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Old 2003.02.27, 10:57 AM   #1
dwi116
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Squat F1 Foam Tire Review

A little product review for those who are interested. I just installed a set of Squat F1 Foam Tires, purchased from this site, on one of my F1's.

A little background:

I run on a hardwood floor which is very smooth and have tried all of the ribbed tires, including the 20 degree super softs which gave the best performance in terms of both grip and predictability of the rubber tires. The biggest problem I faced was that the tires would accumulate dust and the traction would go away. Very realistic and quite fun actually, but to make the grip last for any length of time I had to really clean the floor (First mop and let dry and then once over with an anit-static cloth). A 15 minute chore at best.

The Squat Foam tires are a little different from the rubber tires in that they have no "bead" or lip around the edge to hold the tire to the rim. If you have changed the tires on your F1 you will know what I mean. The squat tires are simply foam "donuts" which stay on the rim purely through elastic tension. Because they have no bead they are also noticably narrower than the rubber tires. They also look funny, because you can see the part of the rim normally covered by the tire. To cover this Squat sells "spacers" which are foam disks used to cover up the rim. Hard to describe, but if you get the tires it is self explanitory. You could put a "spacer" on the inside as well as the outside of each wheel, but as they are only comsmetic and you can't really see the inside I just put them on the outside. If you do this you will need only one pack of spacers for every four tires. The spacers have tape on the back allowing you to stick them on, but mine had a perfect press fit on the rim so I just left it that way and the spacers have yet to come off after 30 minutes of driving.

Compared to the stock tires, the Squat foam tires do not look good at all! Even with the spacers (which you will defintiely want) they can not begin to compare with rubber tires for cool and authentic looks. You also can't dress them up with stickers like the rubber ones as the stickers will not stay on the foam.

Ok, they don't look good, but they drive GREAT! Traction is noticably better than the softest rubber I have tried. Even better is that they slide very predictably and will not "hook" like the rubber tires. I find I can use the brake much, much harder and recover smoothly from big slides. Much easer to recover from too much power at corner exit! If you have long fast corners on your track you can slide the rear, push the front and then get it right and drift all four!

The foams do still pickup some dust. But I would say at most it takes 10% of the grip away versus about 50% on the rubber tires. I don't need to wipe down the track before I run, and I can clean the tires by rubbing them with my thumb instead of using a paper towel and windex.

In a nutshell - They look bad but drive good! Once the car starts moving you can't see them anyway. Possible I could get bored with these tires since the grip is so good , but since I still have enough power with the stock motor to spin them up everywhere I don't think so.

DWI
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Old 2003.02.27, 11:15 AM   #2
West.F1
San Marino GP- 4/25/04
 
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thanks for the review.

what rated foams did you use for your testing and at what point (amount of laps did you make) before you had to replace the tires.
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Old 2003.02.27, 11:37 AM   #3
dwi116
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I used the Squat "Hi Grip" F1 Tires for sale on this site. I am not sure if there is any other rating of the foam compound. I only have F1's so this is my first go with foam tires. It looks like there are a lot of compound options for the standard Mini-Z's, but this is the only choice I know of which is specifically for F1 rims. However, you could easily re-use the spacers with any foam tire that will fit

I ran about 15 minutes on the foam tires, at about 12 seconds a lap. 75 laps, no wonder I'm dizzy today! Tire wear was not noticeable, but my floor is extremely smooth as the wood is coated with a poly-urethane finish. I do not think these foam tires would hold up very long if your surface is at all abrasive.
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Old 2003.03.05, 10:13 PM   #4
madmax
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dwi116
do you have any pics of tires on the car...i want to see how ugly they look, because i was debating on getting the slicks or foam. slicks=look great, foam=????but great grip.
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Old 2003.03.17, 11:54 AM   #5
West.F1
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i picked up some Squat foams this past weekend and will say i will never go back to rubber compounds again.

last week i ran the f1 with a stock motor with 25 degree slicks in the rear and stock rubbers in front. handled really well until i installed the eagle turbo and Z-130-M-BB motor. slip city. even on the carpet track.

i went for the foams in the rear which helped but the stock fronts wore down faster than what i expected. after installing front foams, i instantly became a believer. i run on the reverse of ozite carpet and what was an eye opener was the difference in acceleration and corner handling. if you thought the F1 rode on rails before then you should try foams.. you'll realize what you've been missing.

to get that extra power to the ground effectively, get foams. as usual - harder in front, softer in rear


(i can post pics of what i have later this evening (i'm at work at the moment). they do look funky but when it comes to speed,
looks aren't what you need)
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Old 2003.03.17, 08:09 PM   #6
West.F1
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DWIs report is spot on!


to help show an example of what is talked about, i've added pics of my F1 w/ Squat foams in the gallery album.

the spacers were $4.50 for a set of four at the LHS so they were only mounted on the outside for cosmetics.

as DWI said, 'they don't look good, but they [really] drive great'
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Old 2003.03.19, 10:11 PM   #7
mini-z
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Thanks for the reviews guys, we'll continue to stock these for you!
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