PG tire wear

[Fourshipp]

We’ve been running PG and XPG on our 124 magless Carrera R8s, Porsche’s and Vetts. Tire wear has been an issue on both compounds but much worse on the softer tire.

The first picture is the XPG and the seconds PG. My question is how many times can these be trued and does anyone rotate tires? I’ve got mostly right hand turns (including the fast sweepers) and the left tire wears the most.

I am running on unpainted Carrera Track. I found both tires performed the same when they were freshly trued but the XPG fell off the quickest. I plan on going all PG with replacements.

thanks,

Bruce

[dw5555]

Man that's a ton of wear. I can honestly say none of mine have ever looked like that. Although I run with just center mag in. The only thing additional trueing will do is cut the diameter, it won't hurt the tires. I think I've trued a couple 3 times but it was more of a scuffing to clean em up more than anything.
Dave

[Dodgefarmer]

That's exactly the wear patterns I get when I test 1/32 urethane on my Carrera Go track. I just resurface them.

Randy

[HomeRacingWorld]

Yep, switch to PG standard compound.

[Billy boy]

please please please,not trying to start something, but how about trying a set of silicoln tires on one car to see how they work. from what i can see, you guys run hard----nice.just a thought.if you have,please disregard this suggestion.

[slothead]

In the past some on HRW have advised using either silicone or urethane on a track, but not both. My oval is all silicone and my road course is all urethane. When I first discovered PG tires I tried some on the oval cars, but silicones were better.

By fall I should have a new MDF oval that's not near as slick as my current hardboard surfaced one, and hope all my cars with silicone tires still run very well on it. It would be an expensive and tedious process to change nearly 100 cars over to PG tires. The only non-silicone cars on my oval now are the new Pioneer Legends which I run with the stock tires.

[RichD]

I have not run on Paul Gage tires very much, but a couple of years ago we did have a class that used them and in addition we often host proxy races for cars with urethane tires. In any case I have never seen urethane tires with the tread chewed up that way. Some people have reported having that sort of damage with NSR soft rubber tires. If necessary you can clean up the tread using a truing machine or just sandpaper, but eventually the tires will have to be replaced. The ingredients that are used in making urethane tires have a limited life after the containers are first opened, perhaps they were just a little past their prime for a few pours.
Silicone tires do have a considerably greater resistance to wear than urethane tires. We have been able to get through a 24 hour race with a single tire change.
It might not be a good idea to mix silicone and urethane tires on the same track, neither type would be likely to run its best.

[SpeedyNH]

yeah, the silicones tend to remove the rubber that the urethanes lay down fairly quickly (a couple of my Monogram Midgets run them, among lots of other things up north).
i can get away with it for a few laps on a friend's track, but that's about it- once i get down on it, any more and i have to break the lane in again, and you're constantly having to clean them because of the pickup.
sometimes i dedicate one lane on my test track to urethanes so that i can work both types. they both seem to have their place, but not concurrently.
i've never seen urethanes (or anything else for that matter) wear with a pattern like that. it's like they're chattering or something.

[Fourshipp]

I ran one set of silicones on a proxy car. I can to clean the track to test the proxy car and then it took a while to get the grip back for the urethanes. I’ve got about 2 dozen cars, 124 and 132, all with PG urethanes so swapping the fleet to silicones likely won’t happen. I do have plans to paint the track in the next year so I’m hoping that will help.

inthink my best option now is to go to all PGs and not XPGs. When I ordered my first batch they only had half the PGs I needed so I got half and half.

Thanks for all the advice.

[dw5555]

This isn't a post to hijack the thread but what do you clean your tires with? I have thousands of laps on my PG tires and never had anything like you have. I clean my tires exclusively with wd40. I have for over 6 yrs now with no breakdown in the tires or ill effects. I don't know if the wd40 somehow keeps the tires moist or stops the breakdown like you have. Just a thought.
Dave

[RichD]

WD-40 is mostly a mixture of unspecified organic solvents plus 11% light mineral oil. I have a database on chemical and material compatibility, but that does not include polyurethane. When we raced on urethane tires we cleaned them with a water based surface cleaner, like Simple Green. WD-40 would clean urethane tires as well, but I am nor certain if anything in the formulation would actually condition the tires. Oil does condition rubber tires for sure, so WD-40 would work on those, but it might be better to apply straight oil, like 3in1 Oil. It would be interesting if someone that normally uses WD-40 on their urethane tires would switch to a surface cleaner for a while and report back on what happened.

[slothead]

Over the years I've noticed virtually no change in the PG tires on my cars. My Trans Am Scalextric and Pioneer cars are 8 - 10 years old. After sitting for awhile I lightly wet sand them using 600 grit sand paper and lighter fluid. Only has minor effect and likely not much different than a spit cleaning.

[dw5555]

Rich I have used both and still do depending on what's in front of me at the time. When I use windex the grip is almost as good but I hardly ever see any tire residue on the paper towel when they are cleaned. When I use the wd40 almost always there is dirt or residue on the towel. The grip seems to last longer also.

[Giddyup]

Rich, I tried Simple Green once and while it cleaned up the tire, it seemed to harden the tire. Did you ever experience something similar?

[SuperSlab]

I have seen similar wear patterns on the HEAVY 1/24 Carrera cars with XPG's. I have pretty much always just used PGT's and no problem with those. And while "regular" 1/32 cars do "scuff up" and show some wear on PGT's it is not enough to be a concern to me. The one occasion that we had to monitor regular 40 Shore urethane tyre wear carefully was in the local Western Canadian TT races where the ground clearance rules are VERY strict and the penalties severe (catastrophic?). Over 3 hours of racing we did see something like a 1/10th of a mm ground clearance reduction.

Alwyn

[Fourshipp]

I usually clean tires with a lint roller and rubbing alcohol. I’ll try the wd40. I haven’t used that yet.

thanks,

Bruce

[RichD]

When I was testing urethane HO tires I found that they could get coated with something that sticky tape or a lint roller would not remove. Silicone tires wear very slowly, but they do leave a residue on the track. If you run urethane tires on a track where silicone tires are normally used the urethane tires will get coated and lose some grip. We also noticed that on a track with copper tape that urethane tires could get a copper coating that had to be washed off.

[slothead]

I've seen the copper haze get on my silicone tires too. After a good wet sanding with lighter fluid it goes away and the cars are super fast, for awhile.