Fluff, Tarmac or Dirt?
RC racing in the UK is a thing of change, unless you race indoors all year round (lots of clubs do, nothing wrong with that), you’re gonna have to race on more than one sort of surface.
Touring car racers race on tarmac, or carpet. These are quite different disciplines. I’m not a fan of touring cars on carpet, they’re too quick and I don’t have the thumbs for it!
Off-roaders race on a variety of surfaces in the dry, dirt, grass, astro, but when it gets wet that gets a bit icky. So in the winter they drift indoors too, onto carpet, and slippery floors. But! The guys at the Proline Dirt Arena have built a dirt track indoors! Is this the future of buggy racing in the UK?
In the USA there’s a lot of dirt racing, but perhaps their weather is more reliable than ours!
The summer season is over, and the winter season is starting, so if you wanna keep on racing, you got to be flexible and roll with the changes. And find your gloves.
What’s your favourite racing surface? Comment below.
Written by simon.
Tamiya M05 Setup Shenanigans
I raced the Tamiya M-05 at DMCRC for the first time last night. There were 3 more of them out there, and it seems there’s a bit of a struggle to get a set up that works!
I faffed about with mine a bit, and got it to work okayish, it was still a bit twitchy, and had a bit too much turn-in.
Tyres were key, as usual, I discovered the ones I were using weren’t actually glued on any more, so once I fixed that they were a lot better! I was using the usual S-grips up front and M-grip on the rear combination favoured on carpet. Other folk were using A-types, but I can’t afford them!
My car is short wheelbase, I think it might work better as medium or long. But that’s not easy to change without a longer bodyshell, so I’ll stick with short and get it to work.
Springing was a bit weird, I ended up with super ultra hard springs, on the rear! And on the front about 2 grades softer. I was running a front roll bar, but not a rear one.
The M-05 has it’s front shocks leant right in, I keep thinking if they were stood up more it would be lesss twitchy? I don’t know. I’ve seen 3-racing do a shock mount which offers two wider positions, I think that will be worth experiementing with.
The other thing I did was put about 2 degress of camber on the rear. The M05 Pro comes with adjustable rear links, but not front links. So the fronts remained at kit camber (about 0.5 degrees I’d say) – if they were adjustable, perhaps I could have increased camber to try and reduce the amount the outside edge of the tyre grabs as it rolls into the corner, to attempt to reduce the twitchyness. I’ll have to try and fabricate some short front links.
The end result was a car that was quick, the fastest lap was on the pace, but it was difficult to drive, it was all too easy to turn in too quickly and for it to hit the corner, so I made a lot of mistakes. The new steering system is too sharp, the old M03 steering was more forgiving!
Oh, yes, the other thing I’m going to try is to sand down the outer edge of the front S-grips, and maybe try the old superglue on the outer sidewall trick.
All in all the M05 is cool, it corners flatter, is more accurate and fun to drive. It’ll take a few meetings to get them performing well, and then I think we’ll have some really close racing.
Written by simon.
Video: SLCC Round 1 Aldershot 17.5 A Final Leg 2
(Watch in High-Definition, click the little HD button above and then go fullscreen.)
I’m the blue and white car on grid point 6, I think I came in 5th. That big moment at the chicane didn’t really help!
Commentator is Nick Adams from Demon Power Products.
Written by simon.
SLCC Round 1: Aldershot
Today saw the 1st round of the Southern League Clubman’s Cup at Aldershot.
I was feeling particularly lazy, so I drove up this morning and did a handful of laps in practice. The car was okay, not enough turn in, and a bit twitchy.
The recommendations in the pits from Saturday’s practice was to shorten all the top links, to flatten the car out, and make it more stable. So I tried that, and also removed the front anti-dive.
Round 1 was a bit lairy, really twitchy, but I realised I’d not reset droop, and my diff was slipping. I corrected droop, changed ackerman, but forgot to tighten diff for Round 2.
I got it together in Round 3, the car was stable, decent turn in, speed was okay. I put in a reasonable run, about 10 seconds off TQ, so qualified 6th.
Finals went okay, a 4-into-1-chicane incident left me on my roof, entirely my fault I think – I was a little overexuberant! 2nd final was cleaner.
The racing was great fun though, the cars were so even on pace and setup, so it was all down to driving, nice lines and racecraft. Very enjoyable.
The rest of the rcLazy team had fun, they didn’t have much luck in the finals including letting the magic smoke out of a 10.5 with a nice big burning smell.
A great day out, it flew by.
Written by simon.
Differential Drama Day
The diff on my Tamiya TRF415-msxx was a bit gritty today whilst racing, so I swapped it out after race 2 today. I put in a unknown 2nd hand diff I’d picked up, it felt okay, so went with it.
I cleaned and rebuilt the other diff, and it felt okay, so put it back in the car, but a run later and it was very notchy again, so the spare diff went back in Unfortunately, the spare diff managed to loosen itself, the nyloc nut was worn.
So I fiddled with the other diff some more, and got it smooth again, and back in it went.
Yes, you read all that correctly, I swapped diffs after every run. And in the last run, the diff failed again, notchy once more.
This evening once I got home, and messed about with all the diff parts I’ve got, and ended up chucking out 2 sets of ceramic balls (notchy, flat spots I guess), 3 pairs of plates (both sides pitted and used), 2 nyloc nuts.
I was left with a complete diff with ceramic balls and thrust, and a good enough nyloc, and it’s very nice now.
Spares didn’t quite go to a spare diff, I was a nyloc nut short of making up a spare steel ball / steel thrust diff.
I’ve ordered up some spares: a JAAD ceramic thrust, some EDIT ceramic balls, some Tamiya plates, some HPI nyloc nuts, some Tamiya sticky covers. ie Enough to make a spare ceramic diff and some other spares left over. That should get me through a good few months I think.
(And I won’t even talk about the front driveshafts… or the end result…)
