18 replies to this topic

[MSwiss]

I've been meaning to make this post for awhile but have been too busy.

 

My wife's on vacation in Africa with one of my sister-in-laws so I have time to give props to my friend Nelson Swanberg.

 

He has contended for years that the stickiness of commercial slot cars is one of the things that is holding back the genre.

 

I poo poo'ed it a bit but the last year has really proved to me that he was right on the button.

 

After being promoted by an Instagram influencer, my party business, which already was keeping me busy, more than doubled, as have my walk in rentals.

 

My walk-in rentals would be even more except for having too many parties on the weekend.

 

I am now exposed to that many more people who accidentally put their palm on the track surface reaching for a deslotted car or grab the car under the spoiler where the tires have kicked up glue/gunk.

I can't help but notice the less than pleased look on their faces.

 

Anyway, it's of my own doing. I get a lot of grandfathers who come in regularly with their young grandkids and they appreciate not having to walk around marshaling cars, all while the cars are going around fast enough to impress the kids.

 

While Blue and Orange usually don't require much, I am regularly gluing the Lead-on on Black and Purple, and the Dead-man on Red and White.

 

Even if I was better at cleaning the bottom of the chassis, and the underside of the cars, the track surface needs to be sticky/rubbered up.

 

And "civilians" aren't real excited smelling a lot of naptha in the air, especially in a party setting where food is served.

 

I can't help but to think how commercial slot racing would of evolved if sponge tires and glue never became a thing. When I started racing in the 60's, it was all silicones and it seemed like we were still having fun. Lol

 

After thinking about it hard for the last 3 months, or so, I've come to the realization I'll have to go to wing cars for my birthday party cars.

Have a lot of handling in reserve so I don't need to glue the tight turns which should keep the cars cleaner.

 

The track will still be rubbery , but if the cars never fall off, it will be less of an issue with people touching it.

 

While I could PM him to ask him if he made any progress with his silicone tire experiments, I'm sure Nelson will see this post and he can share it for all to see.

[bbr]

sponge tires and glue, the mainstay of 1/24

 

before the advent of silicone coated foam tires in HO, it was the same in HO - sponge tires and glue

[MSwiss]

I raced HO seriously for about a year in the mid-70's.

 

Milled down pancake cars with lowered motor magnets.

 

I remember sponge tires,(TCP), but don't recall a crazy amount of glue.

[bbr]

before magnets in HO, fair amount of glue was used

[Pappy]

I've got silicone tires on my 1/24 scale "track" cars. They're Champion Turbo Flex chassis, the yellow 22,000 rpm flat six motors with Parma Rental car bodies. They hook-up good and are fun to drive. Fast enough you have to drive them, slow enough you can't break them. I'm sure you know with silicone tires you need a dust free track surface. I did spray my track with a very light coat of glue one time a long time ago and haven't needed any since. I just dust the track with a tack cloth. 

[Martin]

I always said, I wonder what kind of tire traction development would have happened If track owners just banned glue.

 

What a mess. Why would anybody want that. In other motor sport you race on the track provided, Not add an artificial surface.

Drag racing is the only one I can think of where they do mess with the surface.

 

But there again If NHRA did not artificially change the surface it would have slowed the speeds. Would this not have been a better way than what they did which was to shortened the track to 1000' from 1320'. 

They have there reasons I am sure. 

 

Tire/traction development should always be the way to go faster   IMO 

[Jay Guard]

I don't know about the latest iteration of Kelly Bulldog tires but I do know that many many years ago there was a big Kelly race down in LaGrange, GA.  I was using natural fish tires and was really struggling to get grip.  One of the Kelly guys took pity on me and handed me a pair of Bulldogs.  I was instantly hooked up and did very well from that point on.

 

OK, so after all of the two days of racing was over I went over to the donut (an up hill no less) and wanted to see how much rubber had built up.  I was shocked to find there was absolutely NO glue or rubber build up of any kind, like you could have eaten off the track surface!

 

Then of course there were times back then when racing at other places and you would start seeing small rubber BB's all over the track, again Bulldogs at work removing the glue and rubber.  And that is why we banned them because after the Bulldogs were run nothing else would hook up.  We always thought they were some sort of silicone type of rubber but could never prove that.

 

Are they still the same, I don't know, but here's my point, you might want to try Kelly's Bulldogs with absolutely no glue at all.  Maybe they will work, maybe not, but I always found that the less glue or rubber on the track the better they worked.  Yes, they were loose for a few laps, but after that they hooked up and it was magic,

[jimht]

There is such a thing as foam silicone sheet, but I don't know of anyone that has experimented with it, unless maybe "speed rubber" or Bulldog were variations.

 

I got a small sample over 35 years ago and ground some tires, but what I got was way too dense and really heavy for my focus then which was something that would be better for wing cars.

 

About the same time I started looking for more durable track braid which led to Magnatech braid and traction magnets so the tire issue was shelved.

 

Regular foam tires capped with Permatex® Flowable Silicone Windshield & Glass Sealer are really good and I've made them or gotten Protrack's variations, however availability, durability, and longevity are a factor for anything faster than cars for used rentals and parties.

 

The real issue we face is whether it's better to cater to a small group of dedicated enthusiasts or go for the high profit casual renter.

 

As Mike Swiss indicated initially above, he's come to the realization that staying in business is easier if you worry more about profit margin than just catering to the enthusiast.   

[Pappy]

And that is why we banned them because after the Bulldogs were run nothing else would hook up.  We always thought they were some sort of silicone type of rubber but could never prove that.

 

Jay, we have a local guy that won't allow silicone tires on his track for that reason. He's never cleaned his track since he's had it (probably about 20 years). His track has a thick coat of black rubber on it and sponge tires work real good. If someone runs silicone tires his sponge tires slip and slide all over the place. Then he has to re-spray his track.

[MSwiss]

The real issue we face is whether it's better to cater to a small group of dedicated enthusiasts or go for the high profit casual renter.

 

I peel sticky, clear sippy straws from Capri Suns off of my floor and deal with empty pizza boxes so my friends can race on Wednesday night.
 
The worse day of my life was when I read the greasy half of a pizza box shouldn't be recycled. LOL.
 

 

[jimht]

"I peel sticky, clear sippy straws from Capri Suns off of my floor and deal with empty pizza boxes so my friends can race on Wednesday night."

 
So it's like your wife's parents are coming over on Wednesday and you have to clean up for them to make a good impression.
 
It's a worthwhile thing to do for them but it's not the same as effectively getting paid to clean up by your party/rental customers.   

[Cheater]

The real issue we face is whether it's better to cater to a small group of dedicated enthusiasts or go for the high profit casual renter.

For the vast majority of raceway owners, that question was decided decades ago.

[Bill Seitz]

Years ago I came in contact with a John Ford economy track that used flat latex paint without any polyurethane overcoat. It didn't have the same level of grip as a heavily glued poly-coated track of the time, but it sure had more grip without glue than a poly-coated track. It shredded SBR tires it had so much more grip. This convinced me to try latex garage floor paint on my home track, but I made the mistake of using satin gloss.

 

Now fast-forward to 2025, and I recently visited Cajun Slot Cars in Walker, LA, where they have a rebuilt Ogilvie Engleman. The track surface was painted with latex flat gray floor paint. It had been cleaned but not re-glued two weeks prior to my visit, and I was warned the track was probably going to be slick. I was ready and ran some natural rubber and soft Wonder cars, but the track wasn't the ice rink one might expect of an epoxy or polyurethane surface. It wasn't grip like glue, but it was very drivable. It didn't take too many laps to start getting some rubber on the track, and as the rubber film built up, the track got faster and faster.

 

The black, messy goo comes from mixing traction glue with rubber; leave out the traction glue, and just plain rubber is much less messy. Maybe all these years we've been painting track surfaces with the wrong stuff aimed at working best with glue. The latex paint is also cheaper and easier to apply than the current epoxy.

[Garry S]

I'm finding that very minimal tire goop (Champion Light), no glue, and lower voltage is a lot more fun than sticky tracks. We've been having a blast with 36d_powered WhisperJets at 10v. Five second lap times on my 75' Four-lane, and I'm betting it takes more skill than glued wings!  

[NSwanberg]

Perhaps we missed a marketing opportunity with traction glue and should have put sanitizer in it?

 

After JB at Downriver Speedway cleaned the Grandstand track, restriped it and rebuilt some of the slots he decided that there would not be any glue used on the track. It would be reserved for silicon tires or urethane. Whatever the 1/32 racers were using. He did a nice job on it. Not sure what paint was used or what JB used to touch up areas but he matched it quite well.

 

Since I had a clean track to work with we started working with silicon tires. Most of them were of the Pro-Track brand when we could get the sizes we needed. We were experimenting with coating our own tires. The ones I did used JK small hub wonder rubber. Clean them, grind them and true them to have a base to work from. All we did was simply spread the clear flowable silicon over the tire with our thumb while rotating the wheel and tire on an axel. JB got good enough at it sell them. Out of a dozen tries I had three sets that were useable.

 

I was particularly interested in seeing how well I could get an IRRA rules car to run with silicon coated sponge rubber tires. I had considerably better race results on the Grandstand track than the King track as it was not so much a horsepower war. We were using the ProSlot FK and Scorpion motors. I picked the best running car I had for the Grandstand track which I will describe as a stacked rail tuning fork design. The other car that I thought might be the best to work with was a hinge rail car. Very flexible.

 

The tuning fork car ended up being the best. I was able to get it to within a half a second of the “B” group lap times. That was more than a second slower than the best retro cars ran. Although slower it was just as fun. It did suffer more of a handicap on the inside turns of the gutter lanes. I did not get much of a chance to develop them on the gutter lanes. As expected, the cleaner the track the better the performance. I found a good old fashioned tack cloth to be best for cleaning the lane. At the end JB decided that a damp towel worked best. Either way when you run a clean track your customers will end up cleaning the track for you.

 

I tried retro cars, flexi cars, womps and a wing car or two. The best package for silicon tires was the updated JK direct drive car. It was so smooth and just tracked so predictably. I was thinking this is the best rental car package ever. If I ever felt like there was a way to bottle the fun of slot car racing and sell it this was it. JB would not hear of it as he insisted the axels or motor shaft would bend as soon as one hit the floor. I never put one of the floor. I did hit a wall a time or two. I had what I would call the second generation JK direct drive that had another bracket in place and left less of the axel exposed to bending forces.

 

Hemi Bob actually worked at White Circle raceway back in the day and is intimately familiar with the process they used to coat what I believe to have been the finest “silongie” ever produced. The White Circle tire. I believe the owner of White Circle was Bob Smolinsky. (Somebody check me on that) Coating tires is not music theory. One thing we found about the Pro-Track tires was that they were not very consistent in their coating thickness and some of them would wear out in just a couple of test sessions. JB was able to recoat some of them and brought them back to life for a couple of more sessions.

 

RTV stands for Room Temperature Vulcanization. And from what I can tell the new coating just became part of the old coating and he was able to get them to work fine. JB is a man of many talents and has focus and determination that lets him accomplish just about anything he needed to get done.

 

We tried the silicon tires on the King track and Spove warned us before hand that it just had the wrong type of surface for the silicon to work right on. It seemed to turn the coating to dust and then we we would have to clean the King track.

 

Our good friend Billy G. Patterson even went as far as crafting his own mold out of wood to try and coat the tires. He used some sort of wood wax as a mold release argent. He got darn close to making it work and given a few more tries I think he could have. Billy G. Is one of those people you meet and you feel like you wished you’d have known him all your life. He is a competitive gearhead from go. He will be 90 in September and is still playing table tennis.
 

Along with not allowing glue on the track, I think another mistake we made as hobbyists was not limiting the weight of the cars to 45 grams. It would have been so much easier on the tracks and and along with no glue the horsepower requirements would have been greatly reduced. Eventually I think we would still have hit 2.0 second laps as well for air control would have been a more obvious advancement. I remember discussing with Jon Laster that if you are going to use air control, the mass has to come out of the cars. He didn’t buy it then.

 

I wonder how "silongies" would work with magnetic braid, car magnets and a clean track? Jim seems to know.

 

Some pics of the experiments.

 

Bill G's mold.

 

 

 

[Mr. HP]

My $0.02. The last time I was in SoCal, I stopped in at Electric Dreams. They were running soft molded rubber tires on a routed 6-lane flat track with no track prep other than cleaning. At the time I was there silicone tires were not allowed on the track. The level of grip was surprisingly good, actually good enough to induce traction rolling in the corners if you pushed too hard. Granted these were 1/32 cars (non-magnet) but I believe with proper tuning it could be applied to a 1/24 scale cars and tracks. This is something I plan on testing on my own routed four-lane home track. The thought of not having to spray glue the track and deal with the mess is a huge plus.

 

On a side note: A few years ago 1/10 and 1/12 on-road R/C racing went away from foam tires to rubber in some of the classes to simplify the tire game and to make racing a bit more novice friendly.

[Mike Patterson]

In other motor sport you race on the track provided, Not add an artificial surface.

Drag racing is the only one I can think of where they do mess with the surface.

 

NASCAR has been known to spray glue some tracks.

[Phil Hackett]

The drag strips around the world have been doing it forever.

[Rob Voska]

Nelson,

 

Tires drying out, racers that don't want to buy or take tires off for storage or true tires to get to fresh sponge.

 

1. How thick was the silicone on one side of the tire? 1/16"?  

2. Did you ever try solid silicones like they had in the '60s?

3. Did you ever try something like silicone or rubber tubing glued to the hub then trued?

4. Did the silicone need a roughed-up surface?

5. Anything else you can enlighten us with?.