Awesome day out at TORCH for Team RCLazy
Finally made it to TORCH for their all day event. You know the idea, this is what happened.
Arrived at 8ish and what a turn out, no space for parking near the track so I dumped off the racing gear and bag o’ bacon with Si. Nice to see young Dan Horton roll up for a nice relaxed intro to off road. He stole my RB5 and drove it like it’s never been driven before – more of that later.
First things first – breakfast. Si had a champions breakfast of cornflakes and a chocolate mini roll (in the cereal!).
I stuck to Sprite and chocolate. Get some real milk for a cup of tea Si! Especially now you’ve fixed the melting fuses in the chuckle bus controlling the fridge!
Drivers briefing gave us 4 rounds quali and 3 finals for everyone Yay! Good work gents, plenty of time for charging and chilling. 6 (pretty) full heats with some notable TC drivers arriving fresh faced and eager to get budgie racing!
Bob was nowhere to be seen but apparently was at a disco in London town and Digweed was splendid. Apparently?
Round one was a shocking result- me qualifying first and beating Phil Williams by a mere two seconds. Great racing Phil. Dan started out a tad excitable but a -30% expo curve calmed that down nicely. Si’s wheel fell off.
Round two pretty similar and Dan was storming through the field and had a very respectable 3rd in his heat.. Si rebuilt his diff. Sorry wrong car, he has gears now and is loving his lack of balls.
I have to stop getting cross with marshalls. Even the ones who applaud your crash before picking the car up, stand around chatting or have to do some sort of rain dance before strolling across an empty track to get you. I know it was my fault I crashed, but purlease at least look like you care. Rant over.
Anyway, soon enough it was lunch, another champion feed of chocolate, and bacon.
Si had made A4 while I was A2 in 4wd and Petit Dan had made A10 in 2wd. A fantastic result for him with my buggy first time out. By this point I had had to hide chocolate from Si, now I know why he was cross with my choice of lemon cakes for the Stotfold national!
Finals went pretty smoothly, nice victories for me in the first two legs and an interesting starting technique from Si. Si’s Fandango literally back flipped on the line. Something to do with a locked slipper and a 5.5 on max acceleration. reminiscent of Lee Martin at Stotfold. Is Si a future Euro Champion in the making? Well done to Lee for clinching the double in Austria, go team Tamiya! Dan moved up 2 positions to 8th overall and looked really in the swing of things before handing the car back. I was amazed it never went that well for me!
Si had found the chocolate again and was feeling pretty sick after an entire tub of mini rolls.
My best moment of the day: being asked if I dominated at the nationals after winning the A final 4wd. “Err… no” I replied “I was over joyed with 92nd.” “Oh.” came the response.
Nice raffle to end the day, sorry you didn’t have the winning ticket Si. So close! All in all a thoroughly brilliant day thanks to the TORCH guys for a splendid day out.
Sorry no pics, left the camera at home. Very Lazy.
Written by mark.
Setup: Tamiya TRF511 – Lee Martin
I somehow ended up with a bit of paper with Lee Martin’s Tamiya 511 setup at the Robin Hood Raceway (RHR) national…
I tried the setup, and the car was much easier to drive. There was a lot of grip that day, and the weird hard-at-the-rear idea worked well to calm down the grip roll. I didn’t have the skillz to make the setup quick though.
And check out the weird oils – harder at the rear than at the front!?
Written by simon.
Stotfold: Mid-South 4wd Regional R1
We weren’t really up for getting up at 4am or something ridiculous on a Sunday morning to get to Stotfold 4wd Regional, so I asked nicely and arranged to camp over in the chuckle bus.
So Saturday tea time we trucked up there, and took ages to get there.
It took so long it was dark when we got to the track. No cheeky practice then (the club don’t allow it anyway, only on race days), instead we ran a lap of the track, and were amazed at how steep some of the jumps were. I lost.
We were woken by cars arriving, and Rude Tony was the earliest arrival. I got up and got set up.
The field soon got busy, and the track was a steady flow of practice. Initially it seemed to be local boys not crashing much.
I thought I’d give it a go, and got the 511 out. A couple of enjoyable laps and I snapped it. Front hub.
Fixed it, and another practice. Snapped it again, same part of the track, the opposite front hub. Annoyingly I lost three of the four king pins that vanished too…
The heat list showed 49 drivers, plus a ‘guest heat’ of 2wd.
How did it go?
First three rounds the car went well, handled great, and I got quicker with each round. I loved the track, challenging, but fast and flowing.
Round 4 all the solder melted on my motor tabs… I think the connectors I’m using on the motor were arcing a bit, and got a bit hot.
I wacked in a different motor, but it wouldn’t run, I’m not sure why, so I put the 511 under the van in frustration and got out the DB01 spare car.
Had a few practice laps and it went well (until the wheel fell off).
Finals came, and I was in the D, qualified 37, not bad for me really.
So there we were, having a couple of practice laps at the start of our final and I gave Nick Wilson a little tap from behind, just to make sure he was awake, and, err, snapped my front shock shaft! What’s all that about? I hardly touched him!
That was my final finished before it was even started…
Thanks to Stuart ‘Sherlock Holmes’ for finding all my lost parts on the track.
I got to marshall the A final leg 2, and it was cool sat in the middle of the track with them whizzing round me. I got shouted at at one point, I think I missed Kev Lee crashing, so he lost some places.
Sorry Kev, I seemed to have a 270 degree marshalling position! But no matter, he took the win over the three legs at the end of the day.
There were a handful of Tamiya’s about, and Alec Springer popped his 511 into the A. It was going well, but it’s one of those tracks were a tumble that needs marhsalling takes a long time. Marshalling often required jumping down, up or over something, which takes time.
The 511 is a terrific car, I couldn’t fault mine at all really, even with a crazy 5.5 in it I was loving it. I wasn’t fast, but I really do need a lot more off-road track time. I’m loving it though, it’s ACE.
Kathryn enjoyed it, cooked a gorgeous breakfast, and took a million and one (quite unique!) photos, cheers chuck, Xy!
Written by simon.
Tamiya TRF 2wd Buggy
Tamiya TRF 2WD Prototype Satoshi Maezumi (Pic: Jun Watanabe)
It’s been many years since a proper Tamiya 2wd racing buggy. And now finally there’s one on the way.
There’s a pre-production prototype being raced by TRF team drivers, and photos are slowly leaking out.
It was first spotted at the Yatabe Arena being raced by Satoshi Maezumi. And now there’s (at least) one in the UK, it appeared at PDA piloted by Lee Martin.
Tamiya TRF 2WD Prototype Lee Martin @ PDA (Pic: Ross Whitelock)
(Pics of Lee’s 2wd at PDA by Ross Whitelock, click here to see full set on Ross’ site.)
So from the photos, and the gossip, what does it appear to be so far?
It’s all pretty traditional 2wd layout, rear motor affair, but we don’t expect Tamiya to reinvent the wheel, they know better than that, just improve on what already works.
The details?:
- Moulded tub chassis
- Rear motor
- Front TRF dampers behind moulded front shock tower
- Rear TRF dampers behind moulded rear shock tower
- Rear wishbones from 511
- Rear hubs from 511
- Rear driveshafts NOT from 511
- Bearing in wheel front wheel fitment
- Cells down centre
- Servo in front of cells
- 511 steering rack
- Body clip wing mounting
- Moulded rear motor guard
- Slipper clutch
- 3 gear gearbox
- 511 type ball diff with geared pulley
It all looks very familiar, suitable for Tamiya to do a normal ‘plastic’ kit, at a cheap price, and a TRF bells and whistles carbon fibre one.
I had a quick chat with Lee, and got a few confirmations out of him, and it’s close to production and the above list is pretty accurate…
One rumour is it is to be released end of May. There’s the Euros warm-up around then, so I guess we’ll see lots there. I’m certainly sure we’ll get it this year though.
But, the big question, what will it be called? 211? 212? Manta Lee?
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- Tamiya TRF 2WD Prototype Lee Martin @ PDA (Pic: Ross Whitelock)
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- 511 rear suspension (Pic: Ross Whitelock)
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- Rear motor (Pic: Ross Whitelock)
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- Tyre… (Pic: Ross Whitelock)
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- Big Air (Pic: Ross Whitelock)
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- Underside (Pic: Ross Whitelock)
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- Tamiya TRF 2WD Prototype Satoshi Maezumi @ Yatanabe Arena (Pic: Jun Watanabe)
Written by simon.
Tamiya 511 Build Review
After a short delay of doing other things, I’ve finished the Tamiya 511 build. It worked out real nice, probably the nicest kit I’ve ever built.
Last year I built a Tamiya TRF-416WE touring car chassis, and the 511 is remarkably similar, but chunkier, more robust, and just more more more (no much).
The build was sweet, it went together no problem at all. Mark and I did 80% of it one Saturday afternoon, and built it to kit settings, apart from ceramic balls in the diffs (from Ghost RC), Ghost damper o-rings and a couple of other bits here and there, including some titanium turnbuckles.
And of course, wishbones are (or will be) 501X kit items after my embarrassing wishbone breaking incidents: I dropped it breaking a rear, and I drove it into the living room door breaking a front, before it was even finished…
Very few parts needed adjustment, everything is mentioned in the manual. Shimming of the wishbones and steering is worthwhile, so spacers and shims on hand are very useful.
Getting it up to rolling chassis stage was easy. The electrics install was hard though, it easily took as much time again. There’s a lot of things to avoid, the spur gear is right where you want to put everything, and the belts are close by too.
Electrics for now are Losi Xcelorin speedo and 6.5 motor, Futaba S9550 low-profile servo, Futaba 2.4GHz receiver, AMB PT.
After a lot of perseverance, the install was done, and it’s neat. The lipos I used are only 3200s so no clearance issues, higher capacity lipos need the bulkheads trimming, or lipos moving out a little. I located the lipos with some lead strips on the bottom in the cell slots.
The weight distribution is okayish with 845g on the rear axle and 795g on the front. Total weight comes in at 1640g. So that’s 52/48, so I need a touch more over the rear. There’s space between the lipos for some weights, but I’ll probably run it first to see what it’s like, once I’ve got the race tyres on it, currently it’s just a set of Tamiya wheels and tyres from the DB01 kit.
One thing I’ve not done is remove the rear spring adjusters. The ‘TRF boys’ all remove them to get the rear end low enough, but with kit springs (which are arguably too soft?) the rear driveshafts are almost horizontal. I’m as yet undecided whether to run Tamiya springs or Associated, I’ll end up trying both I’m sure.
A quick shell in my usual colours topped it off, and a few stickers and it’s almost ready to race. I’ve got to do final camber/toe adjustments .
Very nice car, I’m looking forward to getting it on the track this year. I’m keeping the DB01 to run along side it, and to compare the two.
Brilliant!
