Setup
 

unfortunatly its runs. This is in no way an uncommon thing in the black carpet world. I clean the tires with lighter fluid. I sauce them about 5 minutes before I run them and I wipe the sauce off right before the run. I use sxt. The tires swell and once they swell the car handleing starts to go wonky. So you either chase a setup all day long and never really get it or you just put fresh rubber on. For me it is much simpler to put fresh rubber on and imo tires are a consumable and definatly needed often.

That sounds like the lighter fluid and sxt mix is causing a bad reaction in the tire and causing the swelling. Try another way to clean the tires, or don't add sxt after the lighter fluid...I had good results with just tire cleaner on my front tires and sxt rear, but that was after treating all the tires with 303 the day before racing...

Yeah I'm in the same boat with the SXT and lighterfluid. It works amazing on Jaco Blues, the Traxxas 4-tec 2.0 tires, but it swells up the USGT tires and there's nothing I can do to get the car right other than change tires. I've even got chunking on my fronts. The lighterfluid doesn't stay on the tire long—it's on, wipe wipe wipe, gone. It's hard to imagine it has time to do anything. Makes me think that SXT is doing it, because the same thing happens to off-road tires using SXT. I can't reiterate again how stupid it is that the USGT tires baloon up and become worthless while the the traxxas spec 4-tec tires run great until the thread is gone and they're slicks. Is it our tire program? Whatever it is, it's just incredibly frustrating.

On the carpet I used ot use the SXT Lt sauce as a cleaner and sauce , never had a problem . I put 4 dots on a papertowel rub the tires on it ,usually by the 3rd qual. i would only clean Or sauce the tires

Every set I've had have swelled. I also use SXT on black carpet. I've tried naptha, brake cleaner, and just sxt for cleaning. I never let the cleaners sit on the tire, it's always apply and immediately wipe off. The worse swelling I had was when I was using only sxt to both sauce and clean after a run. To sauce, I applied about 5mins before a run and wiped enough back off so it would be almost totally dry before I ran. I think I'm going to try a new set and just use either naptha or brake cleaner to clean and skip the sauce. Just sucks because I know traction will be crap.
Something I have also noticed with these tires: after a run, they are the worst I have seen to gum up on the edges. Takes quite a bit of cleaning to remove. Maybe this is why they swell so bad? Could be that I am having to clean them too much?

thats a bit of bad luck ,are you racing on asphalt with sugar water on the track?
i have seen on cloudy days that a humid where the sugar never really dries and sticks the tires. If that is the case id take clean hot water to the tires ( like cleaning offroad tires)

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A couple of McAllister bodies I painted up this week. Definitely going to try the C6 Lemans for my next race body.

No asphalt, only black carpet...
I've noticed a very small amount on my vta tires before, and very little on my TC tires. (rush) But hands down, the usgt tires are the worst for gumming up. I don't get it.

They're the worst at a lot of stuff. What's not to get? In other news, my experience is the exact opposite of yours. My USGT tires never pickup or gum up, but my jaco blues and 4-tec tires pickup gunk and gum up a lot.

Another issue with tires that most ignore is how to store tires...They need to be sealed in a dark container or else they will have poor track performance, no matter the tire treatment....

Im with Team Green...


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