Car update

Hi everyone,
Well time for an update on the car. Had a miserable second round of the Ardent Winter Series. Big shunt in the second round of qualifying and it killed the sensor board on my motor, day kinda went downhill from there. Qualified second in the B final and won the first final, second in the next so a B Final win overall. Gutted as the car was handling fantastic before the shunt! Ho Hum roll on next weekend. 
Now I had the choice of replacing the sensor board or getting a new motor. I opted for the latter as the GM was second hand when I got it and it was getting on a bit. So I came across a bargain Trinity D3 that had only been ran twice. Weighed it before I put it in the car and as you can see its 6.8grams heavier. Was hoping not to add any more weight to the car but this can't be helped!!

Once that was fitted I turned my attentions to the new front end parts from CRC:

The new front lower and upper braces including servo mounts. Now this is how the car looked at the start:

One of the first things I noticed about the new lower plate was it was quite thick carbon fibre. I ran the suspension mounting plates as well as the carbon riser plates. I decided to still use the riser plates as I have a lot of new tyres and don't want to true them right down. 

Now I thought I would put the servo on before I mounted the plate to the car. I put the servo mounts on and noticed that the holes are different spaces from side to side. With the mounts fitted as below it didn't allow for my futaba S9602. I am guessing they for JR or KO servos?

Swapped the mounts round and it fit my servo fine. 

Mounted the plate to the car with the riser plates underneath. 

Reattached the front suspension, mounted the servo saver and sorted out the links. 

Now I had the front brace to fit. I had previous run with a raised roll centre, this was done by raising the castor pin with another plastic holder. With this kit the screws that you get with it don't allow for that so I have had to remove that extra plastic part to get it fitted. The mount is fantastic though Really stiffens up the front end. 

Well I have to say I am massively impressed with the quality of these new parts. Top notch like the rest of CRC products. Thanks to John at CRC for getting me them sent out. Can't wait to try them at round three of the Ardent Winter Series this weekend. Weighed the completed car after all this and the weight had gone from 945 to 950gms so there is a weight saving with the new front end parts, shame the motor was so heavy! Going to be a interesting first few laps though, new motor and new front end parts. Hoping for good things!

Car Update

Hi all,

Been a while since I posted stuff about my car. It has been running really well the past few meetings, problem seems to be the guy behind the sticks at the minute!!

Recent upgrades are 12th kingpins and springs to the front:




This has helped make the car smoother.

I have been trying to get the weight of the car down to the 930gms limit (or as close as I can) but have been struggling. One problem I always suffered with is the size of the futaba receiver. I love futaba radio gear, bought an original 3VC with my life saving when I was 16 and used it for 10 years (its still being used by the guy that bought it off me as far as I am aware) and the only reason I upgraded was I got a bargin 3VCS 2.4ghz off ebay. The Futaba FASST system is brilliant and I never suffer from interferance problems with it. The only gripe I have is the size of the receiver for the stick handsets. Now I know there is a smaller R614 receiver but that doesn't work with the 3VC line of handsets.  I thought I was stuck with the rather large R603FS receivers but I happened to come across an article that mentioned another manufacturer that makes FASST compatible receivers. A quick bit of googling and I found a receiver that should work in a glider model shop! Next day it turns up and I have to say it is tiny! Its made by a manufacturer called FrSky and the its the TR4 model:

Granted it has two ariels coming out rather than 1 external and 1 internal but look at the size of it! Now this is the main thing which made me buy it........... IT WEIGHS BUGGER ALL!!

That is a 8.2gms weight saving, happy days! Dead easy to set up and I must say I was a bit dubious about using it because I hate interference problems but I used it Chesterfield club night and it was fine. It was a complete bargain as well. The normal Futaba R603FS is about £90 to buy. The FrSky TR4 was £24 plus shipping! Many thanks to Richard from http://www.t9hobbysport.com/ who got this to me next day! They have a great website with live stock levels, nice guys to deal with an quick shipping!

The BRCA AGM was held on Sunday, low turn out but I think things got changed for the better, GT10wise 2s cars need to be 1150gms minimum which should hopefully even things out. There is hopefully going to be 4 nationals next year as well. 

Well I won't be racing for a couple of weeks now :( but will post any changes I make to the car. 

Cheers

Brca AGM reminder

Just a little reminder that the brca agm is on this Sunday and there will be a fair amount of discussion surrounding the gt10 series.
It's in Stoke on Trent, details on the brca website

Www.brca.org

Ardent Pan Car Winter Series Round 1

Last Sunday saw the first round of the Ardent Pan Car Winter Series.Very good turn out for both F1s and GTs. Unfortunately the day got off to a bad start when I dismissed my alarm rather than snoozed it!! Woke up 1hour late!! Got to the track quite late which mean we had to pit along the side of the track which turned out to be great, sat and watched the racing while I was working on the car

Managed to get out for a few sighting laps just to check the car was ok and that the new bodyshell I was using didn't catch on anything. I got put in the second heat for qualifying, this meant a bit of traffic dodging but not too bad. 1st round of qualifying got under way and I got a fairly good time in but the car felt unstable and I wasn't able to get a rhythm going round the track. I did a slow 24 lap but the top guys were doing fast 25 laps. I was running magentas all round so swapped to magenta rear purple fronts for the next round. Car felt much better, quite a bit calmed but allowed me to do faster laps. Unfortunately didn't get a clean run but still managed to improve my time slightly. Top guys were hitting 26 lappers now but they were using 2s lipo 17.5t motors which has a major advantage round this track especially. 3rd Round of qualifying and I wanted to get a 25 lapper in to guarantee a spot in the A final. This run was fairly clean and I stayed out of trouble. This allowed me to get a solid 25 lapper in and left me 5th in the A final. 

Finals Time!

I really need to work on my starts as I almost got mobbed on the start by the quick reactions of Vince Formosa (not bad for an old bloke!) I almost managed to gain a place but the door was rather firmly shut and I ended up last. People ahead of me had a bit of a scrappy race but managed to fight my way back for a 5th place finish. 

Second final and I got a much better start, the first lap was amazing! Everyone drove a clean first race and the couldn't have been  more than a couple of millimetres between the cars going round corner. A couple of time it was 3 abreast! I managed to grab third place by the end of the first lap and the car felt great. Unfortunately about 6 laps later I hit one of the yellow kirbs at speed and it left me facing the other way in 7th place. I manged to fight back to 5th and was having a fantastic battle with Mark Simpson. Managed to get past him going onto the straight. I thought I was going to have some trouble keeping him behind me until he was took out by a back marker which ended his race (shame as it was a fantastic battle). I managed to cruise round to take 4th place. This allowed me to take 4th place overall or 1st of the 1s lipo cars :) 

Many thanks to John and team for a fantastic event and I can't wait for the next one. 

Here are few pics from the event, thanks to Vince Formosa for the taking them. There are fair few more over on www.rccircuitcars.com so head over and have a look. 

A Final Grid

Fantastic Shell by Tony Cooke:

Repairing Foam RC Tyres

Thought I best put up a small piece on how I repair my tyres. Had a couple of deep chunks in the middle of tyres and I am such a tight git I didn't want to throw them away. So out I found a old spare magenta front 1/12th tyre and broke out the truer!


Step one
Take one chunked tyre






Step Two
Cut out the chunk, I find it easier to cut out a square around the chunk. Makes it easier to chuck out a replacement bit of phone.



Step Three
Find a replacement tyre. Preferable the make and compound as the tyre you are repairing. I didn't have any RC4less donors so but I found this GRP Magenta, so close enough!



Step Four
Trim the donor part and glue into place. I use Evostick as it is flexible when it dries. Leave to dry for a couple of hours






Step Five
One it is has dried put it on the truer and take VERY small cuts until you get a smooth finish

Ardent Winter Series Round 7 (End of Series)

Back at the wonderful Ardent Raceway this weekend for the final round of the Summer Series. Now I have not had much luck at Ardent, general good qualifying then all going to pot in the finals. A lowish turn out saw the GTs split into two heats. Now judging by my previous results in this series I was not looking at a good final result for the series but was hoping for a good result on the day.

The track had been changed slightly since the last time I was here which has made it a bit slower. I placed my fastest time in the first round with a 26laps in 367 and this was good enough to take TQ. The car felt good running RC4Less tyres magenta all round. For the last round of qually I changed to purple fronts which settled the car a bit less. I also tried a front brace plate at the same time. Hard to tell what change the brace made but the tyres definately made the me drive the car more consistantly.

Finals time and I cocked up royally off the line, car speared left for some reason, hadn't took enough of the additive off I think. Ended up third in the first final. Second final got away to a good start but cocked up a few laps in and was down to second behind Vince, I was a VERY VERY close battle and was nipping at his heels lap after lap. There was a couple of debatable incidents which ended up with me winning and vince finishing Third. This meant I took the overall win. The knock on effect from this meant that I ended up third in the series overall which was a hell of a suprise! UPDATE - Apparantly the points were wrong and I ended up third instead of 3rd, bugger! Never mind!

Well that wraps up the summer series, A big thank you to John Dawson, Ian Plimmer, Simon Hagues and Geoff for running the series. Can't wait to get stuck in at the summer series. Also a congrats to Vince Formosa for coming second in both the GT and 1/12th series and good luck with the next couple of months! Heres a few pics from the day.