Tire Truing

Thanks Zack,
I may have to do some tires over, I may have missed a couple of steps. Already My truer has made a big difference in performance.
I may not be a better driver, but it feels like it. It also makes Scalextric and Ninco look like  better manufacturers.
Some cars that I had given up on suddenly have come to life.

yeah, thanks a lot Zack......Now I want to throw away my Razor...........

I use my razor for cleaning up the back sides of BOSA tires.  Works great.

Truing - I'd use my Hudy.

Doc,
I've read other post from guys who are doing the same thing just one tire at a time.

Tom,
  I have both a Hudy and a Tire razor. The Hudy is great for after market wheels of all sizes including the 1/24 scale cars. I even had a machinist mill down an old 5/40 threaded axle to fit into the machine so I can do the old cars. What a difference that makes. Some guys will pop off the plastic wheels and use a small drop of glue and turn them on the Hudy then break them loose to put back on the car. I've personally had issues with breaking the plastic wheel and with getting the wheels mounted straight again.

  I bought the Tire razor to true some of the plastic wheels/axles. I'm still in the getting use to it stage at this point and prefer the Hudy.

  Al and Zack have the Scaleauto version which is different yet. I haven't used either one.

As for truing itself, you can look at a tire and it looks perfect but when you put it on the truer and give it a touch then stop and look at it you can see that it really is not. Truing the tires is the best upgrade you can do. Just yesterday I trued all four tires on an old Revell 1/24 cars with threaded axles. Before you had to push it to get it below 8 seconds, now it cruises at 7.2 seconds.

Some of the guys at Howies change tires for every race. Buy giving my tires the lightest touch on the truer I have tires on their third season that grip as well as new tires. It also turns out that those foamies/fish rubber/natural rubber tires aren't perfect either.  You can also turn down the fronts on any car the get the guide height exactly where you want/need it to be.

Has any body checked the shore rating before and after a race. I wonder  if after a heat cycle they are not slightly harder shore. I know when I race on road sedan nitro that did did happen but also working with a lot more temp in the track vs what you see with a slot car

I worked in a tire recap shop when I was young. It takes extreme heat to affect the hardness or softness of rubber. I can't imagine we are generating that kind of heat even with the heavy and fast 1/24 scratchbuilt cars. If the tires were too hot to handle after a heat race I'd say maybe, but I just don't see it in our application.

As far as urethanes go, the molding is a cold pour process so again I think you would be talking about extreme heat to charge the tire's shore rating. With that said I do know they will "come apart" if in the truing process you get too aggressive and create too much heat. So if they were reaching a heat cycle close enough to change the shore rating I think they would just come apart. But then again that is a LOT of heat, way more than what is experienced by the car itself on the track. I did a fair amount of experimentation when I was molding urethane tires, and I do know that having them under a very hot lamp does nothing to affect the shore rating (as measured by a shore meter). The heat from the lamp was probably in excessive of any tire temperatures the cars themselves could generate.

I do believe 110 degree would definitely affect a 1:1 racing tire. The rubber compound used for racing tires is much different than street tires for sure (the shop I worked in actually made recapped racing slicks). However I really doubt the slot car tires ever reach even 100 degrees (unless you are over aggressive when truing them!).