Am i crazy?
 

Hi all. Went to my local hobby shop today to get some new tyres for my 1/10th TC. Been out of racing for 20 years and we used to race foam tyres on carpet i remember back then it was all green and pink compounds. Checked the local club out last week and was told compounds are now a sh number and 32 front 37 rear works well for most at the club.

Went to a hobby shop and asked for this and was told you dont buy foam anymore you buy premounted. Then i asked for some additive for carpet and got looked at like i was nuts and told where the hell are you racing foam on carpet?

2 questions.
1) in my day foam on carpet and rubber on asphalt was the norm. Is this backwards now?
2) can i really not by the compounds of foam i want and glue and true my own wheels? I get the convience factor but i dont want the same style wheels as everyone else and cant find foam tyres for 1/10th anywhere except ebay where a compound isnt specified.

Thanks
Colin

Foams are now really only used in 1/12 & 1/10 pan cars.

TC uses rubber tyres exclusively, normally sold pre-mounted with inserts. Some clubs mandate a control tyre, as well as an additive. They last a lot longer than foams and the FDR doesn't change with wear, unlike foams!

Yep a lot has changed regarding foams on TC.

My local club ran foams until around 5 or so years ago.. The main issue was finding decent foams as everyone had stopped making them. A few of us moved over to rubber and after a few weeks we were very close to the times we had before, but with tyres that didn't chunk and didn't mess up the carpet. Also we have a lot less breakages.

The strange thing is, now everyone runs high grip carpet the cars handle much more like foam cars again anyway even with rubber tyres.

you will defiantly struggle to find clubs running foams on tc and doubt you will find any series running them, all pre glued rubber now

Thanks for the replys guys. Carpet at my local is apparently well used and low grip. Checked and foams is the only option. So looks like im stuck with contacts same as everyone else. Guess its because they run wgt in with touring cars do to low numbers. Also run lmp with gt12.

Remember back in the day street spec (which i gather is close to wgt now) raced seperate to tc.

Thanks
Colin

If you've got low grip carpet then foams are the sensible choice, so much easier to generate the grip needed.

Generally all sanctioned touring car racing is on rubber tyres these days, thanks to strict rules limiting them to one choice of tyre and the number of tyres used. No longer do racers have to take a suitcase full of rubber tyres with them to ensure they have the best tyre and fresh tyres for each race. Modern chassis are also a lot more flexible than they used to be and are fitted with a front spool, both changes counteract the disadvantage rubber tyres have compared to foams, making modern touring cars harder to drive on foam tyres.

Just because foams on touring cars isn't popular in the UK any more doesn't mean the rest of the world is the same. There are still several options, for example Enetti and Ufra make bigger ranges of preglued foam touring car tyres, with quite different wheels as well, than Schumacher, but they are harder to get hold of.

As for buying your own donuts, that died off with the advent of factory automated tyre gluing, when it costs less to buy ready mounted and trued wheel and tyre than buying them separately you don't have much demand for donuts. Schumacher still sells donuts as they are used for 1/8 stock cars, they can be used on touring car wheels as well.

Thanks Terry. Il check those brands out.

TC on foams is definitely out of fashion, but is a lot of fun if you just want to do club racing and tyres are open. I run them indoors and outdoors at club level. Performance is better than rubber, more consistent over the life of the tyre, and tyres are cheaper.

You want nitro foams, I've been using Matrix from rcmart. Xceed (Enneti) from Amain also look good (I have some but haven't run them yet). The key thing to know is that fronts and rears are a different type of foam; the fronts are much denser with less grip. I tried running the 26mm fronts on the rear and the car was terrible. So you need the 30mm rears for the rear. You can either cut them down to 26mm, or maybe fit them on full width depending on your car. I've machined the rear arms on my Xray and dremelled the shock ends so I can run them full width.

Compound wise I run 37 rear and 35 front.

I run 4.5t mod indoors and the car is epic :D

Mine is the yellow and white one, running just behind the plain blue one at the start:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnrf...Y6kjX2RTYUnL2N

The drivers I'm racing with (Elliot Harper, Kyle Branson etc) are significantly better than me, but the tyres make up for it.

i have watched your watch the video it was nice