Testing without Graphite

[DerbyJP]

Because 1) I have very limited time with testing track and don't want to spend any of the time reapplying graphite, and 2) I want to eliminate the variable of graphite variance (from car to car and from run to run w/same car), I've been thinking about doing my testing without any graphite. I plan on testing weight placement, steer, etc. for multiple cars and will use polished wheels/axles.

Is there any downside to this that I'm not realizing? Does anyone else do this? This is for a scout build.

Thanks!

JP

 

[Crash Enburn]

Personally, I think you're introducing more variables by not lubing the car for testing. I would just add a bit of graphite every few runs, then spin the wheels to dump any extra. This would hopefully keep the various runs to more of an apples-to-apples comparison.

 

[Vitamin K]

I've had it strongly recommended to me not to run unlubricated axles for any sort of weight-bearing application. Since the metal of the axle is harder than the bores of the wheel, you risk chewing up your bores. Or something like that?

 

[zeebzob]

I would not try testing without any lubrication. My kids will play with old cars that have been sitting in a bin for years that no longer have any lube left in them. There is no consistency with those cars at all. You can easily have runs that can be faster or slower than the next by more than .300 seconds. The dry wheels will chatter at some point, but they don't start chattering at the same point in the run.
Go with Crash's suggestion of just reapplying every few runs.

 

[txchemist]

If it is a Scout race that does not allow oil- I helped Cubs in 4 different packs win with oil prep and NO oil or graphite. So the axle is covered with Jig or 3M or Blaster SL, and you do the wheel prep with wax you like. The cars are consistent and if you have good alignment- you beat 99% anyway.

 

[TRE]

I tried that when i first started.. like they said use some kind of lube..if you want consistant use oil

 

[Obsessedderbydad]

I did like Txchemist said for our scout race. I didn't lubricate my wheels thinking a faster kid car would beat my den leaders car. That back fired when I beat my sons car by 0.1 seconds.

 

[quadad]

I think its going to be hard to do all you want without any lube, though we used to run up to 10 times without lube on freshly preppred wheels and axles where we had burnished the wheels with graphite (so they had some). I did it for the same reason and I think it worked. After that though I would reprep after 7-10 runs. This also gave me a feel for which were the fastest runs with our typical graphite application. The one nice thing about tuning with graphite is that you can swap out axles or wheels and get a somewhat fair comparison if you re-graphite about the same.