So it’s been a few very busy months for me but I finally have time to start to catch up the build thread.
Back to late June I went to Pardubice for a race with high expectations and hope for a gold medal. I finished 2nd with crazy overheating issues. I even had to skip a heat because the battery was empty and I couldn’t charge it because it was 80c+. The rear D100S was thermal throttling I could feel that. And the motors I couldn’t touch even for a very brief moment, it immediately felt like burning my finger.
PS: lifting that board above my head for the picture was a huge challenge.
Here’s a video from heat 3:
Unfortunately my camera mount broke before the challenge race (head to head) started, and I didn’t fix it since then. There was no position change in the head to head race, just 5 consecutive laps, so not much action.
I also realized during the event that I was running way higher pressure than ideal so I lowered it down. I was getting them well up to temperature:
I was a little low on pressure here but didn’t bother to fix until later. The ideal pressure as I later found out is around 0.45 bar cold for my weight and style.
The inner shoulder of the tire however does work harder than the rest, which is not good, means that I have significantly shorter life out of a tire than what would be possible. Though to extend that I’d need camber in the hanger which is something that noone has done before to my knowledge, and it does sound expensive to manufacture. I still get a long enough life out of them though. Just had the first set changed out now.
Wheel aligment and camber:
Wear on the inside of the wheel means I need positive camber. Wear on the outside of the wheel means I need negative camber. Even wear would mean I don’t need camber.
I made a drawing to explain riding styles and how they influence wheel alignment issues. This is mostly my intuition so this might be mostly bullshit but from my tire wear it would make sense to try positive camber, that I am confident in.
When you are turning, you need to lean between two specific lean angles so that you don’t slide out or fall. Orange angle is the minimum lean angle you need and green is the maximum lean angle that you can do before you slide out. Between these two extremes you can be anywhere and you are technically good. Being in exactly the middle requires no camber, and causes more or less even tire wear, but then you can’t really feel how close you are to the edge of grip. Yellow means the outside of your tires wear more, and it’s overall less tiring to ride like that, but it (in my opinion) gives less precise feedback and (in my opinion) makes sliding less predictable. Green is my riding style, the tires wear more on the inside. I feel like it gives more precise feedback, but it’s more tiring overall. Super steep lean angles also look more entertaining. But I know some people who wear the outsides of their tires more, so this confirms it for me that wear pattern depends on riding style.
Regarding pressure: the further under I am from the ideal pressure range the more important camber becomes. For this tire I found predictability to be the best at pressures lower than the tire was designed for, which means I won’t ever have “perfect” wear and even pressure over the full contact patch. But it can be significantly better than it is now with some camber. At least wear definitely, ride feel, I’d have to try and see if there’s any difference.
and it’s huge and heavy not to mention expensive.
but that was in much better conditions. In good conditions the 9x3.5 were actually pretty great on this track.
