lupinz-blog

Well first the good news.  The mini is awesome, awesome to the point where I top qualified and because of a count back came 2nd over all.  The key to this was as simple as adding a little weight over the rear.  Obviously this was enough to settle the rear end and make it much better to drive.  The down side was a slight loss of speed. Its amazing how much slower the car was with 30g on board.  I will experiment with the weight a little as it may not need 30 but it was just that 30 fitted nicely where I wanted it to go.

Now the touring car on the other hand.  I quite possibly had the worst weekend I have had so far.  Had a couple of shunts.  Put one car off the track when trying to go around it.  Broke a few parts, and was kinda in one of those why do I bother moods with it.

On the other hand a visitor, who just happened to have raced at a state and I think national level, kinda handed it to us all.  It really showed me just how much potential is still in my car as he was basically running the same kinda stuff that I am.  The other thing that it showed me is that my driving skill is nowhere near that kind of level, and I need to be careful just how much I turn up the wick.  I did manage to string together a few decent laps and it did show me that I was on the right track with things.  I just need to sort out the car a little more and stop running into stuff and it will all be good……I think.

So far the M05 has proved to be a different beast to the M03 as far as setup goes. Below is a list of the Hop-up I used for round 1 of mini testing / racing.

1. Tamiya alloy shocks
2. Tamiya M05 Ball Diff
3. Tamiya universal shafts
4. Sport Tuned motor.

Firstly the shocks. These are almost needed for the 05 as they no longer have a shock in a similar style to the 03 so there is no way to shorten them to get the ride height correct.

The ball diff proved to be more trouble than it was worth and ended up getting removed and replaced with the standard diff.

The universal shafts I feel are a must in racing, as these things tend to get bashed around a fair bit.

And the sport tuned motor is a must if you want to keep up.

From day 1 I just couldn’t get it to handle to suit my driving.  It would either have too much grip or not enough.  Speed was no problem however.  I found it to tip over very easily at our track most of the time.  I countered this by moving the Transponder to the other side of the chassis.  This helped quite a lot in stopping it tipping when going through the sweeper.

The next change was ride height.  This has had some effect, but not as much as I would have thought.

Tires have been a huge change though.  I think I have discovered that no matter what new mini tires are no good.  You almost need to scrub them to get rid of some of the grip.  At the last meet I put a set of old tires on the back and this brought the car to where I feel it needs to be.

A accident with the car has drawn me to a mounting problem with the motor in the 05.  After a front hit it stripped the spur gear.  After asking on a forum or two, it seems the general consensus that due to the long screws that are used in the 05 to mount the motor, in a crash it can move allowing it to come out of mesh and do some damage.

So round 2 of testing will see.

1. New standard gears.
2. Tamiya Alloy motor mount and heatsinks
3. Tamiya sport springs

The only other thing I may look at changing is the steering setup for the alloy one.

There has been some improvement in the setup as a whole though.  It’s taken a bit of work, and I really need to spend some serious track time to experiment with setup and see what I can achive.

One thing that I am keen to try is to add weight low down in the car to help prevent it from tipping.  Even though they say the 05 has a lower center of gravity than the 03 I still think a little weight down low will help.  The first test of this will be to put a Nimh battery in the car and see how it goes.

So another weekends racing has been completed, and I think almost everyone at the track is looking for parts to rebuild some cars before the next meet.

We had a few new cars on the track this weekend.  It would seem that they are all going to take a little time to get used to driving, but by the end of the day they all showed improvements.

As for myself I had possibly the closest racing I have ever had.  3 of us had lap times so close it really came down to who made mistakes and who didn’t.  At one point our lap times we only 0.02 of a second off each other, and our quickest lap times for the day were only 0.7 of a second off each other.  In the scheme of things that nothing.

As for my poor old mini,  a mishap with another driver somehow damaged my gearbox and stripped the teeth off the gear.  I managed to get it going but it was short lived.  About half way through the 1st final the car was grinding to a halt.  So I called it quits for the day with that one.

As for the touring car.  It had a few small things go wrong.  I lost a screw in the rear suspension which allowed the dog bone to fall out. At some point in the racing, my RX came unstuck and broke the antenna off.  Thanks to 2.4g technology this wasn’t a issue.  However my lack of tape in my tool kit meant that I had nothing to stick it back down with.  Luckily because I keep my wires neat, it could move too far….or so I thought.  Obviously it moved just enough to hit the servo arm and work it loose.  Lucky for me this happened on the out lap and not at full speed.  But still it meant I missed a final. Which put me in 3rd place for the day.

All in all it was a great day out and as usual I cant wait for the next one.

Time for some photos as well.

So short story, won the 17.5 class.

Slightly longer story, failed badly in mini class.

Had one of those days where it all went perfectly and wrong all at once.  The X-ray was a absolute weapon on the track.  Set a PB.  Then another PB.  So really happy with that.

Then there was the mini.  It went well in the first qualifier, then I’m not sure where I went wrong.  I had a problem with it tipping over.  I think this was due to the transponder location, but it took me a little while to work that out.  I played with a few things and stopped it from tipping, but then it had no rear grip.   I’m not sure if it was just tire related, of if it was one of the changes I have made.  I will look into some different tires, and in the mean time will put everything back to where it was originally set and hit the track later in the week if I get time.

Anyway I know you want photos so here are a few of the days events.

So I thought I should write something about the X-ray / Tekin build.

Well it all went together fine, took a little while to get the settings on the tekin sorted to something that I think is usable, but that was only a minor problem.

I painted the shell using left over paint from some previous jobs and took bugger all care in painting it to be honest

So got it all together for its first trial run.  Was going well, semi impressed with its speed, but kinda knew it wasn’t geared or setup right anyway.  Flying down the back straight when it suddenly look a left turn into the bushes with a big thud (about the same place my Schumacher went off in a bug way too), quickly realized that I had nothing no steering no throttle, nothing.  Thinking the worst, that I was dead, I walked over picked it up to find that it had turned its self off.  Clearly where I put the on off switch was in a bad place, and something flicked up and turned it off.  Didnt appear to be any damage so turned it on and went again.

Came home to have a bit more of a fiddle the the settings and play with some gearing.  This is where it all went bad.  I’m still not sure if it was a setting in the Tekin, or the gearing I chose, but long story short after 6 mins the motor was dead.  Got it home took it out, took off the cover and found that the rotor had failed in a big way.  A quick email to tekin telling them the problem and a new rotor was on the way from the US.

So I went over all the settings, but them somewhere I thought would be OK, changed the gearing and tried again.  The plan was to run for 2 mins check the temp, run another 2 check the temp, run another 2 check the temp.  This would give me a good idea of what was going on.  2 min check recorded good temps, but it didn’t make it to the 4 min mark.  Somewhere down near the last turn of the track is my missing pinion that decided to part with the motor leaving me stranded on the track, and because I decided to travel light I didn’t have a spare.  Upon getting home I noticed a vibration in the drive line as well.  Upon close inspection I had a damaged front left drive shaft, and it had done a small amount of damage to the hub also.  I managed to swap it out for a Mini one and its all good now.

So basically with it next event only 2 days away I still don’t know if the car will last the distance.  I may head on out to the netball court for a small test, or if not I’ll just have to hope that I have something close to where it needs to be and keep a close eye on things.  I think its going to be a day of testing so I could be in for a long day.

I also picked up a M-racing setup station.  These things are awesome for the price.  I was suprised how close I was with the ruler and eyeball method though.

Anyway I’ll report next week and in the mean time on with the photos.

Well with the 4 days off for easter, I thought  I might hire this one and take a look.

Right from the start the graphic style is one of the best I have seen for this type of game, not that there are many types of this game on the market.  The cinematography of the game are so movie like there are times that you just end up watching and missing something you have to do.  The fact that you also see boobies in the first half hour or so help as well

The plot is great, there were 3-4 times I thought I knew who the killer was, only to change my mind in the next scene, and once I did realize who the killer was I was shocked to find out.

That said there were parts of the game that I missed because of my actions, leaving a few holes in the story. (I googled the answers later)

Over all this is a great time filler.  However unless you like getting trophy’s or fail the first time its hard to decide if you want to play it again or not.

I’m not really sure how this happened but it seems there is another RC car in the family all of a sudden.

A X-Ray T2-007 EU.

I guess I kinda just fell over it and had to have it, as you do.

It will get built up to race in 17.5 but it will take a little while as I need to sort out the mini before I commit to something else.

Also I guess I should post a photo or two of the finished Mini.

So the mini has arrived, and is all put together and waiting on final wiring and the body painting.

The build was fairly easy apart from a few small things, like the instructions for the diff not being clear, me forgetting that I had extra parts to fir the shockers and doing it wrong the 1st time, and some slight confusion over one screw that I must have changed 5 times before getting the right one. But all in all it was a fun build and really took me back to being a kid again looking for all those parts on the tree.  (B4 where are you)

I will be painting the shell over the weekend, removing the shitty Tamiya plugs and then its a long wait till I can get to the next race meet, but I will slip in some practice at some stage.

So anyway on with the photos.

The mini arrived in the post yesterday.

Its about half put together so far, with the worst parts to come.

Will post more up once its finished.

Also the Schumacher suffered a fair bit of damage on the weekends racing, almost enough to put me out for the day, but do to the good nature of my fellow competitors, and them loaning me some wheels and tires, I managed to achieve a personal best lap time.

So lets take a look at what I ordered and the fun that it will give in the next few days/weeks/months/years

The first box came from Hobby King and contains. (clink the links to see because I was too excited to take any photos.)

Lipo Sack

Bit O wire

Lipo Charger

Lipo Batteries

Now most of this stuff is just for the current car just because I could.

I charged the lipo’s last night and gave the car a little run around the house.  I had to do some modifications to the battery holders as the lipo’s are a slightly different size to what I had previously, so we will see how they hold out.  But the interesting thing was the wheel spin I was able to get on carpet with the lipo’s.  Normally it would just hook up on the carpet at home and take off.  But now it will just wheel spin.

So that means I’m off to the track at lunch time today for a little test run before the weekend.

And more to the point…

THERE IS STILL NO SIGN ON THE MINI IN THE POST

Just returned from lunchtime testing.  Lipo’s have definitely made the car quicker.  Maybe not in top end but it gets there much much quicker, and stays that way through the whole run.  Have just put the pack I used on charge so will be interesting to see what it puts back into it.