lornecherry
06-15-2009, 03:23 PM
In my quest to somehow keep dust and hair and life in general out of the tiny slotted wheel hubs (a serious design flaw that requires too much time and a watch-maker's course to deal with the barely visible screws and springs) ... I have been trying to mod the front end.
What I thought was just a problem with the racing carpet I was using, continually manifests itself, even on clean EVA. Yes, I have two cats and two dogs and four kids, so dust and hair are everywhere, but I have noticed that as soon as I switched from the stock (hard) tires to the much-better (and hence stickier) Atomic tires, the dust in the front end problem got worse.
So here's the odd-ball approach I came up with: I added a second set of rear tires over the front tires so that they are even with the outside of the edge of the original front tires. (They fit perfect). This "tire-on-top-of-a-tire" has two effects: it raises the CG slightly (but does not seem to induce any traction rolls) and secondly, it covers ever-so-slightly the inside edge of the wheel to as close to the kingpin as possible, so that the small hub disc is less exposed.
The results so far reveal two benefits. 1) The car that I have done this to has run a full 20-25 minutes without the bearings slowing to dust on the track (in this case EVA foam) and 2) the handling is improved by further reducing understeer. I get a little bit of tail-out oversteer on fast cornering, exactly the handling I like.
Am I nuts? Just stuck in a placebo dream? I seriously don't know ...so if someone could verify or disprove my results it would have more meaning. The rotating, slotted hubs so close to the ground in the front wheels are a design flaw from both a maintenance and drive-ability standpoint ... I'm tired of cleaning front ends, so if my observations are correct it will save a lot of work for everyone.
What I thought was just a problem with the racing carpet I was using, continually manifests itself, even on clean EVA. Yes, I have two cats and two dogs and four kids, so dust and hair are everywhere, but I have noticed that as soon as I switched from the stock (hard) tires to the much-better (and hence stickier) Atomic tires, the dust in the front end problem got worse.
So here's the odd-ball approach I came up with: I added a second set of rear tires over the front tires so that they are even with the outside of the edge of the original front tires. (They fit perfect). This "tire-on-top-of-a-tire" has two effects: it raises the CG slightly (but does not seem to induce any traction rolls) and secondly, it covers ever-so-slightly the inside edge of the wheel to as close to the kingpin as possible, so that the small hub disc is less exposed.
The results so far reveal two benefits. 1) The car that I have done this to has run a full 20-25 minutes without the bearings slowing to dust on the track (in this case EVA foam) and 2) the handling is improved by further reducing understeer. I get a little bit of tail-out oversteer on fast cornering, exactly the handling I like.
Am I nuts? Just stuck in a placebo dream? I seriously don't know ...so if someone could verify or disprove my results it would have more meaning. The rotating, slotted hubs so close to the ground in the front wheels are a design flaw from both a maintenance and drive-ability standpoint ... I'm tired of cleaning front ends, so if my observations are correct it will save a lot of work for everyone.