Strategies for building fat track cars
I would say the single best thing you can do for open track racing, is to make sure your wheels spin freely and most importantly, run straight. I have a number of builds that spin free and are fast, but drift to the side and that means they bang into the walls all the time. That can cause anything from slow down to all out crashing depending how hard it pulls to the side.
- i am still struggling on the wheel polish stuff, but every axle seems better than the last, but still marginal at best — dr_dodge
- For drag racing, I think polishing is vital, but for open track, I haven't seen any clear evidence that it makes that much difference. Good graphite and straight running wheels are really all you need — Chaos_Canyon
Drag racing is definitely all about the details, taking every chance at speed you can get. Open track is a little bit of everything, but a straight rolling car with even weight distribution is likely the best you can reasonably do. Lately, I have had trouble with cars that rolled straight, now running slightly left or right after putting them back together and I don't know why?? Didn't take the axels off and only put a small bit of weight in the middle. Now that aggravates me
- I have "laughed" about that myself, was straight, now, not so much, argghhh! — dr_dodge
- could it be slight warps in the track? — SuburbanNerdMinis
- Same here. I use the same wheel jig and rubber band widths but sometimes they still go off-center. Seems like it happens more with metal bases, for me, anyway. — FeralPatrick
This thread was started on 2020, and being as many have now had 2+ years of fat track racing,
I thought I would bring it back up and get any follow ups from those who weighed in previous,
any new theories?