Tires

 If you read back into the past on this blog, you'll see I've put a lot of emphasis on factory stock tires, whether good or bad. I wanted to touch on tires for a little bit. 

When you're running without magnets, cars tend to do some pretty special things, especially when they haven't been fully tuned. And tires play a huge part in that. Almost without exception, tires on a new slot car need some attention before they're truly running effectively. And not all companies share the same idea of what a good tire is. Carrera tires are absolutely bad and should be replaced as quickly as possible. Their hardening power is next to none. Slot.it stock C1 tires are actually really good, and can be made to be very competitive. NSR tires are even better, stickier, gummier. Revoslot tires feel like they're from another world. 

When I first got the Carrera cars, I thought they were durable, but they slipped around a lot. The R18 had hardening issues pretty early on, which made it impossible to run without magnets, and I didn't have a chance to replace them at the time. But that's when I was under a strict financial restriction, which I didn't need to have and am glad is over. But anyway, I digress. The Carrera cars got to be so uncontrollable that I benched them not long after I got my first three Slot.it cars. By that time a year had gone by and the Carreras were just too far gone to compete. By the time I took the Carreras down off the shelf to go for a spin they had turned into rocks. They sat unused for a good couple of years. 

The Slot.it tires are fantastic. I've never had a problem or issue with one, and they always run nicely. I think I've gotten the stock tires tuned up about as well as I could hope for, and they compete very well against each other. 

And that's where my problem is. The other day I got a pair of Ortmann tires, which are urethane, and tried them on the Porsche 962C, which had been giving me control fits ever since I got it. The Ortmann tires worked great and solved the loose butt syndrome that the car had. This will undoubtedly improve lap times and put them very near the NSR cars. So my problem is that I need to upgrade from the factory stock Slot.it tires to the Ortmann tires all the way around. I just ordered them, and they should be here in a week.

The NSR rubber compound tires have been so far very good, although each tire has a small nub in the tread. It doesn't seem to affect performance, so I'm not worried about it. I like the tires so far, but if the Slot.it cars improve too much with the urethane Ortmanns, I might have to switch the NSR cars too. 

I've run urethane tires before. I bought some Paul Gage tires for my Alfa and one of the GT40s, and they ran really well on them. Problem was I didn't have urethane tires for everyone, and it wasn't fair to only run two of the three cars with them. So I didn't use them. I'd put them on occasionally and tell myself I have to get urethanes again someday. The Paul Gage tires turned out to be pretty expensive, as they came from Canada and I paid duty and international shipping fees. 

So I made the decision and just ended up outfitting seven Slot.it cars for the same price as two pairs of Paul Gage tires cost me. No offense to Paul Gage, it's just that Ortmann tires cost 3.50 a pair. That price just can't compare, even if his tires are better. If I was commercial racing, I'd probably care more about that, but then I'd probably grab one of the two pairs of PG tires I already own and run those. But since I'm only doing this here on my track, it would be kind of nice to have one brand of track tire. It would feel more fair and evenly balanced, as each car would have similar grip. I'll admit that it's kind of fun having different acting rubbers on some of these cars, so I'll miss that a little bit. Urethane tires have always felt easier to deal with. 

So I would say if you're racing one brand of car, if you're happy with the factory rubber tires, keep at it and stick with them. If you want to change to urethane or silicone, do all the cars at the same time. It's pointless to do it piece by piece. You'll either use them and blow away your other cars, or find out it's boring to blow away your other cars and not use them. Either way, new tires is an extremely inexpensive improvement to make to a slot car.