Why is toe-in better for DFW than toe-out?
- Thread starter davet
- Start date
It's not always faster to have the DFW against the rail. My son's scout car last year preferred using opposite steer. This year's car did not like it at all. I know txchemist posted that he had a car at a workshop that preferred opposite steer also. The only thing about having the NDFW rub the rail is that now you're using energy to turn a fourth wheel. But you have to give the car what it wants. Try it both ways and see which is faster for you. The difference in speed between the wheel riding to the head or the body is only a couple .00X's, much less than you would lose to a poor alignment so I wouldn't put too much emphasis on that IMHO.
- Nov 24, 2011
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Actually, the DFW wheel will still be riding on the body all the way down the track, even if it is off the rail, because of the positive cant. But if you ran negative cant on the DFW , steered it off the rail, then it would ride on the axle head. But my guess, like KINSER says, it will be slower. I think that the NDFW will drag the speed down. Like Chromegsx said " rolling friction " is better than " sliding friction".....SPIRIT.....
agree with rolling friction being less than sliding/rubbing friction....but I haven't build a car to test out that idea although im sure some of the long time experienced racers have looked at it and determined that the former is faster.
Just to clarify the comment about the car I was saying ran very fast with the NDFW rolling on the rail- I drilled the car with both front axles having a 3 degree positive cant., but no intentional drift or bending of front axles. The rules required you to "make a 4 wheeler if you could" ( good luck with judging that) So both front wheels only contact the track or rail at very close to the bottom of the wheel and roll if they touch anything.
Although the speed was OK, tuning it correctly would have been faster, but when I bop out a bunch of Cub cars, I do not get into tuning with Tigers and Wolfs. In order of relative speed- starting with the slowest AVERAGE time,
slowest- 4 on the floor no drift, the car will take a zigzag path, but can still beat all cars that are not designed to keep the rear wheels off the rail. or do not have positive canted front wheels and neg cant rear wheels, in other words- still the pack champ in 95% of the Packs.
faster- 4 on the floor with proper drift on one wheel
faster, or about the same, 3 wheeler on track surface but 4 wheels rolling -drift away from the rail with DFW rolling on track and NDFW rolling on the rail and not touching the bottom of track.
Fastest- 3 wheeler with DFW drifting into the rail all the way and the NDFW never rolls.
Although the speed was OK, tuning it correctly would have been faster, but when I bop out a bunch of Cub cars, I do not get into tuning with Tigers and Wolfs. In order of relative speed- starting with the slowest AVERAGE time,
slowest- 4 on the floor no drift, the car will take a zigzag path, but can still beat all cars that are not designed to keep the rear wheels off the rail. or do not have positive canted front wheels and neg cant rear wheels, in other words- still the pack champ in 95% of the Packs.
faster- 4 on the floor with proper drift on one wheel
faster, or about the same, 3 wheeler on track surface but 4 wheels rolling -drift away from the rail with DFW rolling on track and NDFW rolling on the rail and not touching the bottom of track.
Fastest- 3 wheeler with DFW drifting into the rail all the way and the NDFW never rolls.
