South Texas Coastal Clay

Nesloney

Member
We are a new facility and looking to learn.
What we've learned to this point.
Renovate with tractor 6+ inches deep.
Tiller up 3-4 inches of material above renovated material and packed base.
Water at about 2-3 inches of penetration ends up measuring out after roll-in at only about 1 inch of racing surface which has proven to be not enough to hold up. Track routinely crumbles high on exit creating dry powder bumps. This has been under drought conditions. Watering is hindered by being unable to run water truck on track within 3-4hrs of last water session without "pulling up" racing surface.
Future plans are to water as usual plus spraying "pump driven spray" water from truck driven next to track in order to keep from pulling up track surface by running on the track within the 3-4hr window. Hoping to get full penetration of tilled and some renovated material by watering 4-6 times daily starting wednesday evening with first soak.
Watering has begun on Wednesday evening soak in the past with only being able to water about 2-3 times on Thursday and Friday each with a slow roll-in around 5pm Friday leading up to a Friday night event which hasn't given us the track we're looking for.

This is not meant to be a guideline.
This is a a description of what we've been doing and what we plan on adjusting to our program.
We're not where we're want to be yet as far as track durability but we're taking notes.
I feel that if we got the full 4 inches+ of penetration of tilled material and maybe a bit of moisture in the renovated material we'd be right where we need to be after roll-in.

Sandy Clay mixed with black farm dirt.
Please feel free to comment and suggest.
Thank you
 
Your first thought's are going to be I'm crazy but provided the track does not stay soft spongy all the time, and get's pretty hard you may be causing yourself a lot of added work and effort, there may be NO need to even open it up provided it's smooth try just doing it all on top, keep wet all day the day of the race ( yes you'll have to spray somehow without driving on the surface ) then run it in as wet as possible without picking up, then if you miss timing and it starts to dry some before you start just re - mist it and let karts finish it off. I learned this after taking over a track in early 2000's
I was thinking I would have to do the same because very little clay, come to find out I could do it with just the top quarter inch only time I would disc it up is if it washed out some during hard rain storms as it was banked pretty hard.
 
Your first thought's are going to be I'm crazy but provided the track does not stay soft spongy all the time, and get's pretty hard you may be causing yourself a lot of added work and effort, there may be NO need to even open it up provided it's smooth try just doing it all on top, keep wet all day the day of the race ( yes you'll have to spray somehow without driving on the surface ) then run it in as wet as possible without picking up, then if you miss timing and it starts to dry some before you start just re - mist it and let karts finish it off. I learned this after taking over a track in early 2000's
I was thinking I would have to do the same because very little clay, come to find out I could do it with just the top quarter inch only time I would disc it up is if it washed out some during hard rain storms as it was banked pretty hard.
This is likely what we'll be trying approaching the next event. We're going to try to run the track in this coming weekend and leave the surface packed throughout the week leading up to the event the following Sat. Hoping to have spraying device fabbed this week so we can spray it all week long.
Humidity dropping more frequently, so we'll see. Keeping the workload down being the driving factor behind this attempt.
 
This is likely what we'll be trying approaching the next event. We're going to try to run the track in this coming weekend and leave the surface packed throughout the week leading up to the event the following Sat. Hoping to have spraying device fabbed this week so we can spray it all week long.
Humidity dropping more frequently, so we'll see. Keeping the workload down being the driving factor behind this attempt.
We never had to keep it wet all week, we raced Friday nights at 7 pm and IF we started watering Friday morning by 10 am never left it dry all day we were good, Sometimes a good soaking Thursday night right at dark.
 
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