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alright................... since the majority of my racing career has been done on foam tires (dirt oval, 1/10-1/12 pan car), i haven't had to deal with foam inserts in off-road tires. so, for you off-road specialists............. do you guys just stuff the inserts in the tires the way they come with the tires, or do you do some kind of trimming on the outer edges to round them up a bit? or narrow them up a little?

just looking for a little insight from the pros before i start gluing them up.

Oh boy, this is a can of worms, guys do all kinds of things. But most common at least in the 1/10 scale world is to trim all 4 corners (inside and out) off a little with scissors. Say about ¼ of an inch or so, maybe a little less. Firm foams for hard packed groove tracks, such as J Concepts and Trinity Bomb Ones. Standard foams for rougher/looser dirt tracks, like the foams that come with Losi tires. Pro-Line foams do not have a very good rep for holding up over time. To be fair all foams degrade over time, on some of the real hard packed wet clay tracks where bald tires have become the norm some guys will cut the sidewalls out and replace the foam.

It is also somewhat common to jam standard buggy rear foams into front buggy tires to get more firmness. Oh yes, as big of a pain to get them even as you might suspect.

Note that the 1/8 scale world has a lot of molded foams, already have some shaping.

As always concerning off road tires, asking around at the track you are running is the best advice. The challenge and madness of off road, they are all a little different, few universal truths.

My rule of thumb has always been...

Hard, smooth surface = firm inserts
Rutted, soft, loose surface = soft inserts


Making it any more complicated than that makes my head hurt.

you ran pan cars on a dirt oval?
must have been a nice groomed smooth track.

Spiderman wrote:you ran pan cars on a dirt oval?
must have been a nice groomed smooth track.

nope, no pan cars on dirt. i think you missed the comma after dirt oval.

scr8p wrote:

Spiderman wrote:you ran pan cars on a dirt oval?
must have been a nice groomed smooth track.

nope, no pan cars on dirt. i think you missed the comma after dirt oval.