DeBary Glen Raceway Resurfacing.......maybe

[Modlerbob]

When I started out racing 1/32 slot cars 11 years ago I was using silicones on Scaley sport track. When I acquired my current MDF track 6 years ago I gradually switched to Paul Gage urethanes (pgt and xpg). I have quite a large stable of cars and it seems like every week now I discover a car where the urethanes have decomposed into an orange goo the consistency of jello. At first I thought it was just the xpg's but the more time passes it seems like the pgt's are just as vulnerable. I am seriously considering coating the track surface with a high gloss clear coat and switching back to silicones. I have yet to see a quality silicone tire go bad and I have some dating back to the 1970's. The plan will be to gradually switch all my cars back to silicones.

[chrisguyw]

A gloss surface coat and a switch to silicones is certainly one option, or, before going that route you may want to try another brand of urethanes,....possibly yellow dogs, I have not seen any decomposition issues with these at any of our local club tracks nor the commercial tracks I have been helping out at for the last 10 years or so.

Cheers
Chris Walker

[4424ever]

This comes up now and again on the board about tires going bad and I’ve never seen a definitive answer as to why if there is even a legitimate answer
All I can say is the ONLY issues I’ve experienced myself are scaley rubber going hard and Carrera tires literally melting
My buddy and I normally order our eurathanes from Paul together to save on shipping and as I recall he has had 2 or 3 tires go bad and I can’t verify they are Paul’s because they could be KD eurathanes ( remember those)
Opinions are all over the board about this so what ever works for you go with it

[Cgyracer]

I only have NSR rubber and Super Tire Yellow Dogs. I have not experienced the Jello Goo urethane melt down I have heard mentioned by others.

[munter]

Another possible solution is to make your own urethane tires.
I have done a run using SmoothOn vytaflex40 and also their Reoflex 40....more than enough for my cars.
It is messy though, some mould nouse(techinique, skill and knowledge) is required but once underway nothing can stop you.

[Barc 1]

I just finished up a batch of my own urethanes. From a small 2kg batch of vytaflex, I probably ended up with over 300 tires.

I use a veterinary syringe to inject the urethane rubber into my tire molds, and this results in a flawless tire.

Over the years I have had some PGs.go to an orange goo. Not many though.

[Mitch58]

For a long time most of us in Portland were running urethanes. I've never had any go gooey. When I first built my routed track I left a rather textured surface, the urethanes were much happier than rubber tires. After a couple of years I sanded it down and repainted it with a smooth foam roller giving a nice smooth surface. I now run almost exclusively NSR Supergrips, the traction is fantastic. Most of my skinny tired cars are a mix of urethane and PCS rubber from Pendles. Both work well.

[slothead]

If Bob were to paint his track it would probably make more sense for him to then begin switching back to silicone tires than to switch to a new brand of urethanes.

Personally, I've never had any PG urethane tires go soft and gooey, but perhaps that's because the overall climate up here in Maine is cooler than most places. A few days each summer the temperature in the barn loft where my tracks and cars reside gets up to the upper 80's, but never hotter. Otherwise it's 60's - 70's most of the time and in the 40's - 50's on winter nights when I turn the heat down. Humidity might also be a critical environmental factor, but I don't track that.

[Mikeinclover]

Bob, not sure what your surface is right now but you definitely don't need a high gloss surface to use silicone tires. I would just get some silicone tires and try them out on your track before you do anything. Just make sure you wipe down the track surface first.
Mike

[Modlerbob]

Well I'm still debating what to do in the future. My experiences with Paul Gage tires are as follows. First I should point out that I have well over 200 1/32nd scale slot cars. Most of them sit on the shelves 99% of the time. The 10 to 20 cars that I run regularly usually wear down the tires to the point where they don't provide minimum track clearance before the chemical change starts turning them orange and eventually decompose. Just ask the guys at Slot Car Corner, they will vouch for the high number of tire sets I buy. It is just so frustrating when I decide to run a car I haven't put on the track in several month and discover the tires are falling off the rims.

I have several sets of silicones I bought back when I had Scaley sport track and when I put them on one of my cars it runs good for a few laps and then starts slipping and sliding. I am physically unable to try to clean the track on a regular basis and I realise even after resurfacing the track if we run other compounds besides silicones they will probably need several laps to reset the groove. On my next tire order I will try using the yellow dog urethanes and see how well they hold up. Something I should have done from the start is when removing the original rubber tires putting them in a sealed baggy with identification as to what car they came from. Then when a car I rarely run has tires go bad I could at least put the originals back on.

[Brad_T]

This may be a little long winded, I apologize.
When I first built my wood track I was running silicone tires but eventually switched over to urethane for two reasons: Because my track is in my garage, there is dust and the cleaning became more than what I was willing to do, secondly the availability of tires for all the brands and cars, so I had mixed brands of tires. When I made the change to urethane I was using yellow dogs from SCC Canada but found the Paul Gage tires which offered a wide selection and was aesthetically a nicer tire, at that time the tires were shore 30 and the XS (now XPG) tire was just being released but I wasn't using them. That was in 2011 and in 2013 I basically put all the slot stuff away, put t a tarp over the track and didn't touch it until 2020.

Seven years later when I got my track out of the corner of the garage, took off the tarp, blew it off with my leaf blower, grabbed a few cars from the shelf, put them on the track and they worked great. I was shocked. They were all clad with the shore 30 tires and none had issues, some cars are still on the same tires today. Like I said, my track is in my garage which, in the summer can be in the high 90's, and it the low 60's in the winter. I have some XPG tires now but, just like 1:1 only used when the temperature is very low. All of the new PGT are shore 40 which is all I run at higher temps but they still work in the cooler temps. I still have quite a few shore 30 tires but only use them when the temps are cooler and in a short race under 20 laps, the shore 40 tires take that many laps to get warmed up. When the tires get hot they will become less grippy, just like in real racing.

I have repainted a section of my track one time. the switch from silicone to urethane did not require it, just a good cleaning and a lot of laps to get it rubbered in again. Track temps and humidity play a huge factor in the grip of the tires. Though my garage temp can get relatively high (in am in Ontario) there is no humidity to speak of.
We run exclusively PG tires on the tracks here and have never had a tires go gooey.

Are the PG tires with the decomposition issues all compounds?

[Bal r 14]

I run all silicone tires on my track. There are areas of my track I can't reach easily for cleaning. So, to clean the track I use a heavier car with wide tires, run the lint roller across the tires then drive the car for a lap or two. Repeat until tires stay clean. On each lane.

[paul gage]

For the official record, only the XPG (Shore 20) has ever had the orange meltdown. I make my molds from the same rubber (Vytaflex 20) and some are over 10 years old and still casting perfect tires. I have bags of discontinued XPG repops from 10 years ago that were replaced with my own PG designs, sitting in bags with no melt downs. The only time the melt occurs is once they are on a car. The most common factors are tires were glued on and the second common thing is the cars are sitting on their sides like a book and only the tires touching the shelf have melted. I have over 900 cars on the shelf with the PGT (Vytaflex 40) and all are fine. I have a 1 gallon ice cream pail full of the o.e.m. tires I removed to be replaced with PG's. It looks like a pail of melted licorice ice cream! I remember my first Eldon set in 1965, tires were all melted by 1966. The melting tire problem has been around for over 50 years. As has the "dried up and turned to powder" problem. Mush or dust, I simply replace them and race on!

[Fathead59]

Remember gentlemen , nothing last forever , if wear n tear doesn't get them , time will

[Fathead59]

I was just wondering something , if the tires were kept in an airtight container , like a mason jar , could that prolong the life of the tire ? Just a question

[slothead]

The feedback here suggests tire failure is more of an oddity than an issue. When it does occur it seems to be for mounted tires for which not a lot can be done storage wise. But if I was concerned about it for all my new reserve tires I'd put them in a zip lock bag and keep it in the fridge.

[Fathead59]

slothead , I understand where you are coming from , but since a lot of tires I have can be mounted onto CB wheels they can be mounted and even if they are not mounted they can be placed into the empty pill bottles that can be closed and placed in the fridge , maybe even put into zip locked baggies . And it isn't much of an oddity if it has happened to more than one person . All I am saying is something that the guys can do to try and save the tires

[mattb]

You need a stick of wood under the car to take weight off the tires, then just buy a refrigerator to store your cars in!

[Fathead59]

Matt , with as many cars of different sizes that a lot of guys have they just might need to buy a second refrigerator , and I understand what you mean about using the wood as a jack stand to take the weight of the car off the tires , to keep from getting a flat spot . I bought a car off of the bay that had flat spots , figured that the car sat someplace warm and was way over tightened in the container