• From: Hillsboro, OR
  • Registered: June 15, 2008
  • Posts: 1,727

Topic: Fly Classic Wheels/Tires for the Summer Season

Howdy friends.  We started talking about the upcoming summer series for Fly Cars last night and the talk turned to tires, probably should have gone to wheels too.  As it turns out, we have some options.

We are currently running the Fly Classics at Penguin Point and are providing hand-out urethane tires to all that want to use them.  The offer the following advantages:

1.  Easy to true
2.  Excellent grip
3.  Fit the Fly wheels like a snug glove, no gluing needed though you certainly could
4.  FREE


Other possibilities would be to use a silicon or rubber tire.  Personally I think we should steer away from the hard-to-true and time-consuming to do so silicone tires like the SuperTire.  SuperTire also has the YellowDog line of urethane tires if that's your company of choice.

It's also been pointed out that Slot.It will be switching over to urethane tires in the very near future so the time may have come to consider saying goodbye to the silicone tire era.

My personal choice would be to use the free handouts and allow any other type of rubber or urethane tire.  But this begins to head toward tire wars.  So the handout would be easiest.


Then there's the wheels.  Basically the wheels on the Fly cars have issues, mostly with the fronts.  They are out of round on most of the cars I have and replacement wheels are near impossible to get.  We probably need to allow most any wheel that fits the purpose as long as it looks the part.  No O-rings or Zero-Grip rubber bands on the fronts.

Comments?

"Big Smooth"

kidvolt's Website

  • reek455
  • reek455
  • Slot Racer Emeritus
  • Offline
  • From: Milwaukie, OR
  • Registered: June 19, 2008
  • Posts: 1,418

Re: Fly Classic Wheels/Tires for the Summer Season

After the race last night Randy and I tried running my Fly Classics as set up for Monte's track.  Here is what we found:
Chevron B19 with Slot.it orange end bell motor, revised gearing and the hand out urethane tires:  7.8-7.9 sec laps.  The car handled very well and  was nicely controllable.  It did have some hop down the long straights most likely due to the aforementioned Fly wheels or my poor glue job.  This hop is not noticeable on my track or Monte's track.

Next up was the Ferrari 512S, stock motor and gears, stock wheels with some Paul Gage urethane tires (Very similiar in compound to the free hand outs).  Once again the car was easy to drive and hand very controllable slides.  It ran 8.6-8.8 second laps and would be fun to run.

Lastly we tried the same car with IndyGrips.  It was still easy to drive but had that kind of greasy silicone feel that we are all used to from the current class we are running, but lap times dropped to the 8.2-8.3 range. 

Any of these combinations would work, we just have to decide what we want to do.

Race cars are neither beautiful nor ugly. They become beautiful when they win.