Alignment On A Rail-less Track

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dodge
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Alignment On A Rail-less Track

Post by dodge »

Last year my son won at the pack race. He was running the rail with the front left wheel toutching the rail and the right wheel up. He went to the district race and found that the track there had no rail, but instead had sides on the track holding the cars in their lane. Should he have tried to re-direct the car to the left side to be more competitive?
doct1010
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Re: Alignment On A Rail-less Track

Post by doct1010 »

This has been discussed before and is problematic. Unless you can come up with a radical redesign that is within the rules, align it to run as straight as possible. Rubbing the outside of wheel imparts too much loss to be overcome by RR alone, unless some radical solution to mitigate is employed.
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Stan Pope
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Re: Alignment On A Rail-less Track

Post by Stan Pope »

That's like trying to run an Indy car on a MotoCross course! Incredible! Why would a responsible organization want to make such a farce of the boys' and their dads' serious efforts? Did they at least make an attempt to communicate the insanity to the packs ahead of time?

Just reversing the RR bias drives the rear wheels into the guide. Not pretty! RR endeavors to keep the rear wheels free and loose, and to avoid the losses inherent in extra frictions in the more heavily loaded wheels.
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dodge
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Re: Alignment On A Rail-less Track

Post by dodge »

Do you think aligning to go straight would lessen his chance on the wooden rail track and increase his chance on the aluminum rail-less track? We normally epoxy the axles in place once we have it where we want it. The wooden track at the pack race has no stopping apparatus for the cars, so they use towels and such to stop the cars. (CRINGE) The cars end up bouncing in each others way at the finish sometimes, and the first one to the finish is at the mercy of the other two cars. The aluminum track at the district has the proper stopping section at the finish. So my thoughts are to rr at the pack , and if he progresses to the district , try to make it run straight?
OR, would 4 wheels down be a benefit?
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Re: Alignment On A Rail-less Track

Post by TAL »

I have seen and ran 2 of those tracks and won both times.

RA's/GA's generally use this kind of track.

If your left front is down and your drifting right, Pull the right axle out about 1/4" and the head of the axle should ride on the outer rail and keep the right rear off of the rail also, that is if your rear alignment is straight.

Most of the rails on those type of tracks are 3/4" high some may vary and may have to use a big headed axle to keep from it jumping on the rail.

Kinda like a rail rider but only useing the head of axle on opposite side.

If the rail is any lower than 1/2" better try some thing else.
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Randy and Son
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Re: Alignment On A Rail-less Track

Post by Randy and Son »

I've read where racing on an edge guided track like this it would be an advantage to narrow the rear instead of the front in order to keep the rear wheels off the edge guide. Also smooth down the raised letters on the wheel and polish the rounded outside surface of the axle heads.

I'm not sure who mentioned this, but someone suggested running your wheels inside out in order to keep the letters off of the edge or to consider turning a wheel to run horizontally as an edge guide. That would be interesting to see.

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Re: Alignment On A Rail-less Track

Post by doct1010 »

Randy and Son wrote: I'm not sure who mentioned this, but someone suggested running your wheels inside out in order to keep the letters off of the edge or to consider turning a wheel to run horizontally as an edge guide. That would be interesting to see. Randy
Those were my suggestions in another thread. Hence, above stated "...a radical redesign that is within the rules, align it to run as straight as possible....unless some radical solution to mitigate is employed." Most rules may frown on reversed wheels, lathed exterior or the inverted horizontal wheel. Pulling the axle out and polishing the head seems the easiest method on this track to avoid rule controversy.
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psycaz
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Re: Alignment On A Rail-less Track

Post by psycaz »

One thing about polishing the heads - you may want to have an extra one undone and be able to reproduce the look.

We polished the heads last year - mostly on accident - it gave them a nice baby moon look.

We then were accused of chroming the axles due to the unusual appearance of the heads.

It took me several minutes of explaining and a lot of frustration to get folks to understand that they were just polished.

Would have been sooo much easier to just have a cordless dremel tool and some Mother's Billet and do another.
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Stan Pope
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Re: Alignment On A Rail-less Track

Post by Stan Pope »

psycaz wrote:One thing about polishing the heads - you may want to have an extra one undone and be able to reproduce the look.

...

Would have been sooo much easier to just have a cordless dremel tool and some Mother's Billet and do another.
Excellent advice. Even better? Have the owner/driver be able to reproduce the look!
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psycaz
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Re: Alignment On A Rail-less Track

Post by psycaz »

Trust me Stan, for our race, I will have a bag of almost every extra axle we have left and some polish there so my son can easily show folks how the heads turn out that way.

Just bought a cordless Dremel tool on clearance from Sam's Club just for this instance. It will get used elsewhere, but I will not go through that again.
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Re: Alignment On A Rail-less Track

Post by dodge »

How about a paper clip and epoxy to make an extended bumper to the front end?
For that matter, maybe put one on both front and rear?
Would that cause too much drag ?
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