Advantages of Tungsten

[Wolfram Racing]

Think about a 5" wheelbase car as the front wheels hit the transition point....now imagine the car stopped at that point. Imagine where the front edge of the car is on the track. Now a 4 3/8" wheelbase car comes down....as his front wheels hit the same transition point wouldn't the car have actually traveled a little further on the slope before it's front wheels where in the same spot as the 5" wheelbase car and thus the nose of the shorter wheelbase car be ahead of the longer wheelbase car....ie closer to the finish line.............should be a slight advantage

IMO, a longer wheelbase is a cheat for me to keep a shorter COG without having to adjust the weight around as much to maintain stability. Remember that during the transition period, it's your COG that accelerates to align at the bottom (the brachistochrone problem). So you might get a boost on the slope and pay for it in the transition and flat.
Either way, a short base is more difficult to get stable on the flat. The wiggles will kill your run.
When I get better at adjusting weight distro, I might try to shorten my base for the reasons you are saying...but I'm not there yet...and you can see Mid-Ataltic and Reece are smoking me and they both have shorter bases but still run smooth as silk down the flat. They also can taper their nose better than I can on a long base car.
There's tradeoffs everywhere though. A longer base has, naturally, a longer moment arm and thus the lateral force the track applies to the DFW will be less. It's like pushing a door open at the hing or at the handle. Same door, but it opens easily at the handle, not so easy at the hinge.

 

[Thinkin'Bout Racin]

Oh guys don’t get me wrong... I am only speaking in the context of league racing as I know Duck is gearing up to send one in.
Yes it’s not nec at the scout level.

And I only have enough cubes and putty for 3 cars and keep cannibalizing for other cars.

Jimmy,

No Problem. You are correct that if Duck wants to be competitive at the league level he will need to transition into tungsten cars. I was looking at his reply in post #12 above and he was asking about Scout cars.

I think our thoughts run parallel ...just that I was referring to a Scout build and you were thinking about league racing.

We both can have our cake and eat it too.

 

[Bubblegum]

I have used both at the scout level and won with both. My lead car beat my tungsten car last weekend because of other factors involved and that car was faster than most tungesten cars present as well.

I used fishing weights melted into dummy wells and did not allow my children to handle that.

If buying tungsten buy 4 oz per car and an ounce of putty for the fine tuning.

 

[Jimmy & his 2 Kids]

Check out the cars in my avatar pic. That was a combination of zinc plates, zinc racing figures, tungsten putty and big split shot sinkers flipped upside down to look cool. Lol
These cars took all trophies at Awana GP 2 years ago. Rainbow one never lost, Spider Mobile lost only to the Rainbow.

 

[Jimmy & his 2 Kids]

Thanks again everyone! Based off this information, sounds like I need to invest in some tungsten! If anything, I could buy enough to do two cars and easily swap it out for another car in a pinch. A few more questions.

1. How much do you need! The way it is packaged, I think in 3 ounces, it forces you to buy at least two packages, am I right?
2. It comes in cubes, right? At least the ones I've seen, and the cubes are all the same. Or do you buy smaller ones too? So if they are in heavy cubes, it looks like you'd either be really under weight, or over weight. With large increments, how do you meet the weight.
3. How are they attached so that you can easily pull them out and donate them to another car.
4. Based off of what I've read, I should put 2 ounces behind the wheels and the rest in front of the back axle, but not worry about the COG. Is that correct? I've been setting my COG at .75"

Thanks again in advance.

Hey Duck Tungsten is actually not very expensive when you use it properly. I got all mine from John. An oz which is 6 cubes (small .25” cubes) is only like $5 and tungsten also comes in all sorts of shapes and sizes since it’s so widely used in the leagues now.
As for mounting I use the thin clear 2 sided tape used in window plastic covering kits. It is strong and I have never had a cube come loose but at the same time give a cube a twist and it pops right out allowing fornre-use or to change things up regarding weight placement for fine tuning.
I usually end up with 2 rows of 6 behind my axle so yeah... 2 oz back here and the rest in front of axle. I am bad in that I never measure COM. But I have looked and see my cars COM is .5”-ish forward of rear axle.
Hope all that helps. I bought my weights almost 2 years ago and have used them in 5 different cars, soon to be 8.
Jimmy