i feel dumb....:)

[Maxx-speacial]

I was wondering whats the top speed of some of your guyses hopped up ones?

[GraTou]

my next door neighbors radar gun clocked mine at 61mph when the engine was prefectly tuned.

[nrustlerman231]

I'm geared for acceleration so probably somewhere in the 50s

[bluethunder]

mines geared for acceleration aswell. i could'nt guess the top speed but i'll tell ya that it gets up to that top speed in >3 seconds.

[FangsCPO]

Mine is just finely tuned and was clocked at 64mph. SMOKING!!! I was curious to ask...what kind of tires are you guys running? I'm running foams but if I had all the acceleration you guys say you have it would probably eat my foam right off the rim.

[terry]

Yeah, acceleration gearing will top out somewhere in the fifties. It won't eat foams any more than stock gearing. In fact, you need foams to really take advantage of the acceleration. They hook up good for hard launches. It's cornering that chews foamies up. Tossing a car around from corner to corner aggressively as possible seems to really grind on the old foamies. You should have seen my car after an hour or running on a fast track last week. It was a filthy mess, just from all the foam. I scrubbed a set of foams down to about 1/16th of an inch skin. On the plus side, your car handles really well the thinner they get. I just ordered a bunch more tires and a tire truer so I can do a lot more foam racing.

[FangsCPO]

What's a truer?

[NitroRCracer]

tire truers on tower hobbies

when you mount foam tyres on rims youself, usually you would use a tire truer. It makes sure the tyres are a proper shape before they get scrubbed around on the bitumen.
True'd tyres grip better straight away, and helps prevent the foams from chunking when taking corners. They usually last longer aswell..

If you dont true your tyres they are usually a LOT taller near the edges, and they have square corners (where the tyre meets the sidewall) which can easily cause your new tyres to chunk + self destruct in no time at all..

if you dont have a tyre true'r you can put a nut/bolt through your rim (get one the same size as the hole so its not loose)
then put the end of the bolt in a drill, and spin your tyres while Gently using a peice of sandpaper to round the corners on your tyre. Take it easy on the first couple of tanks, to let the tyres true themselves a bit more on the racetrack.

look at the two pics below, and compare the shape/look of the foams to see what a difference it can make.

[terry]

It's not just for self-mounting tires though. You can use it to re-size new pre-mounts. Full thickness foams are often too thick and sometimes not the same size from the factory. That can change the rollout of your vehicle. I like to run smaller diameter tires during qualifying, or short mains, when I don't need as much material to finish the race. During qualifying, I take a measurement of the tire before the race and then after the race. I do that after each heat. Then I can determine how much my tires are wearing in 5 minutes at different rollouts. The average lets me figure out how much material I will need left to run let's say a 30 min. main. Then I true a new set of tires down to the amount I think I will need to finish the race with a small amount left on the rim (.06-.1 inch is what I like to have remaining). On long mains, when you can't rotate tires, you can use it to run stagger(left or right tire bigger than the other). This is helpful when you find that one tire wears more than the others due to more high speed corners in one direction than the other. You won't wear that tire to the rim faster than the others if you do this. It's also handy to run stagger on oval cars. It helps the car turn better. You can repair damaged foams as well. You can glue a repair piece of foam back into a chunk and then re-true it. I use all of my old tires "re-trued" for qualifying. I can get more competitive use out of them this way. Until now I have had to borrow a truer when I can. I've heard of some pro's actually using them to resurface rubber tires as well, If your truer has fine enough adjustments and the right cutter, you can.