I need help

Dec 27, 2011
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Two weeks ago I was at a race where both oil and graphite was used. It was my first time using John's oil process and although we did well we experienced a consistently slower speed with every run (approximately .010 slower each run). Could this be caused by contamination or could it be caused by too much oil? I pulled the tires and there was a lot of oil in the wheel bores. I have another race coming up where people will be using both oil and graphite, I'm undecided what I should do because I have never seen such a large consistent drop in our times using graphite. I appreciate any help you guys could give me!

Thanks,

Craig
 
could be few things too much oil, too much jig, contamination in there..it takes alot of times to get good with the oil process..still working on it myself
 
I doubt it was contamination unless somebody put graphite on your car. Or, you had huge wheel gaps, even still I doubt it. Could have been dirty wheels especially if you had a lot of oil and it got on the outside of the wheel, it would be a graphite magnet.
 
id agree with the above....maybe a prep issue with too much oil to begin with....or the fact that everrun, more graphite got cacked on the wheels slowing it down....unfortunately if your like us, no one can touch the cars once submitted so there is no opportunity to clean em off between heats....

still id expect a good oil car to beat a good graphite car all the time....and besides, if its truly is graphite on the track getting the wheels dirty then odds are even the graphite cars next to you are picking up the same stuff....id only be worse on yours if like Kinser said, u had too much oil, it starting leaking out the sides and splashing on the wheels and now its really picking rubbish up...but I think ud have seen that at the end of the race just looking at your wheels....

with the gaps as narrow as they should be id be pretty hard to get any significant amt of graphite into the bores without purposely trying to squirt it in....

I usually will drop 4 to 5 drops on an axel before pushing the wheel over .... maybe I need to reduce this myself .....
 
Our wheel gap was set at .020. We didn't see any oil on the outside of the wheels, but there was a lot of oil inside the wheel bores when I pulled them apart. Graphite on the wheels after the race was no more than usual.
 
Wow! - .020 gap seems huge to me. for an 0.093 dia. axel I will have a wheel bore dia. of 0.095 0.096 on the wheels I make. What are some typical clearances you other guys are using?
 
cycrunner said:
Wow! - .020 gap seems huge to me. for an 0.093 dia. axel I will have a wheel bore dia. of 0.095 0.096 on the wheels I make. What are some typical clearances you other guys are using?
Cycrunner, I'm talking about the gap between the body and wheel.