seaball

iTrader: (9)

fatdoggy - agree with your statements about the truing. as i mentioned in a previous post, i now have come to a fork in the road. i have a difficult time with tall tires, as they alter the characteristics of the car. this, in turn, impacts me mentally. i just want to run smaller tires, new or not. we race every weekend, and practice once or so in between. it adds up fast. if tires were cheaper, it would be no decision. it is heartbreaking to feel like you may have left something on the table when running the larger tires.

i'm an all or nothing kind of guy, but my wallet doesn't always see things my way.

futureal

This is one of the problems that the internet has introduced for a lot of companies, and it's especially damaging to the R/C industry. You need importers here in the US to provide foreign stuff to distributors and hobby shops, but they lose money when people undercut them by importing themselves -- something that should technically be charged an import tariff.

If the distributors went away, it's true that you'd lose the middleman, but it would also mean that hobby shops would need to deal directly with an incredible amount of smaller companies. The reality is that you would only see products from a smaller amount of companies on store shelves, and the companies offered would vary more from store to store.

futureal

As for local shops charging $23 for a pair of foams, that's ludicrous. I'm all for supporting local shops, but that's gouging, or poor distribution, or both.

I think a pair of Jaco foams is $17 at my local shop and I know of a few US-based online stores like KT Hobbies where they are closer to $15. The Trinity booth at Snowbirds was selling pairs of TRC foams for $12 out the door, no tax.

robk

iTrader: (22)

"You just dont see top A-Main guys runing Speedmind tires for example-even though they appear to have a realy good rim and all the shores and exotic foams."

I'm not sure what the Speedmind deal is. Wayne Vince was running them at Cleveland 2 years I ago from what I know. He was fast. Other, local, guys here have tried them, but they were too soft, acted strange, chunked, etc.

fatdoggy

seaball - This is where being competative costs, it generally takes me two weeks with constant rotating to get them down to 60mm. One guy at my local track likes them at 54mm. I think if your on top of your game and are one of the local fast guys it's either shell out $$ or loose track position. Luckily I'm not in that position. I think running clean consistant runs and staying off the walls will make a bigger difference to my lap times then 2mm of foam. If you can drive around setup flaws, you will be that much faster when your car is perfect.

WC

iTrader: (28)

Dunno where you've been reading, but "Stippled Silicone" was one of the best ways to get grip on Polished Wooden Floors.

Heck, I've still on a pair... on my Tamiya 936 Porsche.

Only works on wooden floors though... anything else relied on the foam wearing to get you grip.

speedxl

yea the silicone stuff was for wooden floors i used to do that to run at my high schools basket ball court they werent to happy with the silicone groove i would leave!

rayhuang

iTrader: (5)

seaball-RB's running BSR tires now so I was just surfing to see whats it all about and he has a page full of rough cut doughnuts.

http://www.bsr-racing.com/mountedfoams.htm

I dont know what diameter rim the 1/10th pan cars are, but maybe they'd fit over the sedan rims we run.

robk

iTrader: (22)

Pan car dounts will work, you can buy rears and make 4 tires.

CypressMidWest

iTrader: (1)

As a customer and "friend" of the facility you race at, (driving 2.5 hours to get there!) I can say that you are VERY VERY LUCKY to have the group of racers that you have. The track owners and customers do FAR MORE than any other group of racers I've ever seen. You also have a very large group of local racers. I have raced at shops where the shop helped pay for the track, and in most instances the store does pay for the track. Real Estate of the scope necessary to have a track the size of the Gate is not cheap, and you guys have the benefit of having a successful track first, and then adding a hobby shop. My favorite facility of all time was funded by the store that it encompassed, and believe me, it was not because of an inferior track. I challenge anyone who had been to Crossroads to find a better racetrack and more available pit area. We at Crossroads however, could not count on 60 to 70 people showing up every weekend, or even 10 to 20 to show up on "work nights". So our fearless leader had to pay the bills for the track outta the hobby store's profits. This was not the only facility in the country that WAS/IS run that way. Actually the general consensus in the industry is: Pray the track breaks even, because it's the store that'll pay your bills.

CypressMidWest

iTrader: (1)

BSR rubber is excellent, and I've seen John's 1/12th and 1/10th pan car tires. I'm not too sure about touring car stuff, but if RB's running them I'm sure it's good stuff. Pan car donuts should mount right up, just like robk posted.

fatdoggy

1/10th scale donuts, I just took some pink rears off the rims becuase I broke a wheel yesterday and you end up with two 25mm foams.

Rob Hochberg

Here's the way I think of truing- Either you cut them down early, or you end up chunking them and wasting more money by having to throw them away.

fatdoggy

Imo chunking has alot to do with driving style. I've never had a big problem with chunking and I don't true them down at all.

jay272

I get mine from hong kong too. $10 pair, 1$ shipping and handling per pair. I thought it was a joke, but I'm looking at them right now. It took about 10 business days, but I still think it's a pretty sweet deal. The guy is an E-bay seller, and he has any compund Jaco or Ellegi foams. RC-mushroom (another hong kong e-store) has them for $8.50 per pair. Why do american stores charge so much??