Weight Bias

[kcbcommando]

I'm comfortable building rail riders with narrowed DFW etc. Weight placement is my next critical excursion. I place it low and give myself a fairly aggressive COM as I only race on a Freedom track. The question is this: Should I bias the weight distribution laterally toward the raised wheel? My thinking is that it will help the car steer slightly in that direction.

[roosclan]

No. You actually want to bias the weight toward the DFW, not the raised wheel. This will place equal weight on the two rear wheels, helping stability.

[texasengineer]

I agree. I set upt to run 3 wheels for my son's car and came up with the same idea, that is, to put more wieght on the side that had the front dummy wheel (the one not touching the track). As you probably know, you can move it over far enough then you can make the car go straight without bending the axles at all. I reasoned that this was the best approach and we smoked the competition the first year (on a wooden track). This may have been because most of the competition did not even know to run on 3 wheels. Problem with this setup (weight to the side) is that it is inherently unstable, and it will show up if you run it on an aluminum track where the transition from incline to flat is more agressive. We learned that this year.

Next time around we are putting the weight straight down the middle with COM 3/4" to 1" in front of rear axle, rail riding set-up, chop the back and stick it on the front.

-Good luck to you.

[kcbcommando]

Good intel. I will be putting it together in the next week and on to testing!!!

[ProQuest]

Hey Texasengineer,

This has nothing to do with the question asked, but where in Texas are you??? I'm out of Houston.

ProQuest

[roosclan]

Here is a link to a thread last year explaining why a 3-wheel rail rider should have the weight biased toward the dominant front wheel:
weight triangulation
The main advantage to doing this is stability, as it helps to minimize the torque from the front wheel, especially when the car reaches the stop section.