super track council race

[denboy]

hello to all,
first time posting on here, but must say I love reading all the other posts, and all the great info. We raced over the weekend on a best track with a rail riding car and won at our pack, but the council race is held on a super track with no center rail. Would like any ideas on what to do to retune car to run on this type of track. Car currently drilled with silver bullet. 3 deg. cant on back axle with one raised front wheel, and dfw drilled straight with bent axle. Didn't know if I should try to get the car run straight as possible, or to try to run it against the outside of the track, and how you would go about doing that. I have a few ideas, but would like to hear from some of the great guys on this forum with any ideas. Thank you in advance, and have a great day.

 

[5KidsRacing]

I would adjust your car to go straight as possible.

 

[jator359]

In this case would you still want to keep a pos cant on dfw? There's no center rail to keep rears off of. Should dfw have neg cant? No cant?

 

[5KidsRacing]

I guess it depends on how much modification Denboy wants to do at this point...

If the body has been drilled with the Silver Bullet and the car is set-up as a 3 wheel railrunner then I would Just adjust the steer for straight and let it roll. I mean you guys are here so you are probably already 2 or 3 car lengths ahead of the next racer so tearing the entire car apart to get and extra inch proabably isn't worth it.

If I was building this car from scratch with the "Super Track" in mind I would probably narrow both of the rears and run the DFW reversed with negative cant (just like rears). I would also flip the lifted front wheel and lock it down with negative cant.

 

[jator359]

Thanks 5k. The question came up b/c I recall reading a post a while back (I don't remember which forum) that recommended adjusting steer to run the outside rail with a neg cant on the dfw when there's no center guide.

 

[Guest]

It should help you to imagine running marbles down the track. Picture their reactions and formulate your car to have same reaction.

 

[5KidsRacing]

Thanks 5k. The question came up b/c I recall reading a post a while back (I don't remember which forum) that recommended adjusting steer to run the outside rail with a neg cant on the dfw when there's no center guide.

I am sure it was my post somewhere...

It is also good timing that this comes up now because I have a friend with two scouts that come over every year to build cars and they are coming over tonight to test/tune their cars. They have ran on a Super Track the last 4 years and we have built their cars to run on the outside rail. We narrowed the rears and reversed the DFW and ran it with negative cant. We steered into the outside rail the same as we would on a center guided track. They have won every year with this system.

This year we kicked out the Super Track and I am running their race this Saturday on our pack's Best track. Should be fun/images/boards/smilies/smile.gif

 

[Quicktimederby]

Unfortunately I have raced on this type of track many times. That being said, I have had most success running a neg cant on the front with about half as much steer that I use on the Best track. Also narrowing the rear is a must so you drag the rear wheel down the rail the whole way down the track. The most important thing on this track is build the car strong, there is no stop section just a crash house. If you are running a extended wheel base move the front wheels back so they don't get damaged in the stopping process.

 

[txchemist]

Wow! BH actually said something profound!.
It turns out that running a marble, or even better, a Steel polished pinball down the lane, no matter how careful you are- will have two interesting characteristics:
1. it will be slower than an average car.
2. It will have almost 3 times the variation of a good car running on the normal rail in the middle. So if you try to run straight, you will look like a pinball, but so will all the other cars. The odds that someone will make a correct car as Quicktime and others have described is remote, but it might be easy to get the DFW moved out 1/4" and just rotate the axle from 6:00 to 12:00 and get your neg cant, then set drift to run that wheel into the side of the lane.

 

[GravityX]

As crazy as this may sound, here it is anyhow. Neg cant on the rears as normal. Install the DFW as you would normally and tune the car, with 3 wheels, for as little steer as possible, let's say 1/2" over 8'. Then install the 4th wheel the same way as you did the DFW and then re-tune the car to remove that amount of steer, in other words, remove the steer you installed in the previous tune by adjusting the wheel just installed. (Of course this involves running 4wheels flat.) Now you would have a straight running car.

I know running a car with toe-in slows it down, but are we not shooting for straight line running of the car? Bouncing from side to side is taking the long way down the track and scrubs speed fast. Or is this just ludicrous thinking?

 

[OPARENNEN]

This is my opinion also.

I guess it depends on how much modification Denboy wants to do at this point...

If the body has been drilled with the Silver Bullet and the car is set-up as a 3 wheel railrunner then I would Just adjust the steer for straight and let it roll. I mean you guys are here so you are probably already 2 or 3 car lengths ahead of the next racer so tearing the entire car apart to get and extra inch proabably isn't worth it.

If I was building this car from scratch with the "Super Track" in mind I would probably narrow both of the rears and run the DFW reversed with negative cant (just like rears). I would also flip the lifted front wheel and lock it down with negative cant.

 

[zeebzob]

Narrowing the rears makes sense...but that may involve building a whole new car.

 

[down4derby]

How much would you need to space the dfw out to keep the rear off the side. With a neg can't on the dfw and the appropriate spacers i wonder if that would work to keep the Dom rear off the side.

 

[Quicktimederby]

You don't need a lot. In fact you a lot of time you can take down the inner hub area, and change the frt to a neg cant and it will give you enough spacing. Most of the time. its easy to test just pace a piece of wood on the table or board and run the car down it, you should be able to see it you are dragging the rear wheel.

How much would you need to space the dfw out to keep the rear off the side. With a neg can't on the dfw and the appropriate spacers i wonder if that would work to keep the Dom rear off the side.

 

[Radioactive Racing]

Great info thus far! Just wondering one more thing... What would the super track setup recommendation be if your car had front and rear fenders that extended beyond the outside of the wheels?

 

[Quicktimederby]

You have to index the outside of the fender, like you do in the inside for the best track.

 

[jm801]

How light would you go on the wheels due to the crash course finish? Lighter than 2 grams?

 

[Radioactive Racing]

10-4 on the super track fender setup. Thanks for the heads up Quick!

 

[Quicktimederby]

If you are running fenders than go as light as possible, if no fenders than you want a stronger wheel up front.

How light would you go on the wheels due to the crash course finish? Lighter than 2 grams?

 

[Minions Racing]

This is an old thread, but I had a relevant experience this last week. I was helping my neighbor with his PWD and I had him setup with a 3 wheel rail rider. DFW on the right with 1/16" shaved off the right front per usual. Come to find out the night before the race that the track is a plastic super track. Luckily, however, it was already setup and we could go run some test runs.

We went to the track for a few hours. After reading this thread, we set the steer for straight at first. We also spaced the NDFW out just a tad so it would protect the left back rear wheel. In some lanes, that worked fine and the car was fast. In other lanes, though, the car would drag the right rail the whole time, really killing speed. I'm assuming because it was contact with the back right rears the whole way. We attempted to change DFW to negative cant, but when we did this, the NDFW now touched the track!

We then tried slightly steering to the left (maybe 1/2" in 4') hoping it would bounce a few times, but at least stay away from the right side. This worked in some lanes, but in others it caused it to ride the left side the whole way, which wasn't as bad because the back left was protected by the NDFW, but the little plastic rails would flex sometimes and the joints would separate or somehow catch the NDFW hard and the car would go flying.

So then we switched the DFW to the left side, and drilled another hole on the right side a little higher for the NDFW. We pulled the DFW out just a tad on the left and set it to negative cant. After this we were able to successfully ride the left rail. The rail was still a little jumpy in spots and it took some fine tuning the steer to get it to be stable in all the lanes. I think the final steer was 4" or 5" in 4'.

My neighbor ended up winning but I guess there were cars jumping lanes all over the place, not his though. So maybe this particular track wasn't set up well, I don't know. But my opinion now is that riding an outside rail if you can is best on this type of track. If you can tune on it and make sure you'll make it down all the lanes, I could see straight being fast too.