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When it comes to the perfect setup for winning races, a key ingredient is the gearing of your car or truck. All that monster powerin a pricey Italian nitro engine or sizzling modified electric motor isn't much good without the right gear ratio transferring it to the wheels. In fact, with the right gear ratio, you can actually beat more powerfully equipped opponents if their gear ratio's all wrong. If they don't gear high enough. While they're struggling with throttle control to maintain traction you'll be smoothly accelerating out and away.
Calculating Gear Ratios: The obvious first step in optimizing gear ratios is calculating them. If you've spent any amount of time at a race track, you've probably heard veteran electric racers referring to the gear setup as "22/88" or "23/90" or similar numerical combinations. What they're talking about is their pinion/spur gear combination. For instance, a "22/88" setup is the combination of a 22 tooth pinion gear with an 88 tooth spur gear. Using this combination, one can easily calculate the gear ratio by dividing the number of teeth in the spur gear by the number of teeth in the pinion gear.
With nitro vehicles, the ratio is increased or decreased by changing the size of the clutch bell gear. Onceyou've calculated your gear ratio you now have a point of reference to begin making adjustments.
Tweak, Time, Repeat . . . Once you've determined your car or truck's current gear ratio, you can begin the quest for the perfect one. Finding this magical matching of gear combinations is a lot easier than you might think, too. Often car and truck manufacturers provide gear ratio suggestions with their kits. Other more experienced racers can usually help you as well. Ultimately, though, the best way is to simply head out to the track and try a bunch of different ratios till you find the one that suits your particular driving style and powerplant.
One of the simpler methods involves using a series of 5 minute runs at different gear ratios until you consistently achieve the best lap times. Start with a low gear ratio and then time your laps. After a few laps, come back to the pits, incrementally increase the gear ratio and run again. Repeat this process until your performance falls off, then revert back to the ratio you had just before the performance drop.
You may have to repeat this process anytime you race at a new track or install a new motor as these factors will effect which ratio is best. Keep a log of all your lap times with different ratios on different tracks and with different motors. Before long you'll have compiled enough data to know which ratio works best for a particular race environment without a test run.
"There's hills in that thar' dirt!" When racing off-road on tracks with lots of jumps and moguls it's best to choose a lower gear ratio. This allows you to keep your acceleration when heading up hill and clear the jumps with ease. A lower gear ratio also lets you scramble over moguls without loading up the engine and bogging down.
The Power Factor: Regardless of whether you race on-road or off, a regularly used gear ratio can cease to be the right one if power isn't taken into consideration. A typical scenario would be after upgrading to a more powerful engine. The gear ratio that had worked so well with the previous less powerful motor may not be near high enough to harness the awesome power of a new one. This can create all kinds of handling problems coming out of turns or on the straightaways because a car can't get enough traction. Anytime you switch powerplants, remember to check the gear ratio, too.
Track Conditions: Differing track surfaces can create the effect of an increase or decrease in power. A nitro engine or electric motor that did just great on a stickier surface, may find itself suddenly "overpowered" on a slick surface and unable to get any traction if the gear ratio isn't adjusted. Simply increasing the gear ratio should solve this problem and provide smooth stable acceleration without getting loose when coming out of the turns.
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