3M Dry-Type Silicone for inside wheel bore?

[davet]

We polish and wax our wheel bores, spray our axles with 3M Dry-Type Silicone and lube for the race. Has anyone tried using this type of lube to coat the inside of the wheel bore prior to oil? I believe it would clean off any wax but if a person put some on a pipe cleaner and just ran it through once or twice would that be better than waxing the bore?

 

[Mr Chips Racing]

Simple answer yes. It has been tried. The thing to be careful of is not to have a product that will melt the wheel. Typically its the 2 barriers between the wax on the bore, and the silicone / wax / etc on the axle that allows the oil to slip between. Hope that helps. Trial and error though is lots of fun.

 

[ngyoung]

It is something you can test out but I think it has been tried. For sure on the axles it has but not used basically because other blends perform better for PWD applications. I know Dupont makes versions that are in bottles instead of aerosol that may work for applying to plastic. My theory for why the current oil process works is that you have an axle with a oleo-phobic coating and a bore that is glass smooth. I think if both surfaces are too oleo-phobic (repels oil) then the oil being added will not stay in the bore. Since the bore is what is actually moving around a fixed axle it is ideal to have that be as smooth, hard, and round as possible.