,
 |
| If any of you are familiar with dirt track racing, you know that hard packed clay is very tacky, but very greasy at the same time. The clay will stick to everything, but it is slick. Even in small scale, this is true! Every so often, to prevent a bad blue groove, they would wet down the track. A blue groove results in tire rubber being laid down on the track and can increase traction as you are running on a rubber surface if you have a semi-slick tire. However, that will also increase tire wear or give you nothing to bite into if you have knobby tires. |
 |
| My lack of time behind the controller meant that I, once again, sucked. It took me about 30 minutes to an hour to get myself used to driving an RC car again. I'm not really here to get lap times down, but I am trying to get used to the controller again. So, I apologize for the lack of times, just know that I'm slow. |
 |
| I dis run into some issues as I drove the truck. First, was just how slick the track could be. Second, was the body slapping against the tires as the weight shifted in turns, braking, acceleration, and jumps. The body was actually hitting the tires so hard that it nearly stopped the truck in hard braking turns. |
 |
| With no adjustment for spring perch height, I used the pre-load shims to compress the springs and adjust the ride height upwards. This worked, but the suspension no longer had the progressive nature of the OEM springs. The suspension was only working with the primary windings. |
 |
| With that now in mind, the tires were now going over their limits on the clay. Since the truck could no longer soak up the turns and the knobby tires didn't grab the clay, I now couldn't control the slide in the corners and the truck got slower. This is an issue since many jumps were just after turns. My timing became off and I began to flat land or come up short on jumps. I needed a grip solution. |
 |
| The day before, I had went to a more local hobby shop for me, Tony's Hobbies in Baldwin Park, CA. Since I wanted to take this serious, I asked for their advice on tire choice for a majority of indoor off road track use. Since most tracks I'll be running on are hard packed clay, like West Coast and Tony's Hobbies' track, they recommended I use Pro-Line Suburbs 2.0 Clay Tires. |
 |
| That's when I spotted these beauties as well! Turns out my eye didn't deceive as these are Pro-Lines ProTrac Renegade Bead Lock Wheels. That's right, bead lock wheels for a RC truck! There's actually a great advantage to this type of wheel in RC. Normally, a tires bead has to be glued to the wheel with cyanoacrylate glue. Not so with an RC truck bead lock. |
