I was reading through this thread some and saw the post about cleaning tires. I come from a dirt oval kart racing background where I had to learn more about tires than I care to admit. But many peoples thought on simple green and Dawn is they are degreasers, and tires are rubber which is a petroleum (oil) based material, so using degreasers will dry them out quicker and therefore possibly lose grip and wear out sooner. Some people did use WD-40 as a conditioner to put the oils back in the tire this is alot of what gives the grippy feel. We would "roll" tires with heat and prep on the inside alot so it would soak all the way through the rubber. I probably had 10-15 different preps for different track conditions. I am very new to RC and was told by other karters who RC also the preps we used would work the same on RC tires so I will be trying them out this summer. Transmission fuid was another some people used but have to be careful it will really soften the rubber alot too.