The post you make when you have nothing to post

I've been down with flu for the last 3 or 4 weeks so not a lot has been happening. I managed a little bit of racing before I was taken ill but not sure that actually helped.

I've got too many projects on the go - my Mi1.5, RM-01 front suspension mod, and now an FF touring car project. Despite a few backwards steps with the backyard mill, I am still busy in the CAD program designing bits and pieces. I actually find it a lot of fun even if it never comes to anything

A few updates - 

After the dismal failure of the last center shaft mount I decided to design a one piece motor mount/center shaft mount. I borrowed a Mi5 gear diff and spool so I could use them as a reference. Its pretty obvious that the Mi5 has the motor further OUT from the center line than the Mi1. This makes it a little difficult to get everything to line up as easily as I would like and requires s lot of material to be removed from the motor mount to allow for the belt pulley. Given the troubles with milling things, and the closeness of the QLD Titles, I've decided on a different design for the time being - using the original center shaft mounts, some 8x5 bearings, the lightweight carbon gearbox shafts from an M03 and a 40mm suspension shaft. Pics to follow...

This one is just me being unmotivated (hard to be motivated when nowhere to race). The design is done and I have the ball mounts to make it work - I just have to make it.

This has come about because of my long established lack of real interest with 4WD Touring cars. I used to love my original Tamiya FF-01 and I didn't mind the FF-02 which handled like a big M-chassis, which it essentially was. The FF-03 seems to have a lot of fans, as does the Serpent FWD. There is also a new 3Racing FWD. I decided to keep expanding my experience with the CAD and design my own. Its loosely based on the famous Yokomo YR-F2 in so far as that was the primary motivation, but as I've done more reading (I didn't know there were so many big name FWD off-road buggies at one stage) I am starting to go in my own direction. I am hoping to keep the motor as close to the diff as possible to keep weight close to the wheels and I am also attempting to keep everything as central as possible. Diff is based on the Schumacher Mi5 gear diff and so is the rest of the gearbox bits. It will be belt driven. I am pretty much settled on the front suspension but the rear is still to be settled on. Will probably resolve itself as I get closer to drawing it. I am only in the very early stages of drawing.

There is a local club meeting this week so looking forward to that. I was really hoping to get a decent run with 13.5T before the QLD Titles but I guess that will happen on the Friday practice.

When is a belt not a belt?

When its the wrong length!

The Mi1.5 project has been going along quite nicely. I've had a couple of meetings with it with the new center pulley mount and Mi5 pulley and spur. I've made a few small changes like swapping the mount from the left side to the right side (closer to the motor). The main reason is to make changing the spur easier. A little stuff up on my part meant that, previously, I had to remove the whole mount to change a spur but now I just need to removed 3 screws. Fortunately, I haven't had to make anything new at this stage but I will have to clean it up and make something that looks a little more "professional".

Ignore all the spacers and stripped spur - it is a prototype after all

The most frustrating part at the moment has been finding a suitable front belt. Those of you that have read my ramblings before will remember the initial trials with finding a suitable belt, well now that I have some track testing under my belt, it has become obvious that the front belt is far too tight and needs to change. After much re-visiting websites of both RC manufacturers and general timing belt manufacturers I decided to buy a 507mm belt, originally an optional XRay belt but also used on some HPI models. The original choice was 501mm.

Now given how tight the 501mm belt was, I was thinking that 507mm would be close to perfect. After all, its only 6mm longer. How wrong I was. Extremely floppy is the first description that comes to mind. Several hours of consternation, more web searching I determined that I had to make the 507mm belt work. I had the original Mission belt tension-er sitting in a box of stuff and, as I was looking through another box of "junk", I found a piece of carbon fiber that just happened to have a slot cut into it that would be a perfect mount for it. A bit of dremel work, a couple of holes drilled and the tension-er was mounted and seems to work exactly as needed, taking out the extra belt slack.

 The drive line has much less drag now and feels smoother. Track time will confirm if I have everything right and that should be happening this weekend.

What day is it again??

Its been a reasonably busy couple of weeks but busy for mostly dull reasons. mostly centered around being chauffeur to my academic partner who doesn't like driving long distances but has had to go to Brisbane a couple of times recently for work purposes. I won't bore you with the amount of paperwork a university requires of someone to do such a simple thing but believe its far more than you'd expect.

The upside has been that I've managed to get quite a bit of track time in a couple of different places, if only to practice. Firstly, Toowoomba has been running some extra meetings to make up for some washed/weathered out ones, so we've been racing every 2 weeks instead of just once a month. Secondly, I got to spend half a day on the carpet at XRay Raceway (Trackside/Brendale) with the RM and thirdly I managed to get to a Midweek at Logan with the F1. While I enjoy/enjoyed each one thoroughly at the time it has started my thinking down a path I am not convinced isn't reality.

Car speed is always a relative thing and we probably all think, at one time or another, that we should be going faster than we are. Recently, especially with my TC, my single lap pace as been within a 1/10, or a couple of tenths of our local gun import, Ed C, but I am finishing races 2 and 3 laps behind him. Why is this? Simple answer - my consistency sucks. 

Now I am possibly going to break out the violin here as far as some are concerned, but as much as I enjoy RC racing, I've never found driving an RC car a particularly "natural" thing to do. I was already in my 20's before I started racing and I jumped straight into on-road. Initially, I made a mistake of switching from one class to another too quickly without really giving myself time to learn it properly but, at the time, I was trying to find a class that I was good at, rather than trying to get good at a class. Eventually the progression of RC towards 4WD TC as its nexus, and the loss of other classes kinda "forced" me into TC...

... and I've never really been comfortable since.

Sure I've had a few minor success with them, a few podium positions at larger meetings and even a club championship in one class one year and up till relatively recently, expecting to be in the A main in stock classes wasn't being too big headed. Overall though, I've never really felt comfortable with them. It hasn't been helped by some bad choices (buying an early TC3, selling my HPI Pro4) and I freely admit that the more adjustable they've become the less comfortable I feel with trying to set them up.

Which is probably why in recent years, every time a class that isn't TC based has made a popularity surge I have jumped on board - Mini, 1/18, 1/12, F1. Ultimately though I don't think this has done my driving any good at all. All these classes need a different driving style to achieve the maximum lap speed from them and I simply don't get enough time driving any one of them to get my brain fine tuned into whats needed to race them well. I can drive them fine (and usually fast) for a few laps but putting it altogether for a 6 or 8 minute race just isn't happening.

I think this is what is killing my consistency because I am making mistakes I just shouldn't make and it stems from the unnaturalness I've always felt combined with trying to switch between the driving styles needed for each different class. Add to this the fact I am now 42 with eyesight and back issues and its probably safe to say my best driving days are already behind me

So whats the answer? To that I am a bit stumped - I simply don't like TC enough to make it my focus again, but circumstances being what they are I don't see a practical alternative if I want to get back to a competitive level remotely close to what it once was.

Ok - a few other things -

1) Development on the Mi1.5 is continuing with some new, slightly longer belts on the way. I've realised there is just far too much tension on the front belt and its causing so much drag its actually pulling the diff pulley onto an angle against the friction pads and plates. Hopefully going 2 teeth longer will stop that. I am also starting to design a new motor mount, and a new pulley mount as the original design doesn't let me change spurs without pulling the whole thing off - bit of a f%&k up there. I've also notice a couple of interesting spare available for the Mi5 that may make a couple of other ideas I've had possible.

2) There is a bit of discussion going on about the SEQ Interclub. Personally I love going to them when I can and will go as often as possible, but after much thinking and self-censoring the only other thing I will say is that I think it needs to adopt a completely different race format rather than the standard qualifying/finals format that is used for pretty much every event these days. Perhaps something like a round robin style of thing (Reedy Invitational?)