Our racing league has opened our tire rules to allow treatment with chemicals for softer compounds. Does anyone here have experience or knowledge of such?
I have some experience with the Hot Lap treatment, isn't allowed in my series though. I'd coat them up, inside and outside and allow them to sit overnight, flip them over and repeat the process, making sure they dry completly and look normal by the time they headed to the track. How well that process works is probably dependent on the compound, but I'd just play around with a durometer and different methods of application until I got a reading I felt good about. Plotting durometer readings over time should be of some use for obtaining optimal grip at the track.
- I race 1/5 scale radio controlled racecars. The cars have 535mm wheelbase, 395 mm track width, minimum weight of 10 kgs, 23ccm two-stroke engines around 6hp. These cars are serious racing machines with Carbon monocoque chassis, pushrod suspension, all structural parts from carbon or T7075 aerospace aluminium, pushrods and all other linkages from titanium, independent front and rear hidraulic brakes, LSD, adjustable 2-way shocks, dyno-tuned special racing exhaust pipe, etc ( see
- Last season I've used Lubrication Dynamics tire treatment products: I've tried the original (#7000 / 7016) Hot Lap and LMT (7032) products several times, under various conditions.
Here are my experiences so far:
1. Generally, the recommended method for use (10-14 coats within 3 days from Hot lap, 2 coats from LMT on saturday) doesn't work on model cars. This is just too much. When treated the same tire we normally used, it became so soft that it weared down totally within a few laps (5-8 minute run)
3. Normally I used LMT with 2 coats the day before the race, or the race day, a few hours before race. I didn't really noticed a significant benefit in lap times - perhaps model cars are a bit different than real ones. On the other hand I gain a lot on significantly lower tire costs. Tires really last longer, and the initial "new tire" traction can be restored on used tires allmost all the time.
4. Treatment almost stops tire aging. Treated tires remain soft even after multiple months.
5. There was a really interesting thing that happened: For the Slavkov EFRA GP in early June, we've prepared two sets of 15 (soft) type tyres according to point 2. As I wrote there, the 1st set weared down totally within 6-8 minutes. I just forget the whole thing, then accidently put on the 2nd set of prepared tires on a race on 23rd September - around 3.5 months after tire treatment. And that set just didn't want to wear - I run it for the whole race - and I was around 3-4 tenth faster than expected.
