Almost Enough Speed…
Did all my mini fiddling work? Yes, almost!
I raced tonight, and instead of being 3 or 4 laps down off the pace, I was only a lap down. I made the A, by the skin of my teeth, hurrah.
A little room for improvement though… I managed to trash the motor I was using whilst cleaning it, not sure what I did, so I was on motor 2, which wasn’t quite as quick in testing. So I’ll revisit the motors again and do some running in etc.
And, the track was very tricky, lots of chicanes etc, and I think my slow servo isn’t cutting it… I might have to try the fast Futaba one out of the touring car to see what difference it makes, if it’s noticeable I might have to get a quick servo for the mini.
Tyres, in the final I was struggling with understeer, fronts were Express, and bald, and rear M grips. I’ve got some new Express but not on rims, so I’ll mount them up and try them on the front, with a veriety of rears to see what’s working.
Springs, I’m running it pretty hard, I think I need to soften it up a bit to let it roll a bit, and hence grip a bit more. A couple of times I was getting the diff spinning up in a tight corner.
All in all, good stuff, and a little more room for improvement, I’d be frustrated if there was nothing left to try!
Written by simon.
Midnight 540 Fettling
I had a bit of a moment last night, I was on the way to bed, past my bedtime at about 12:30am… and I ended up messing with silver can 540s for an hour.
The one I’ve been using in mini this season is not the same one as last season, but they are both identical black-end Johnson 540s. This season’s just never seemed to have qute the same edge, even though looking through the slots the brushes seem a lot more bedded in.
So I ended up testing all three (including an old metal ended one), and true enough, last seasons seemed to sound the fastest when connected to a cell pack.
But oh no, that wasn’t enough, I then cleaned them all, motor cleaner, brasso, cotton buds, motor cleaner, re oiled bushings, comm dropped them. All three of them! It was now 1am…
Re-testing found them all sounding a little faster than before, I think, but last season’s still sounded the ‘brightest’. So it got refitted (I swear RC’s worst ever job is refitting a motor to an M03 mini…), soldered in and we’ll have to see how it goes on Wednesday night.
I can’t help thinking though, it still doesn’t seem to be totally run in, those brushes aren’t perfectly fitted to the comm, even though it’s had dozens and dozens of meetings, it was used by the previous owner for a year before I got it, I ran it for a year too. Should I pull it out again and try the old water (or better, Coca-Cola, apparently) dunking trick?
I got to bed at 1:30am, sigh…
