Carpet track

[Ouraydog]

I have been running on the cheap gray Home Depot carpet, and found that traction is not that great. Grooved tires work better than slicks.

I sprayed the carpet with a very thin coat of 3M 77 adhesive, and now I have more traction than I know what to do with. I misted on a thin coat of adhesive, a large spray can will cover a piece of carpet 6' x 24'. After drying for a few days, the surface of the carpet is barely sticky to the touch, but the traction is great.

It has been about a month since I coated the carpet, and it seems to hold up well to racing and walking on it. I roll the carpet up for storage, and it doesn't stick to itself. Almost any type of tires work ok, but 20 and 30 seems to work the best. Tires with small grooves work the best of all. The 01 rally cars will do a traction roll if pushed hard enough in tight corners. The wider 02 cars corner like slot cars and don't ever roll over.

The extra traction does cause some cars to hop when accelerating hard. The RM 02 chassis hops the worst, especially the F50 Ferrari that doesn't have a rear shock. The MM 02 cars love the extra traction, especially the McLaren and Lamborghini. I cured the hopping on my F50 by converting it from a RM to MM chassis. All of the parts are bolt on, except I had to enlarge the rear wheel openings to clear the slightly longer wheelbase.

[Breeze]

How big is your track? I have one from Lowes that is 10 x 15. I even made banked corners by putting some bulk video tape boxes cut in half at an angle (like ramps) under each end. It took 5 boxes at either end. Now I have banked oval w/ a small twisty section in the infield. The lane widths are 30 in. except for the corners that are 45 in. I used 1 in. foam cut into 3 in. widths for the barriers all around. I tried spraying Dr. Pepper on it and letting dry for traction, but it gummed up the tires and I had to clean it off with a carpet steamer. I like your 3M adhesive idea, but the traction is good now. I had a problem with the carpet being to bumpy so I cut it into 6 sections and glued blue fanfold foam to the bottom of each section. The sections are then taped together with black duct tape. I cut the sections so tey are modular, 2 straights 30" X 7.5 ', 2 corners 45" x 10 ' and 2 infield sections 30" x 7.5'. It works great!

[Ouraydog]

My track is 12' x 23', and I made barriers out of 1"x2" wood strips. The edges of the strips are covered with the gray carpet and seem to protect the cars from too much damage. I attached the strips of carpet to the wood with staples.

The wood is joined together with 1/4" plywood plates and screws. For the large radius corners, I just used a series of short straight sections joined at an angle. I break the rails down for storage by removing a few screws.

My garage floor is very smooth, so bumps haven't been a problem. When I run rally cars, I put things under the carpet to create bumps. I have attached a diagram of my track. The lanes are about 35" wide.

[saiyan]

I miss my garage , it was great for setting out a few cones and doin some drifting with the stock wheels .