by RichD » Thu Jun 15, 2017 9:14 am
My club, Shoreline Model Raceways, now races on silicone tires exclusively, however several members of the club have entered a number of proxy series that were restricted to rubber or silicone tires. In addition we have used urethane tires in the past and have hosted many proxy races with rubber or urethane tires.
My own opinion is that a club would be better off if it picked a single type of tire, regardless if that was actually the best performing type, and used that exclusively.
All types of tires will perform their best if they are glued to the wheels and trued using a machine. In this case we are comparing rubber to urethane tires. It is well known that rubber tires work their best on tracks that have been rubbered in. Someone has stated that urethane tires will remove the rubber from the track and rubber tires will loose grip. I have never heard of that being reported before. Silicone tires do have that reputation however. It is my policy to report my personal experiences, I try to avoid posting second hand information.
The softer rubber formulations do tend to have the best grip, but they can be more difficult to true and can wear out rather quickly. In addition there can be batch to batch variations of rubber tires, making it harder to achieve consistent performance. Rubber tires are subject to aging and if they have not been formulated correctly they can get rock hard or turn to goo. The performance of any rubber tire can be improved by a chemical treatment of some sort, I am not aware of any treatment for urethane tires beyond a simple cleaning. One thing that I have observed about urethane tires is that after the have been trued they also need to be polished to get the best results. The tires will eventually get polished by running them on the track, but that takes a long time. I have run in urethane tires on a skid pad made of Ninco track.
I believe that in this case a certain amount of testing would be in order. Work your magic on a pair of rubber tires and a pair of urethane tires and race on what ever is best for you.