Off-Road Track Building – Jumpers For Goalposts
Off Road Track - Click to Enlarge
One of the great things about off-road racing is you just need a patch of ground. You don’t need a £10,000 tarmac track to race on.
At SHMCC we used the grass car park, behind the rostrum to make a track. In true “jumpers for goalposts” style we just stuck some cones down, marked a few lines between them with whatever was lying around, and got on and did some racing.
The end result was surprisingly challenging. The back straight (slightly off the top of the above pic!) lead onto a gravel road, then back onto grass, back over the tarmac road again, round onto a table-top made of old tyres and pallets, over another small jump, then through a grass and paving slab section, across the loop taped under a banner, round onto a dirt complex making use of a bank and back onto the straight.
Lap times in about 15 or 16 seconds made it a very similar lap length to our touring car track, so it made for decent racing, and there was always something to do, always something to think about.
Excellent fun!
Written by simon.
Off-Road Racing – Like Going Back Home
I used to race off-road back in the late 80s, as a teenager. It was a real hoot. Then I went off and did some growing up, when I returned to racing, off-roading was unpopular, and touring cars were ‘the thing’.
I’ve never enjoyed touring cars as much as off-roading. Some people call touring cars ’snoring cars’, cos they are boring and send you to sleep! The thing with touring cars is they are only good fun when they are working perfectly, and you’re going fast, and on the pace. Oh, and no-one is hitting you.
Lately, off-roading has seen a resurgence, the whole sport is doing well lately, so all classes are increasing in popularity I think. I had to scratch the itch, and give it another go. Unfortunately there isn’t an easy option where I live, all the off road clubs are hundreds of miles away.
So I’ve had to encourage the locals to give it a go, so I had to go out and get a buggy and get people talking about them. Very slowly more and more people have got them, and we’ve run a couple of meetings at SHMCC.
I bought a Tamiya Durga DB01. I thought it looked cheap, and basically a plastic 501X. I shalln’t tell you all about it here, as Oople has an amazing Tamiya Durga review of it. Oople does things far prettier than rcLazy ever will!
Everyone said to me though I’d have to buy all the hop-ups to make it go well. And a few months later, they are right. I’ve spent as much as a high-end car such as the Schumacher Cat SX… But, it’s going great, and it’s arguably as competitive as a Cat?
What have I added?
- slipper clutch
- front one-way
- TRF shocks
- associated springs
- alloy suspension mounts
- alloy steering rack
- hex screws on ‘top deck’
- alloy heatsink plate (chassis dremelled out to accept).
That’s not that bad really, but there’s more either on order, or will probably be ordered soon
- Atomic carbon shock towers
- universal driveshafts
It works well. The electrics in it are basically my ’spare’ touring car electrics
- LRP Sphere 2007 spec speedo
- Team Wave 10.5 motor
- Futaba S9550 servo
- Futaba receiver
- IP 3800 lipo (shared with touring car)
It’s great fun, I liked it so much, I had to go and by a 2WD to go with it, a Kyosho RB5 SP. I’ll post about that another time…
After a Saturday afternoon racing on grass (and gravel, dirt, paving slabs…) I feel at home again.
Written by simon.
Team EA Motorsports New UK Distributor
Exclusive News.
Team EA Motorsports (www.teameamotorsports.com) have a brand new UK distributor selling their Branded Trinity/Epic Brushless motors.
These Motors will be available in 10.5, 13.5, 17.5 and 21.5 turns on special request.
The new UK website is: www.eamotors.co.uk
Add us to your favourites or talk to us trackside at SHMCC (Reuben or Jason).
Images and Stock arriving Very Soon! We will Keep you posted.
