Back in Nomad Mode

On the Road Again

There is not much happening at the moment as my partner and I are back in nomad mode up the west coast of WA. Everything is packed up in boxes and will be for at least the next month, and might stay there as, in a couple of months time, we will be making the trek back across Australia so my partner can start her new job in Toowoomba. There is an on-road club there but at the moment they only race 1/10 tourers and minis, though it appears they did race F1 in the past. I've always intended buying a new tourer once we were settled in one place so that might have to happen.

On that note a couple of things caught my eye over the last couple of weeks on RedRC. First was this new F1 car from Kyosho. Its nothing ground breaking and follows the set pattern of most current F1's, with a pod rear suspension, though it is interesting that it appears to be 200mm and uses F103 wheels and tyres. The front suspension looks nice and chunky but how strong it is will depend on the quality of the plastic. Not being very experienced with Kyosho products I can't comment, but its nice to see more manufacturers taking F1 seriously again.

I am still waiting to see proper pics of the 3Racing F113 before I decide what might be my next F1 purchase.

Second item of note is this new tourer from ARC! The main point of interest is that it is 200mm rather than the usual 190mm. Why this interests me is, that for a VERY long time, I've not understood why there has been divergence between electric on-road and nitro on-road. I know a bit of the history of electric on-road so I can understand why they chose 190mm, but I've less information on why nitro went with 200mm, especially as some of the first commercial nitro tourers that I raced were 190mm, though we used 3mm offset wheels to reach close to 200mm anyway, because some other brands had chosen 200mm. I've also found 200mm cars a little easier to set up but that could just be an idiosyncrasy of mine.

I'm also a bit sad as this year I won't be attempting any major events. The last couple of years, despite all the traveling I still managed to attend the Queensland and South Australian on-road titles (a token effort I have to admit but I was still there, and 7th in Stock Tourer at the QLD's is ok), and I only just missed getting to the 2011 Australian on-roads due to a bit of timing issues. This year though I won't get to anything and there is definitely part of me missing it, made more obvious by the fact that, yet again, I'll be reaching QLD (where the 2012 National's are with F1 included) probably a little over a month after the event! Hopefully once there is a bit more stability next year I can do a few more events.

Until then I just gotta keep them wheel rolling.

Race Day 05-08-2012

Its been a while since I've done "serious" racing. I've done most of my racing at a club that's very new and while we get a far bit of track time, it's all pretty laid back and no overly serious. I decided it was time to gauge where I was with my car setup etc.

WCMRC are the other outdoor club in Perth racing F1 so I decided to make the 45km trip. Its a track that's been around a fair while, starting as a nitro track before houses started to encroach on it. The electric club took it over in 2010 and have been getting it back up to a top quality facility, hosting the Australian Titles in 2011. The club offers most current electric classes but on the day it was F1, VTA, Mini, Modified and 1/8 Electric. I had intended to run only F1 but due to lack of numbers I offered to run Mini as well. This stretched my battery supply to the limit because I had decided in advance to not take my charging gear with me.

The Track

Built in the late 80's, it doesn't appear the surface has ever changed much. The electric club appears to have resorted to using "tennis court" paint to revitalise the surface and increase the grip level. This is quite common around tracks in Australia that have the money to do so. The only real downside I've observed is that, if it rains, it can take quite a while to dry. The track also has quite a bit of elevation change.

Practice

After setting up I quickly hit the track for some practice. Now we have to remember I've done most of my recent running on a fairly low grip track, so it was almost a shock to feel the amount of grip available. Thankfully the base setup I have been working on proved workable from the start and I could focus on learning the track for the first run. 2nd run was more learning but I was playing with radio settings to increase my steering rate and reduce brakes. I didn't feel there was much point in changing any car settings until I had a comparison against other cars.

Heat 1

The club uses staggered start qualifying so its all against the clock. I made a dreadful start and ended up off the track. The grip level and my diff settings weren't quite in sync (this carried on all day to be honest) but once back on the track I was able to run competitive laps times, working myself back to 3rd qualifier for that heat. Compared to the regular runners I could see a couple of places I was losing time to them. Most obvious was the S section after the banked first corner around until the entry to the back straight. Through this section the car was slow to change direction through the S section and then it under-steered through the next section onto the back straight. I realised watching other races that the under-steer was, in part, due to the line I was taking, but the rest was all car set-up.

Heat 2

I tend to find running more than one car drastically affects the amount of time I can devote to car set up. I tend to resort to simple and obvious changes, which can sometimes make too drastic a change. In this case the simplest and most obvious change to the car which was a change of front tyre compound. I changed from Shizimu F1 to F3, however this totally destroyed the balance at low speed. Reducing the steering rate made a slight improvement but I decided after a half dozen laps to pull in and make sure I didn't cause an incident by spinning out in front of someone else. Annoyingly I set my fastest single lap of the day with this set up but it wasn't drivable over a race distance.

Final 1

I qualified 4th overall despite dropping out of 2nd heat. Finals were normal grid starts. For the first final I had returned to the original tyre combination but made a castor change. Wrongly as it turned out. This was also the first time I had a really good indication of just how much my diff was slipping, as I was barely able to hold onto 4th as the race started. The race was pretty uneventful which wasn't really surprising as I was still learning the best lines around the track. The car was still slow to transition but was a little improved as far as under-steer was concerned though I think this was more because of my cranking up of the dual rate on the steering again.

Final 2

The only change I made was to tighten the diff a little but at the start it still slipped far to much. This race was a little slower over all but I couldn't pinpoint any one reason. I hadn't made any significant changes so I wasn't expecting much, but I did manage a 3rd place.

Final 3

A quick inspection turned up a very gritty diff so any other changes were forgotten to do a diff rebuild. One thing about racing in WA is the sand. Everything is built on sand and it tends to get into everything. I'm using a 3Racing out-tuned diff and this uses a similar thrust bearing combination as the F104 "Pro" diff, except it uses an alloy spacer instead of thrust washers. In practice I am suspecting this reduces bearing life and I think in this occurrence this was the problem. I didn't have a replacement so rebuilding the rest of the diff made little improvement.

I had a good first lap but that was followed by 2 dreadful laps and that put pay to any decent result. Luckily everyone seemed to be having an off race so I came back to 4th by race end. It was interesting to note that even the cars that didn't have any real problems were a lap slower than early in the day. I think the track was getting slicker as the track became more shaded. 

Overall I think it was a pretty good day considering it was my first racing visit. The biggest surprise or realistation was how little grip my "home" track has in comparison and also how much better race days etc could be organised. I am not sure if I will get the chance to race there again as my partner has accepted a job which will mean moving back to the east coast, but if I do get a chance I definitely have some setup directions to try.

Front Suspension

The good ol' f103 front end definitely has its fans and its worked pretty well for many years. There are a few variations on the theme, such as the one that comes with the F109, but not everyone considers them improvements.

The main disadvantage with the original F103 front suspension is lack of adjustment. While this ensures strength (which is obviously a good thing), serious racers tend to want a bit more of all the technical bits in search of that last 10th of a second. The F109 achieves some of this with the supplied front end allowing castor and camber adjustments, but the downside is the original plastics are soft or prone to easy breakage. There are some alloy hop-ups but these have their own issues and also seem to be getting harder to get.

Doing some reading online, I came across and American F1 blogger who makes up his own version of an Exotec F104 front end but wider to suit the 200mm width. It's actually VERY simple to make and most bits are probably in a serious racers spares box already. 

Minimum you will need - 

* F104 front suspension mount (plastic or alloy)

* 5mm ball ends

* 5mm ball studs

* 45mm turnbuckles (I used 42mm because I had them but longer would be better)

* original 3Racing upper ball mounts 

* Xpress Alloy upper arm joint set - part of their 1/10 4WD Mini. The plastic versions seem to be almost non-existent, but the alloy ones are still around in online shops etc, and they are cheap enough.

Ignore the big orange thing - its just a bumper

 I still use the original version though the the "creator" has since switched to a slightly different version which he says offers some advantages in ease of set-up. I didn't have any turnbuckles long enough but I also wanted to just test the concept. It takes a bit of fiddling to get it exactly right, as well as a bit of modifying. For example the original writer says that the F104 suspension mount fits straight on top of the F109 lower suspension, but I found that it needed about 3mm ground off one end to allow it to fit as the lower mount is "stepped" around the mounting holes.

Its surprisingly slop-free for a suspension with so many ball ends, but it seems to have less movement that the original 3Racing front end. It is totally different to adjust though as the rear turnbuckle affects camber and the front affects castor, but they also both affect each other so adjusting one changes the other (this is one area the newer version is supposed to be better). It is a little frustrating at first until you work out in which direction each one affects the other, but once that issue is sorted it comes together quite well.

I fitted this to my F109 that I use with a Le Mans body so its not directly comparable to my straight F1, but as both chassis did have a similar basic setup (castor, camber, springs) when I first started with them, I feel I can use the feedback with a fair bit of confidence. So far the LM hasn't seen as much track time as the F1, but this setup does seem to induce a little more high speed under-steer in the car but at the same time the car feels more stable throwing it into corners. Given that I use a 10T brushless set-up in the LM compared to a 17.5 in the F1, this is a actually good change, but since I use a higher down-force LM style body the induced under-steer is a bit puzzling, but I am sure with a bit more track time I can get on top of it

The original version of this suspension is here