Thinking about building another oval

[Kemtronracer]

I'm thinking about building another oval track. This one would be a paperclip design. We run a lot of open-wheel cars, so I'm asking everyone's advice for lane spacing. Is 4" too much? We do run both 24 scale and 32 scale.

[Florida_Slotter]

The scale is not as important as max track width.

What is the max track width that your rules allow?

[Beach Oval]

Definitely not to much, might not be enough.
What are you Wheel width rule. PARMA Tech tool is 3 1/4" and what type of speed are you running?

We run 16D and S16D, so we are running a fast pace.

Our REALITY MOD with the FALCON or JK Motors are Fast as Hell too.

Standard is 4 1/4". We run open wheel Mods and @ 4 1/4", when the tires make contact, the cars fly out off their lanes. 4" might be to narrow for open wheel but nothing like side by side racing.

I'm having a New Tri Oval built and was contemplating going @ 4" spacing, but the speeds we race @, would be a flying mess. So it will be @ 4 1/4" spacing. on my new track.

Hope this helps.

[Kemtronracer]

Thanks for your responses. Right now we have an oval with 3.5" spacing, so we limit the cars to 3" width. We are running Womps and Sprints Plus cars with 16D, Falcon and Cheetah motors - they do run pretty quick. I should mention that this is a short club track (18X6) not a big commercial tri-oval.

[Florida_Slotter]

Thanks for the input.

Now we have a routed MDF track and I have been doing some experimenting. Our lane spacing is also 3.5 inches. I have some cars that I have set the max width to 2.75 inches. If the cars are open wheel cars, you have to be very careful when passing. You can not pass on a curve, either inside or especially outside and even passing on a straight you must be very careful not to cause the car to fishtail as the results are quite spectacular if the wheels of both cars touch, even slightly!

I have a couple of Womp cars set up to 2.5 inches and they run just fine, even with the Parma 16D motors in them. I think that motor is quite excessive as you simply spin the tires the entire length of the straight. I've tried the Parma Homeset motor and they are much more palatable.

Bottom line is simple: If you intend to run open wheeled cars, I would suggest at least 4 inch spacing. Now commerical tracks mostly use 4.25 or even 4.5 inch spacing. A 4 inch spacing is almost too tight with 3.250 max width cars.

If you stay with 2.5 to 2.75 inch width track and cover the wheels, you will get a lot of 'rubbing' but not wrecks due to the touching of open wheeled cars. But from experience, I know that even with 4.5 inch spacing, you will still have cars launch and set new distance records!

Just my opinion of course.

Your results may vary.

[sixtiesracer]

So,,,instead of going "all out" when you race, learning to "drive" the cars especially in the turns or overtaking someone on the straightaway.So you're always thing and trying to out guess your opponent.We run a 14' x 6' 5 lane routed oval and we've all became better "drivers" and we've gotten so we can two and three wide in the turns.