Rubbering Up A New Track

[triggy]

Shortly I have to "rubber up" the new surface on Lone Pine.

The surface is an acrylic undercoat that has been sanded to a reasonably smooth finish. The dust has been well cleaned off with damp cloths and has the sheen removed due to the sanding. There are "pores" visible in the surface so it isn't a smooth glass like finish.

MJK tyres grip OK on the virgin surface but Slot it F22's ( on a slot it 21k) slip quite easily.

Only eurathane and non treated rubber tyres will be permitted on the track.

 

I was considering rubbering up the track using non treated rubber Slot it or NSR tyres on a reasonably well weighted (read heavy) car to "force" the rubber into the track surface.

 

Would this be the best way "rubber up" the new surface?? Any experienced advice is welcome.

[BMR]

Hi Kane , that paint needs very little preparation on the oval about 40 laps or so on each lane and its ready to go , so pre race practise time will take care of it - however I have been experimenting over the last few months with a different track preparation before the 1/32 mob or 1/24 mob come around to race with good results .

 

I have used a dampened lint free cloth and a trigger spay bottle with warm water and pineoclean mix in it to wipe the track down before a race night , I have done this pre race prep to both tracks .

As a comparison I have had the 1/24th mob on the track on a Friday night and left it as it was after the 1/24th nights fun and then had our Monday night 1/32 mob onto the track - the grip was fair considering the cold weather . All the 1/24th cars run with MJKs .

I have done the same thing again ( 1/24th Friday followed by 1/32 on Monday ) but I did a complete spray n wipe job on the track . Both tracks have been better after this treatment .

 

First the track gets a compressed air dust of using a bannister brush at the same time , the compressed air also blows anything in the slot away . Then the track gets a light spray over and and wipe down with the 10% pineoclean disinfectant / 90% warm water mix . Finally a second wipe over with a dry lint free cloth to be sure there are no damp spots - on really cold nights I also used the compressed air to completely dry the surface . please note the 10% / 90% spray is only a mist not a splash

 

Both tracks have been at their best after this preparation , the disinfectant removes any oily crap and old tyre rubber etc that ends up on the track .

 

I was chatting to Mark and Wayne about it last time we raced at my place about how the rubber / oily grime etc actually rolled up like a pencil eraser material would when you rub off lead pencil on paper . That rolled up grime was the first big scrub off and it took about an hour to go completely around the track ( Ferrodore road course ) The oval which is the same paint as you have now was good straight off the bat . Now that its 10 months old it only needs a very light spray mist and wipe over to clean it up 100% - the main thing is really only picking up the dust with a moist lint free rag but the addition of pineoclean does clean it better . Warm water is only to hel it dry quicker .

 

I now do this prep everytime before a race night , most of the time Chad helps me and the only other track prep is the 40 -100 laps that get laid down during pre race practise time .

 

So in the end a super clean track has worked much better than anytime in the past where its been left rubbered from any previous racing .

 

PS I am thinking about dropping a bit of metho in the spray bottle to help with drying , it works a treat on the floating floors inside the house ( squeaky clean )

 

PPS I havent tried the slotcars grip on the floating floors inside yet - way too dangerous to my health

[triggy]

Thanks Steve. That is interesting re the clean track surface everytime. My surface is currently as clean as it gets, so I am a bit concerned at the lack of grip with F22's. This could be because it is a reasonably smooth surface with a reasonably quick motor causing wheel spin rather than grip.Hhmmmm......time , and laps, will soon tell.

[BMR]

Back in March a few were playing around with slot its on the oval , they had F22s on the cars , I remember a few saying they were slippery , that was in the pre racing practise time on the track .

After running the sprintcars and then the Stockcars through their events the slot its F22s were gripping better but it did seem that the MJKs were getting better grip on the oval earlier in the night .

I wasnt going through the spray n wipe track prep back in March , I would say the track was a bit dirty on the driving line , I would have given he track a compressed air blow off but no damp rag wipe over .

I would take a guess here and say the MJKs handle a track surface thats a little dusty better than the F22s

 

When we run the slot it class with 98% of the cars in that class running F22s on the track - I suspect the track is much cleaner on the drive line so they grip better - no MJK dust ?

 

Regarding your track at the moment - You said the other night you gave it a very light sanding . Have you also given it a damp wipe over to remove the fine dust , I would try the pineoclean / water mist or just put pineoclean & water into a breakfast bowl , then dip and rinse a lint free rag in it to wipe the track and then see how the F22s go on the surface after that .

 

Bottom line - I think no matter what surface treatment / preparation we do , the tracks will always need about 40 - 50 laps per lane at least to get the driving line up to scratch for any tyre we use to start gripping well . At lest your track is in a warmer environment Triggy you can fairly much discount the cold surface theory .

 

PS Just thinking on the cold surface theory - on really cold nights we have had Mark D and Chris C blow us away on a 1/24th FJ nights when they had the much harder AMR tyres on their cars , to relate that back to 1/32 scale cars , the standard tyres like those on the SCX NASCARS or Scalextric Aussie V8s match the AMR hard 1/24th tyre for hardess . This may indicate that softer tyres like the slot it F22s cant warm up enough in sprint races on a cold surface to offer their best grip .

 

Now its startng to make sense why DGM keeps his car in his pocket - he has a hidden tyre warmer

[triggy]

Hmmm somethings to consider. Yep the track was damp rag cleaned twice after sanding so no dust issues there.

[smallnails]

I use wd40 and nsr ultras to rubber m track up, takes probably 100-200 laps before you start seeing the rubber "lines" on the track surface!

[triggy]

Smallnails, I assume the WD40 softens the NSR's a little to enable the rubber to "impregnate" easier into the track surface?

If so, does the oily residue from the WD40 affect the performance of eurathane tyres?

[imugford]

Smallnails, I assume the WD40 softens the NSR's a little to enable the rubber to "impregnate" easier into the track surface?

If so, does the oily residue from the WD40 affect the performance of eurathane tyres?

 

i use NSR/WD40 and MJK's on my track... I've noticed that the MJK's are going shiny the days after... so i'm not using WD40/Oils on my NSR's anymore

[dangermouse]

I have used foam tyres cars with some shellite on my track to build up a layer of rubber. The grip level seems fine for rubber or urethane tired cars. I have used the shellite on rubber tyres as well and it seems to work, but mostly I just wipe them with some 3n1 oil before running them - softens the rubber a bit and leaves black lines on the surface. I run a mix of rubber and urethane and foam, mostly urethane. For my rubber tyres I

 

I don't race on my track just use it for testing, tuning and to driving some laps maybe a couple of hundred at a time. I don't find to much oily residue left over. I have used WD40 in the past but someone said it effects urethane so I stopped using it.

 

cheers

David

[triggy]

Thanks for your input guys:

Muggy & DM, I know oil does affect the MJK's so your results don't surprise me, so dropping the treated tyres is a good thing. That's why we don't allow treated tyres at SCR.

[smallnails]

We don't use that much wd40 that theres going to be any residue left on the track afterwards that would affect a MJK/Ortmann shod car in the next bracket, some people on the forum in the past have gotten very hot under the collar about it (don't even talk about the proxy from a few years ago) we mainly use it to clean the tyres, in the club i am in we use both ortmanns and MJK in regards to urethanes. There are guys that also use nsr tires and just plain old tires that came out of the box. We mainly use a cloth that has been previously wettened with wd40 to wipe its tyres clean. Some guys even just like to "tape" their tyres clean with duct tape.

 

We have had no undue impact from it, basicaly tho.........if you are that worried about your tyres going off before their allotted time then don't do anything to them, everything is going to impact your tyre in a good way or a bad way.

 

But IMO the whole WD40 thing is something that gets blown way out of proportion by the (dare i say it) the mjk capital of the world. In careful use it is a great substance for cleaning your tyres.

[lenny broke]

Though I don't want to turn this thread into a blue over the pros and cons of tyre treatment and as a lot of locals would know I would not ever be considered an apologist for the local product . My experience is first hand on this. I raced at Thunderbird raceway one night on MJK tyres. Tyre treatment is the rule rather than the exception there with guys running NSR tyres soaked in CRC2-26 and run in on tyre tuers for hours till they "bubble up" in the middle of the tread face. This results in a layer of treated rubber on the track surface. I ran one twenty minute race there on the MJK's and they were ruined before the end of the race, a chuck away item.

I've also ran untreated NSR supergrip tyres on tracks where MJK tyres were the main tyre used. the NSR picked up the tyre rubble off the track left behind from the MJK's and were useless. it was like skating around on "marbles" in 1:1 racing.

 

Triggy ,my feeling on rubbering in the track is there's no rocket science to this. Just get a bunch of guys around and run laps on the type of tyres you want to allow.

 

Alan

[BMR]

Last Monday night was an interesting tyre comparison for me , When I arrived at a track there was only three of us there , the track hadn't been used for quite a while so I expected the grip to be a little on the slippery side , the owners did say he had been running some MJK shod cars around for about 1/2 an hour to get the track ready . I put my NSR mosler on the track for a few pre race laps , its has MJK GP tyres on it , the grip was fine . But after everyone had raced their Gt cars around ( most on F22 tyres ) and we started to race the open class cars ( mostly on F22 tyres ) my MJK shod open class NSR mosler was on ice , initially I put it down to the controller not being quite right for the NSR car but after thinking about it I found myself wondering why the car was ok during the pre practice before the real racing started ?

 

Could it be the F22 tyres ?

 

I had a chat with another track owner that recently had a guy break a track lap record while he was the only car on the track with MJK tyres - the others had F22s

 

That statement above should eliminate my NSRs traction problems - as in it was possibly the only car with MJKs on it ?

 

So now the plot thickens - I heard about another recent race night where ALL the cars had F22s and all the cars but 1 gripped really well .

 

These cars are all well set up and have all had there time at the top of the winners tree recently , so what is it that takes the grip away ?

 

Im left wondering if it could be something that some racers use on the braid ?

 

Anyone else had similar experiences on race nights where one car thats unchanged and normally good just go off for no apparent reason ?

 

edited out the spelling errors - fat fingers on the keyboard again

Edited July 4, 2012 by BMR

[triggy]

Well I am starting to get some positive results. BMR's clean track theory is holding up. The first problem re grip with the F22's was that they were very dirty. Next problem was the track wasn't cleaned well enough following sanding. Once both were cleaned really well it was amazing the transformation with the amount of grip I had on the clean track. I haven't run laps since this quick test so it will be interesting to see the grip levels when I use the other lanes with both rubber and MJK tyres. I will report back when some serious laps are put down.

 

(Thanks to wizardgm for picking up this issue)

[bandit]

How about running an endurance event with a heap of mates and ensure every one has rubber tyres.By the end of the race you should have a fair amount of rubber down,and every body has a good time to boot.

[Ember]

Seems to be proving that for some surfaces the thought that grip improves with visible rubber on the track is a fallacy.

[triggy]

Bandit, I will be having a shakedown session next Sat, 2 days before the innaugural club night, so that's where a few laps will be run, however that will be a mixture of MJK and rubber.

 

Embs, after my experience last week, I am leaning towards that theory also. Only time will tell.

 

Will report back following further laps.