This is kind of my point. 1/8 buggy doesn't have spec tires and I don't see people clamoring for them. I don't hear people complaining that 1/8 buggy is too fast and it needs to be slowed down. How much does an 1/8 scale buggy cost to put together and run compared to 1/12th scale? What is turnout like for 1/8 scale buggy vs.1/12th scale?

People are bitching over a $20-$25 set of tires on a 1/12th scale that they can get 10-15 8-minute races out of and claiming rubber tires are the panacea we've been waiting for to save this failing class, yet I see no shortage of people who have no issue spending $50-$70 on tires to run 1/8th scale buggy for roughly the same amount of run time... and that class doesn't seem to have an issue with turnout.

Turnouts were 2-3x higher in my area 20 years ago when everything we ran on carpet ran on foam tires. I'm not saying that foam tires are the answer. I am however saying that rubber tires on 1/12th scale are not the answer.

My prediction remains. If rubber becomes a thing for 1/12th scale it may initially attract a few people, but they will quickly realize that 1/12th scale, at it's heart, is the same as it always has been... A bit finicky and not designed for someone not willing to put the time and effort into chassis setup far beyond what most other classes require. Tire truing will be replaced with other regimens like grinding, gluing and heating to maximize performance and the life expectancy that was promised is really not available for those that want to make it around the track the fastest.

1/8 nitrobuggy can eat $60 tires in a single run. I'd love a spec tire in off road. 2wd buggy is the worst though. Wrong tire and you lose. ,At least 4wd cars can get by with mediocre tires.

Sine purple stripes work fine on CRC carpet, I don't see the issue. Those seem to have a decent life.

decent is an understatement. 3-4 days on a set of tires is very good in modern racing. Instead of placing the blame on the tires, I say we start making club owned tire truers more common. $500 spread across 10-20 1/12 racers is not too bad.

I guess you guys might as well quit and sell your stuff ! The end is near for All R/C racers. What are you going to do when you have to drive with what the drone guys are using----the end????
bottom line is - if you like racing it always cost something to race. Have fun with it. Maybe you guys should see what my local bashers are spending there money on?

This.

I have 3 currently idle 12th scales sitting on the shelf. I've always had a love & fascination for this class since I first read about it in an RC car magazine in the early 90s. To this day I love the simplicity of the cars, I love their speed and looks and their performance. I tried getting into it several times over the last 10 years or so. The last few times with a lot of research and practice and some trial and error I managed to get the car setup right that it drove easily, i.e. not erratic, not tweaked, right diameter tires, right amount of traction compound and all the little things that need to be done correctly to really get the best out of the little car. It worked really well. Yet....I never enjoyed driving it as much as my touring car. The combination of 4wd, full independent suspension and rubber tires just makes it sooooo much easier to drive and also to setup (in my opinion). It's much more forgiving to errors in both driving and setup.
(Of the aforementioned three aspects the 4wd obviously has the biggest positive effect in making a car easy to drive, it's just physics.)

To be really fast, the touring car setup of course needs to be spot on, as any racing car. But you can live with a less than perfect setup in a touring car much more so than in a 12th scale. A less than perfectly setup 12th scale is a nightmare to drive (in direct comparison to a less than perfectly setup TC). And even if they're both setup perfectly, for my humble skills the touring car remains and always will be the easier car to drive. People may say that I have not really mastered setting up the 12th scale correctly and that if I had, it would drive just the same as a touring car. Those people may be right or wrong, but even if that were true, then the effort just simply isn't worth it.

I can only guess, but I think that I'm not alone with this experience. I'm sure many people have tried 12th scale but not many have stayed, mostly because they are just harder to setup and drive than most (or all?) other classes out there.

So, where does this leave me in this rubber tire debate for 12th scales? I would be interested in trying a rubber tire on a 12th scale. But I also don't believe that it will change the reason why 12th scale is not and never will be a class for the masses: it's just too difficult to appeal to the masses, because it's 2wd, it's super fast and the amount of movement on the few moving parts is so small and therefore requires extremely exact work. If a rubber tire were actually able to make the 12th scale drive more easily (because it provided less traction and therefore required less speed) then I think 12th scale might grow, slightly, but not massively. I don't see physics working out that way. 2wd is always harder to drive than 4wd, no matter what tire, no matter if offroad or onroad.
Too little traction is of course also no good, look at F1 outdoors on a dusty track...that's just about the worst RC experience you can have in RC :-)

(Side note: I am aware of course that 10th scale 2wd offroad is more popular than 10th scale 4wd offroad, although there too, 2wds are harder to drive. I attribute this to the 2wds being less hassle to build, maintain and repair, because they don't break as easily and have less moving parts. But the difference in difficulty is much smaller than between 12th scale and TC.)

Nevertheless...I think it's still worth giving it a shot with the rubber tire on 12th scales, we might all learn something and if we stop trying new things we stop progressing. And I don't think anyone claimed that the rubber tire is being tested with the goal to make 12th scale a class for the masses.

Reading the post above about rubber tires used in 12th scale is a bad idea. Rubber tires does not have a more connected feel and it will make the cars harder to drive. If people struggle with 12th scale on foam tires, stay away from rubber tires! Pan cars are a special class that requires attention to the smallest detail. Once you get it the cars are very easy to drive. I love 12th scale and only want see foam tires. I do think the body styles need to improve from the wedge. The GT12 class is awesome and has done a great job with the bodies and helping 12th scale grow. Keep moving in that direction.
Just my .02 cents.

This type of tire is nothing “new”. It’s a Mini-z style rubber tire and it has been around in smaller scales for a long time. It works with the smaller cars and the feel is definitely there. Will it slow the cars some? Sure, in the corners and slightly under acceleration due to a little bit heavier weight. But you guys will still be able to handle the same speed since 17.5 (and 21.5)are kind of underpowered.

If this rule was to extrapolate to faster classes, I could see it potentially get rid of the “middle class” as the mod cars would have to be slowed down a bit and perhaps at this point, the 13.5 guys want to run mod. As a wild guess, maybe we’d end up running in the range of like a 8.5-7.5 which would match the traction a little better and perhaps easier to drive for hobbyist and club racers.

Ideally, I’d like to see a bigger sidewall on the tire so that they were more versatile and perhaps even usable on asphalt. You could also true them like this to make them more round and smaller if need be.

The benefits, outside of slowing the cars down could be numerous.

From my experience with tubber tires on smaller pan cars you have:

-really low cost (they’re just a rubber sleeve)
-reusable wheels (depending on mounting technique)
-super tough (no more chunked tires)
-no fuzzing and more compatible with rubber tire sedan racing
-wider grip envelope. Saucing is not as critical and tires don’t change/fade as much

I agree, foam is awesome, and while I don’t think rubber tires for 12th scales will fix on road, at least the potential is promising just based on durability and slowing the cars down a bit. The fast guys will still be fast and the slow guys slow, however, the decreased lap time will be mitigated by a slightly more challenging to drive car.

So lets kill another class because some are to lazy to prep tires. So if you don't like cutting foams then don't race 1/12! I see this rubber tire b.s killing this class just like wgt was killed because of the same reason. There is no need for rubber on a 1/12. Stop making class so people can win trophies race what we have....Rant over!

I think you are overreacting a bit. I’d say the biggest hitch is that I don’t think Scott at SJT is contrasting all the differences. I truly believe it’s not about prepping tires, but about weighing all the benefits vs all the detriments.

I am 100% certain that the racing will be just as good, but costs and ease of use would reduce at the expense of a little bit slower laptimes.

(Besides. WGT was dead before and after rubber tire!).

Pancar guys who don’t want the “hassle” of dealing with foam tires already have other class options available to them. Thing is, in most places where I’ve been, I’ve seen very few guys opting to run either rubber tired F1s or WGTRs. But lately 1/12th GT (on spec foams) seems to be really taking off in a big way. The GT bodies seem to “soften” the handling just enough to make the traditional 1/12th scale cars substantially easier to drive and really raceable. I for one am thrilled with the GT development and the fact that 1/12th scale participation is finally now starting to build some real momentum after years of slow decline. IMO it would be a real shame if the introduction of rubber tires and the inevitable confusion and uncertainty that would certainly accompany them screwed that up.

Are club had full heats of WGT on foam every weekend. I don't see rubber tire 1/12 fixing anything but making it more expensive for new people to come into the hobby. I don't see old racers liking rubber tire either. If you look at TC look at all the work that goes into jaco blues or gravity tc tires on CRC black carpet, Its stupid so why do I want the same problems in a 1/12 chassis. 1/12 is a class of repetitiveness and seeing how constant you can be, I don't see rubber tires offering that what so ever.
Now what does rubber tire 1/12 offer from a chassis company stand point..well a lot! This give chassis companies new ways to make cars and sell them but one again why are we trying to re-invent the wheel. The class has been fine for some time it needs nothing but racers. This is where GT12 comes into pay.

Did you know in Florida they use purple stripe spec tires and 21.5 motors ? Ask Bullfrog..

Racer, All your statements above are opinions instead of facts.

(Except for the WGT part, which your club could have continued running Foam if they liked it so much. I know that at the time rubber came t
to be I owned a track and made WGT kits through RSD, And the facts and numbers nationally point to this class being long dead before rubber tires. Your place was just an exception).

All I am saying is, it’s not the end of the world and no one is forcing a change. I believe that if the tires suck, no one will use them and problem over. No reason to be upset about it. However, if they work, the cost of racing 12th scale and ease of using tires will be drastically reduced. So in a way these are the 2 scenarios:

1.they suck, no one uses them, so you carry on with 12th scale the same way as always.
2.They are pretty good, costs are lower and easier to use.

Saying simply “I think this or that, therefore death to the rubber tire” Is overreacting. Give it a shot, or don’t. However, proverbially “taking your ball home because you don’t like the rules” is hardly ever the right answer. At the end of the day the reason why we all do this is because we love RC Car racing. Let’s not lose sight of that.

From experience I can tell you, due to the type of tire, the cars will not drive much different.

Time will tell! I don't see this helping the class at all! From a guy that loves 1/12 I am a die hard foam guy( if you can tell). So I'll wait and see how this turns out.

Thank you our 21.5 with spec tires grows every club/ state series race.Old 1/12 racers have come back to race in the class. Now we are going to experiment with the rubber tires on black carpet when they arrive.
Our WGT class died way before WGT-R came out. WGT-R grew for awhile till racers that could not drive this class killed it by going to wgt with 13.5 motors and foams. It took a couple of months but it's DEAD here.
I remember when TC killed 235 pan cars. You can't stop progress. Look what were complaining on! I'm a very old racer.