Tyres for carpet

[antnee]

My local club(WBMCC) is thinking about doing off-road catagory, but indoors on carpet

there are concerns that mini-pins would ruin the carpet, are there any other clubs the run buggies on carpet? what tyres do they use?

links are helpfull too

[NeilD]

Yellow mini spikes.

[MattW]

Yellow mini pins are post common. To be honest, i'd not be surprised if mini spikes may do more damage - as they would be sliding a lot of the time.

DMS did a lot of buggy racing on mini pins on their carpet. I think it did deteriate a little, but not too bad.

[NeilD]

At York i think it's around 60/40 pins over spikes.

[antnee]

hmm, the problem is we're supposed to be a top indoor club, and hold a sunday series over the winter(sponsered by schumacher) and some of the countries top drivers attend. so the carpet needs to be in tip-top condition

[PaulRotheram]

we run them at formby in the winter.. minipins seem to do no damage.. although it can rip the tape up (we use cheaper masking type tape though) I cant see um causing any real damage to not be worth running a series.

[terry.sc]

I can see the reason for not wanting spikes or pins on the carpet, they can lift the pile on the carpet which means you have loads of grip in one direction and none in the other. From experience though using soft spikes once the loose fibres are removed if the carpet is in good condition it isn't the problem you might think.

There are options if you don't want spikes on the carpet. Personally I use foams, easily available if you can fit older 2" wheels on the buggies as the tyres I use are made for 1/8th stock cars. Foams are used for dirt oval racing in the US so the tyres are made for 2.2" wheels as well, just harder to get hold of.

Schumacher and Proline both make a range of tyres designed for on road use, I've heard good things about the Schumacher Venom 88 tyres but they only do thse for buggy rears. HPI also do a range of 2.2" slicks, but again only for buggy rears. I have no experience of them though as if I don't use foams it's minipins.

[antnee]

yeah, ive seen the on-road tyres, will pass on whats mentioned here. for the front ribs would be fine, wouldnt they?

[Richard Lowe]

If you like understeer, yes

[Welshy40]

Originally Posted by antnee

My local club(WBMCC) is thinking about doing off-road catagory, but indoors on carpet

there are concerns that mini-pins would ruin the carpet, are there any other clubs the run buggies on carpet? what tyres do they use?

links are helpfull too

As everyone else has said, yellow mini pins are still the best. Mini spikes are ok but do more damage over time.

Yes the carpet will wear over time no matter what your running but if its just for racing then no matter what condition its in the grip will still be there. We raced at Caldicot indoors and the carpet was most probably older than me but the grip was still there.

[_sleigh_]

Couldn't you use one side of the carpet for the clubnight and keep the other for the Winter Series???

Years back I used to race my buggy round a carpet track on Mini-Pins and it didn't damage the carpet, and this was on a small 8-9seconds a lap track. But i suppose it really depends on the type of carpet pile you have.

[jdgarant]

Our local track is the same, no spikes or pins, compound or foams.

I actually have had really good luck with Schumacher Road tires, (Silver paint dots) not sure what they were exactly. They look similar to my Dirt Hawgs but smaller diameter and much softer rubber.

I have these on my RC10B4 FT. Added 1.5oz of weight in the rear and modded the rear arms forward a little bit to have more weight on the rears. Also running stock black springs in rear and silver in front. I was using a Mamba Max 4600 and had no trouble keeping control.

[Welshy40]

Originally Posted by _sleigh_

Couldn't you use one side of the carpet for the clubnight and keep the other for the Winter Series???

Years back I used to race my buggy round a carpet track on Mini-Pins and it didn't damage the carpet, and this was on a small 8-9seconds a lap track. But i suppose it really depends on the type of carpet pile you have.

That what we did at a couple of the Welsh League venues, club one side and other for events.

I dont agree with foams as lets not forget here that if you guys want to set a car up for buggy events then using foams would alter the setting for mini pins or mini spikes (considering foams are not allowed).

I think the best person to get advice from would be Craig Harris, as he is a carpet master and has beaten most of the best driver in the UK indoors with mini pins and min spikes, but also has used foams previous to that as well.