That’s a very strange title! But, a relevant one in our era of viral epidemics.
Hello gentlemen racers, and fellow ‘slot addictos’. (I posted this on the weekend; it was listed for a while then disappeared.)
Saliva, secreted by the salivary glands inside the mouth, is primarily water but holds a very large collection of cells, molecules and compounds, including white blood cells, epithelial cells, enzymes such as salivary amylase for the initial breakdown of carbohydrates, and many other components. Apparently, one millilitre of saliva contains up to 8 million human cells and 500 million bacterial cells.
So what has this to do with scale racing? Well, a popular method of cleaning tires for the track is to put a layer of saliva on one’s thumb and rub it along, through, and into the tire contact surface. It seems to be effective in gaining traction! Of course, a good proportion of the contents of that first person’s saliva is transferred from his tires into the track. Another person’s car later runs on the same lane and his tires pick up the salivary components left by the first person’s tires. When that second person cleans his tires by the same technique, repeatedly putting thumb to mouth, the second person now has a good number of cells and molecules from the first person’s saliva. I know we are all friends, but I don’t think we all want to be that friendly! (No need to further expand on the health consequences generated by this practice.)
Now, coming from sponge tire use, I’ve never had occasion to practice this method of improving traction, nor had I any inclination to apply it previously, when I was using urethane tires. For those, I usually carried a small bottle of water and applied a drop to my tires. The first track of Arts that I saw was a few years ago, the MVL track. He had invited me to the Friday track cleaning and prep session before the scheduled Saturday race. (I couldn’t attend the race day because I had a 24’th scale one already scheduled for the same day, and I was doing the tech inspection of all the cars.) To that Friday pre-race session, I brought along a couple of 32’nd scale cars, and my 24’th scale Porsche 962 Lowenbrau, as well as a tire cleaning kit I had constructed. I cleaned each of the rear tires with my kit, before running them on the track. The previous night, I had already removed my sponge-tire rear wheels from the 24’th scale car and replace them with a set of rims with urethane tires, wheels that I had sitting in a pill vile for the previous five years. (The chassis was brass base-plate and phenolic suspension-plate that I had designed.) Art let me run the car when no one else was on the track. I could not believe it; I had never seen such good traction on that car, with any tire – sponge or urethane, on any track surface – treated or untreated! (Those urethane tires had been cleaned only with water.)
Photo of my 24’th scale Porsche 962 on MVL track; (body a bit beat up from years of racing, but I bought a spare when they were still available).
The tire cleaning kit I built is a fairly simple design, not my invention; I just made a few improvements to one I had seen long ago. It’s made from a small plastic food storage bin in which I cut a slot into the lid and attached brass conducting strips to contact the car brushes. The bin itself stores a sponge wetted with water, a transformer-rectifier wall plug, a 9V dry cell, all the wiring and connectors. I set it up so I could use it on the bench with the wall plug, or use it portable at trackside with the optional dry cell. That allows quick cleaning of the rear tires in between heats, if the ruleset permits. It’s very simple and easy, and works better than spit !
Photo of my cleaning kit as would be used; ( I’ve thrown in a few other cars to compare 32’nd, 24’th and 18’th scales. )
Hope you find this a bit useful.
Felix.
I used to be one of the sharpest tools in the shed; now I’m just a slot-head !
