Wide Axles?

[PJ]

Hello Group:

Over the last two years, I have seen two extremely fast cars that had their axles extended to the car width limit. With the axles sticking out this far, I would assume that the axles could not be grooved. My guess is that they were trying to keep the wheels off of the car body and axle head during the whole race. The only problem with this I think would be if the car did not track straight or got bumped. I would also assume that it would take a long time to center in the lane when not tracking straight. Does anyone have any comments on the subject?

PJ

[Barga Racing]

It would seem to me that having such a large gap between the wheel and body could allow the car too much room to oscillate side to side. Even if the car is set up to track perfectly there may be imperfctions in the track or the track may not be level side to side, which would cause the car to veer into the center strip and move around side to side until it centers itself while scrubbing lots of speed off. When we put our wheels on we start the axle into the slot, then we turn the car on its side with the wheel and axle down and push down on the countertop until the wheel contacts the body.Therefore the distance from the axle head to the outer hub is the distance you end up with from the wheel to the body. We have always done this so the distance is constant on all the cars we build, that way when we are testing different things that part is taken out of the equation. But with your suggestion we may now have one more thing to test with all else being equal. Any thoughts from anyone else?

[Gavin Chafin]

I somewhat experimented with this last year. I built one last car to see if it could beat my fastest car. I started off by leaving a decent gap when I pounded in the axles. The car was about one-half of a car length slower than my fastest. As I pounded in the axles more and more, the car got faster and faster until finally it was a one-half of a car length faster than my fastest.

[Stan Pope]

Prairielands Council champ (undefeated, completely new car each year) for past two years used "extend to max" approach.

The weight distribution was excellent, wheels were well prepared and the axles polished normally and lubricated with moly-graphite. Design was generally "at the limits" of the rules. The key was that the axles were carefully aligned to "dead on", and, of course, the tracks were sufficiently level to not penalize a well aligned car!

While it is not necessary to extend axles to the limit, some "play" of the wheels on the axles is necessary to go from well aligned to "dead on".