Grip
Current RC car tyre ‘foam’ & ‘rubber’ technology versus Gecko® foam rubber technology
Why do Gecko® tyres have a different level of grip?
The Gecko® foam rubber technology uses compounds with a unique blend of polymers, fillers, oils and other special materials combined with a unique process of manufacture that individually moulds a single piece of foam rubber to get consistent high performance properties all around the tyre.
The Gecko® tyre enables you to take a tighter line around the bends, gripping with minimal slide, allowing the power to go on even sooner out of the bend. Therefore you are basically driving a smaller distance on the track and as you can accelerate more quickly out of the corners, all this usually results in quicker lap times.
The Gecko® tyres exhibit a consistent hardness all around the tyres (across the width and around the circumference) so optimising rubber in the contact patch. A criticism of conventional ‘laminated sheet’ foam tyres is that you do get a variation in the hardness across the tread width which means variation in density/weight and so, due to centrifugal forces, this will give an uneven contact patch profile at high rpm (see diagram above). When combining the consistent hardness with the unique cell structure of the ‘in house’ rubber compound formulations then this results in the notable high grip and good wear resistance of the Gecko® tyres.
Gecko® wheels
ARL have also developed a range of wheel stiffnesses incorporated into their unique ‘Gecko® pad’ wheel designs. For example stiffer (white) wheels are used for the 1/10th electric touring cars where maximum grip and stability is required with all the deformation in the rubber and not the wheel (= more rubber heat build up = more grip). However, more flexible wheels are required by the 1/10th Nitro IC TC cars where the wheels need to move with the car’s changing angles under higher speeds and consequent loads around the track in order to maintain the contact patch.