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Review Of Slot.It Sponge Tyres


Vinno

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Slot.it Sponge Tyres SP30 Compound and Sponge Specific Wheels

 

I picked up a set of these last week with no real expectations.of exceptional performance. The tyres have no central rib like normal Slot.it tyres so the rims are specific to the tyres. At the moment they are on a special introductory price at Armchair Racer so it was a good reason to give them a try.

 

 

Slot.it-sponge-1.jpg

 

As You can see the rim has an outer rim to hold the tyre in place and they are made with the short hub with the grub screw partially recessed. All Slot.it rims should come with short hubs as it gives that little bit more room for fitting the wheel to those angle winder pods which suffer from clearance issues with some cars. I don't know why but 3 of the 4 tyres came with a notch in them across the surface which I found annoying as it meant half a mm or so of the tread is gone in truing even as soon as the tyre is fitted. FPVGTP thinks it is to stop the tyre from splitting when fitting as they are so tight. I think it may be a trueing marker and I am sure someone knows what it is for by now.

 

Anyway they went on very tightly and all seemed pretty good. They are reported to not need to be glued and so far so good, they didn't move when truing or running at high speed. The tyres appeared to be a bit more open on the surface than the Scale Auto 1/32 sponge tyres Yngwie was running on his Slot.it McLaren at the same time I was later that afternoon. I wondered if this would show up much different on the tracks I was testing on.

 

Slot.it-sponge-3.jpgSlot.it-sponge-2.jpg

 

I decided to fit them to my Slot.it Porsche GT1 as that is one of my better 1/32 scale cars to drive and the larger diameter wheels that this car comes with meant it was a straight swap for the 14.2 X 9.5mm Sponge specific wheels which are the middle size of three. Fitted the tyres were 21mm in diameter and 20.5mm once trued. I didn't worry about whether inserts fit for the purpose of this test as it was a purely performance based test. I took the car down to my new local centre, Penrith Slotcar and Hobby Centre so I could have a run on both a Carrera plastic track and their gloss coated Kingleman.track from Mobile Raceway. No necessarily a 1/32 track but the perfect place to test sponge tyres.

 

Slot.it-sponge-4.jpg

 

The first place I ran the tyres was the Carrera plastic track and I was surprised to see they could not really hook up that well here. Yngwie was running his Scale Auto tyred car on the same track and it may have been the smoother surface of his tyres but they ran a lot closer to a standard tyre here. So after many laps I could not get anywhere near the Scaleauto tyre on this track.

 

Anyway this was about testing on a true gloss coated track which I hoped would show how good these tyres should be. It may have been the slight amount of tyre goo on the track but then maybe not but this is where the tyres shined. Side by Side with the Scale Auto tyres and the Slot.it tyres were a half second faster. Not only that but the scale Auto tyres seemed to shudder under acceleration whereas the Slot.it tyres were smooth and predictable. It seemed that the longer I drove it the faster the car went and I had to stop in the end as Ken wanted to close the shop and go home.

 

I have also heard via Gazza that they are appreciably faster than MJK tyres on his track which is Ferrodore with clear over the top. As for full Ferrodoe I am yet to try them but I think the tyre life may be a little short on a course surface like that. I will get up to Armchair Racer and run them there to see how they go.

 

So for those of you that run gloss track surfaces I can definitely recommend giving them a go. They should look pretty close to scale with some inserts fitted too. It is nice to run a tyre with no glue also so setup was simple bar the divet in the tread which did true out quite easy.

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very Good Vince. Will you release it in your own name, or is ART still twitching signs of life.

 

For interests sake, I found them better than stock C tyres on my gloss surface track, but not quite as quick as N22 or ultragrips.

Recovering Lapsed Slot Addict :ph34r:  *  Custodian of many used screws (mostly loose :rolleyes:)  *  Total kidder  *  Companion of other delusional slot addicts :lol:  

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Vinno We run sponge tyres on our post 95 Le Mans cars, mainly " fish" and we find that after a race the normal rubber tyres do not grip as well. It takes about 20 to 30 laps before the grip comes back to where it should be.

But IMO sponge tyres are way better than rubber for grip. But maybe that is just my 1/24 commercial track background!

 

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Thanks Vinno. Very interesting. So I guess we will be running soft plasic bodies soon with no interiors.

I supose we could have one class in our group to allow car wash tyres. Maybe I should have had a set in my bag to take on the Texans while I'm there. :)

I can't believe that I wanted to grow up

 

Mount Salt Panorama Track Combined Road and Rally Track built near Salt Pan Creek Padstow - Sydney

 

A quick build rally track

 

2017 WRP Round 11 at Mt Salt Panorama

 

https://i128.photobu...zpss7sqiwfj.jpg

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Thanks Vinno. Very interesting. So I guess we will be running soft plasic bodies soon with no interiors.

 

What a great idea Mel, having the taxis as a test class, you'll just have to convince the pensioners now

Quickly read this post before it is deleted or i turn grey again

Gary

http://www.facebook.com/Rallyproxy2017

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