Undercarriage Stopping Aids?

[gpraceman]

I was curious if anyone does any type of treatment on the undercarriage of the car to help it stop. For last year's WalMart race we built cars that were between 12 and 13 ounces and I was affraid they would fly off of the end of the track so I stuck a non-skid strip to the undercarriage of each. These worked quite well. For most races you won't use so much weight, but there are tracks where cars crash to a stop routinely. I built stopping blocks for our track so it really isn't an issue for our race, but others may not be so fortunate.

[Jewel]

In our race we have raised foam at the end of the track to stop the cars and keep them from bashing into each other. The raised foam seems much easier on cars that have been carefully aligned as opposed to ramming into a back stop. With heavy cars you may need to extend the raised foam area in the track.

I think your basic question is interesting because each track probably has a different set of optimal solutions.

[Darin McGrew]

Our track raises the center strip to stop the car. The top of the raised strip is coated with non-skid material (the kind used on stairs in industrial settings), but the really fast cars still manage to hit the back stop (which is covered with foam).

Anyway, I don't worry unless the decorations on a given car (and especially the decorations at the front) are delicate. Then I've added a thin layer of material that's intended to grip the non-skid material on the raised strip. An example would be my chariot car, which had plastic horses up front:

http://www.rahul.net/mcgrew/derby/photo ... tml#d95a00" target="_blank

But what material is best depends on what material is used on the track. Actually, whether any material is needed at all depends on the track and the design of the car.