Muddy Track Setup

want-hp

Member
1/8th semi banked very muddy track last night after rain. Red clay surface. My regular set up is for 3/4in rear stagger. I clearly saw in hot laps that my 11yr old could not get the kart to turn in the corners. I added a extra 5lbs air all the way around and went to 2in rear stagger and 1/2in stagger in front. That really helped in the heat races. My problem was in the main event. The track was tacky fast. I stayed the same on air and came down to 1 1/2in stagger on rear. My son told me that from the center corner off that the kart wanted to go towards the wall. I'm thinking that the LR didn't unload enough. Should I have taken the 1/2in stagger off the front so the kart could rotate off the LR?
 
First off 3/4 " rear stagger is NOT enough for a 1/8 th mile track to begin with.
You should have left front stagger alone provided it was close to start, adding rear was ok but should of lowered air not increased and closed up split, moved weight from left to right and prepped tires with a more aggressive prep.
 
How are you changing stagger that much at the track .
Changing tires ?
The front stagger seems unusually low .
I believe i would have kept on the the 2 inch rear .
As RP said get out the goat .
 
Less grip in track you can get away with little less rear stagger but 1/8 mile track you want 1 1/4 " min, you didn't need 2 inch rear stagger, it went to the wall because he had no grip to much air not enough bite in the tire's.
 
I should have named chassis. Its a QRC outlaw cage kart with unrestricted clone. It seemed to me that the kart was locked down to the track during hot laps. The track was still really muddy during heat races. During a normal night with no rain we run 3/4in stagger rear, none in the front. If the track stays moist I keep my air the same as heats for main and raise my RF a little to get kart to rotate. If it dries out I go with less air reduce stagger 1/4 and lower RF to increase cross. We won multiple times this year. This was the first time we ran after rain this year. To get the big 2in stagger I used a LF on my LR. One other thing we have to run treads with a RR being a Hoosier D50
 
I should have named chassis. Its a QRC outlaw cage kart with unrestricted clone. It seemed to me that the kart was locked down to the track during hot laps. The track was still really muddy during heat races. During a normal night with no rain we run 3/4in stagger rear, none in the front. If the track stays moist I keep my air the same as heats for main and raise my RF a little to get kart to rotate. If it dries out I go with less air reduce stagger 1/4 and lower RF to increase cross. We won multiple times this year. This was the first time we ran after rain this year. To get the big 2in stagger I used a LF on my LR. One other thing we have to run treads with a RR being a Hoosier D50
That makes it a whole different game.
 
Adding stagger in rear will loosen it up ,but adding stagger in the front adds crossweight. Adding C/R tightens it up.
 
Increasing Rear stagger decreases c/w .Which is 2 changes going in the same direction of freeing the kart up.Front stagger increase adds c/w , going in tight direction.
 
If you had a typical QRC LR before you put the LF on the LR you made a huge change. You added stagger, changed track width, and shrank the contact patch.
 
"1/8, semi bank"? I always wonder what that means! I like to do spreadsheet calculations and I have a couple of spreadsheet set up for calculating, not only rear stagger, but how that's affected by banking. I wonder; is the track mostly flat on the inside of the turns? Is the racing line arc close to the inside edge of the track at the apex?
Have you ever measured the distance between the straightaways? 1/8 mile track covers a lot of different configurations. Tight turns, long straights, wide turns, short straights.
I have no experience with dirt ovals, only paved, so my advice may not be of any use, but I'd like to think it is.
How wide would you say it is, measuring at about the center of the straightaways, from one inside tire path, across the infield, to the other inside tire path? You could walk it off and count each step as about 3 feet.
I have this idea that stagger can be calculated based on that measurement. For instance; if that measurement ended up being 80 feet, the calculated stagger would be 2 1/4". I have this theory that stagger should be based on the radius of the turn. I have this theory that if you change your stagger, in an attempt to cure some handling problem, and you go faster, it's because you are now closer to the correct stagger, rather than anything else.
With no further information, just speculating, when you went to 2 inch stagger you got closer to the right stagger, not because of anything else. Of course change in your stagger that much had to affect your corner weights. Corner weights can definitely change handling!
 
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