. As of this year I have sold off all of my RM cars as I have found that although it seemed as though I could drive my RM more aggressively on the wet track my lap times were slower than they were with my MM cars. My personal preference is for MM on all surfaces. It requires more set up changes but the results have been better for me. I believe there is a component of driver skill and car set up involved as well.

As stated in above posts we have tried a number of things to increase what we percieve(d) to be traction (you can call it whatever you want) by using full square packs, keeping steel parts, and adding brass accessories. We have found that heavier cars hold the track better when the track is wet, freezing, or both. We have also tried to run 4wd fronts and that seemed to work for some people but not everybody.....we even use combos of open and closed cell foam. The one thing that was universal is that lugged tires like Holeshots worked best. There were larger lugged tires that worked well too but I can't remember which ones off hand.

I don't really want to get into defining traction but I will say that by adding weight you increase the amount of weight per square inch of tire contact patch. If that doesn't increase traction it does something akin to increasing traction. Somebody above was talking about a thinner tire provides more traction.....sort of. This is RC racing. Farm trucks and tractors can run a thinner tire because they don't turn at high speeds but the fact remains that there is more weight per square inch on that thinner tire it theoretically helps it dig in to wet earth better....snow and sand might be a different story.