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Do I really need one? OR do I reeeeealy just want one? :flags-waveusa:

It depends on what and how you race but most all wheel/tire combinations are somewhat out of round. A tire truer can be as simple as a sandpaper block that you use to "true" the tires on the car while power is applied or as sophisticated as a Hudy tire truer that you can precisely true your tires on to an exact radius. But with an off the car truer (other than the "Razor") you need to have either set screw hubs or very tight press on hubs that can take multiple removals from the axle. I have the sandpaper block type and an old JK tire truer that do the job for me.

Tire Razor costs about the same as three Carrera cars, last forever, and makes virtually every car better. How serious are you about slot racing?

Thank you for the input.

The answer from my point of view is that it depends on several factors. If you enter your cars in formal races it is much more important to true your tires. The stakes are higher if you race against the best proxy car builders and record holding car builders. Many of the improvised methods that have been posted will improve the performance of your cars, but to get the tires perfect you need to use a well designed machine. Some types of tires are relatively easy to true because they sand easily, that includes most rubber and urethane tires. I race on Super Tires and those are very difficult to sand. Any method that uses a fixed sanding media tends to overheat Supertires, which might damage the tire or cause it to come unglued. Even if you use a more sophisticated and expensive machine like a Hudy your tires will not turn out to be round if you use the wrong technique. Applying excessive pressure as you grind the tire can result in a smaller diameter tire that is still out of round. I recently examined the tires on several poor performing proxy cars that looked like they had been trued. The cars would make a thumping sound as they went around a wood track, indicating that the tires were off.
A final point to consider is that a truing machine is not going to be a good investment if you are not going to use it very often. If you only need a few sets of trued tires you might be able to find someone that can do the job for you.

Sandpaper will take off the really high spots on good tires and wheels.
If you have slightly out-of-round wheels or iffy tires I think you will find the car moves around to much while sanding to take the high spots off.
There have been times when I was too lazy to use my Tire Razor,always ends up a waste of time.
If the car is rough enough for me to think it needs the tires trued.....its rough enough to need the Razor.

We were racing Ferraris friday and the Mrs. was having "issues". I tried to straighten up the rear tires with some sandpaper on the track. We ended up worn through in one spot and still had a bouncy car.
Saturday she wanted to fix the problem, so I showed her the Tire Razor. We replaced the tires,glued them on and she trued her first set. Got a nice smooth 458 now :music-rockout:

All this talk about "Tire Truers" I thought we should recall this relic ! :D