bxpitbull

iTrader: (6)

Both of you make excellent points. I wont even go that far back talking about swiss cheese...the Losi XXX-S graphite looked like a widely gapped cheese grater. But lets be honest, if a dude is going to spend thousands to win trophies and purses not large enough to cover a fraction of what he spent (non-factory of course), then he needs more than a win, he needs a keeper.

I totally agree with the li-po thing, which is why I raised the point. If you peep dudes car that I pasted, that thing has MAD weights. True, to gain acceptance, we need to take babysteps. But hey, if dudes want to run with welded depth charges aka sub c's, us li-po guys shouldnt be penalized.

I just caught wind of a fallacy of the converse...some people say lighter cars give one an advantage, while others say it makes the car less table. In another breath, some people say adding weight stabilizes a car while others say that it makes a car slower. Do you see how shit gets confusing?!?

Itchy

iTrader: (1)

Joe schmo from kokomo has to weight his car because he is gaining advantage by pocket only. Everybody can have fun if all run 1500 grm cars. without weight limit you will end up spending hundreds just to keep up with the big pocket racers. And you wont have better racing because of it.

Besides Joe schmo from kokomo has advantage anyway, because he will remove weight from the top of car (ie: top deck screws) and add it closer to the chassis, therefore lowering the CG.

Also lighter cars can be stronger, because a lower mass in a crash reduces the chance of part faillure. Just look at Xray M18. Its indestructible not for pure resistance (the T2 is much stronger), but because the weight is so low it doesnt really needs to be that strong.

bxpitbull

iTrader: (6)

According to this guy, your line of reasoning is WRONG:

Joel Lagace
Tech Master

1,274 Posts Since Feb 2002
Trader Rating: 1 (100%+) Today, 03:29 AM
Report | Post #5


Ok so with that type of thinking an even smarter guy running stock would slip in a 19turn armature when no one is looking, or make his car wider, or run a extra cell or run lower ride height or use reverse on the track............ect ect ect

Look rules are intended to create some sort of stucture and level playing field. There is enough "legal" tuning a guy can do to go faster. The fast guys go fast within the rules..

A reduction in weight results in an increase in Horsepower,top speed and acceleration without the weight limitation there would be some very fragile cars used on the track! Would it be fair if you got your ass handed to you because your buddy was running a car 1/2lb lighter then yours? When before the weight reduction you where about the same speed?


"RACING without rules is just BASHING!"

I was always under the impression that if you weigt lighter, in many instances, you increase strength, not lessen it. Like racing bikes. Ultra light frames, strong as all outdoors. Keep it going people.

HI_808

Lighter weight does make a car more nimble, but because it is nimble it is also more unstable. In full sized racing, cars are lightened, but they are also equipped with aero parts that create massive downforce. Therefore, in high speed situations, the aerodynamics of the car help to stabilize it while the light weight aids in agility through corners (when the light weight is needed the most).

All else held equal, adding weight slows the acceleration of a car. Up to some threshold, it does not really affect the overall top speed. That is because a lightweight car has less momentum than a heavier car. Anyway, what it comes down to is overall balance. According to all of the contextual circumstances of a race, things need to be constantly adapted for the optimal results.

Lipo is definitely the future, but it will not be fully accepted until the industry is geared for it. The guys in charge wouldn't have it any other way. On this topic, most of the TCs today are designed for heavier nimh cells and will be thrown off balance in terms of weight distribution with half-the-weight lipos (the only top tier TCs that seem to be weight-balanced for lighter batteries are the JRXS and the TA05MS). Lipo guys need to be "penalized" with ballast in racing, or else cars like the JRXS-R w/lipo are going to have too great an advantage.

mac853

You made me remenber again my old ages, when the race regs of mine home town is allowed using foam tires and unlimited car weight, we work hard everyday to remove out the car weight, but with a lot of modification and unlimited creations, of course with a lot risk to breaking the car, from 1350g a yr4m original car to 1200g: removing bumper and somepart of the gearbox with dremel, changing the original lower and upper decks with more holes ones; alluminium screws, kingpins and swing shafts; titanium turnbuckles and pins; delrin outdrives, pulleys and ballnut; removing the esc and receivers cover, etc.
I heard a lot more crazier kinds, for example:drilling the wheels and motor mount as honeycomb, handmaking pins with small carbon shafts, cutting the battery bar thinner, cutting shorter the esc and servo cables. So a lot of crazy stories from that moment, make me feel younger than you all make me to remind, thanks so much.

HI_808

LOL... Your post and signature gives valuable insight into why you use Shikamaru as your avatar. A fine perspective if you asked me...

Joel Lagace

iTrader: (4)

What i ment by more fragile car is that if you where to run classes with no weight rules the manfufactures would run to produce even lighter cars then they produce now, then riding the finline between durability and performance(kind of like IB cells),The swiss cheese effect by racers would occur on all cars and costs would go up.. IF you started off your thread stating that your a lipo user complaining about the 300grams or what ever of ugly lead you have to run to stay legal at a race i would have relalized what your issue was. Not the acutal weight rule just the fact that your new cells make your once sexy car a big fat hunk of lead.

I still stand behind what i say though. IF your running in a class that follows rules and allows lipo and nihm then you must follow the weight rules. What your actually looking for is to have your cake and eat it too. Your running lipo against nihm and you want to take a huge weight advantage too. What you will see in the future is that soon every one will run lipo and the chassis weight rules will change to acomidate the ligher cars. Our club is allowing lipo this fall, and with that rule came the agreement that current weight rules would be followed 100% of the time...

Lighter = more expencive. Steel bike vs carbon fiber bike is what???? a few thousand???


So to clarify?
a- you want a new rule to reduce weight in touring cars to acomidate lighter lipo?
b- you just want to take full advantage of lipo and stick it to your fellow nihm users?
c-even after the weight rules get dropped for lipo and you can run with almost not lead you will still want to stick it to your fellow racer and skim the car even lighter bellow what the rules call for??

LOL Just some fuel for your fire buddy dont take it so seriously.

Racing= following rules Bashing= do what you want

Joel Lagace

iTrader: (4)

Just to clarify i understand what your saying.

Today to identical cars(losi jrxs cars to take away the need to weight balance) one with lipo the other with nihm and no weight rules. Yes you are correct the car is actually no stronger or weaker because of its total weight but during and impact the lighter car would/should take the impact better then the heavier car. So yes the car is lighter and perhaps stronger. But at the same time the car is accelerating faster, has more power and can hit a higher top speed. (this weight vs HP speed is as old as racing is)

But if the 2 identical cars equipt with identical gear and batteries and one car started milling away meterials or installing new space aged lighter materials you would end up with perhaps more fragile cars(from the milling) or cars of the same strenght with the space aged materials but at a huge cost to the end user, so you get chassis wars.

Eitherway at some point you need to put restrictions on racing and conform to rules. Right now its a transition period from nihm to lipo and brushed to brushless. Going to be some sad faces,some happy faces and in 3-5 years all this stuff will be behind us.

Did you know a 2wd sedan can legally run lighter then a 4wd sedan? Maybe go 2wd there will be more room for the weights!! LOL

porschejim911

iTrader: (6)

I think RC is expensive enough without people having to lighten already $400 cars to be competitive. Sure you can lighten by getting titanium and aluminium everything but it costs a lot. It's already hard enough to get new people in due to all the cost. Plus you don't win $, so why would you want to spend the cash? If everybody is doing it the playing field is just as equal, but everyone spends more. So why not get cheap weights to keep it even rather than spending hundreds extra?

Ed237

iTrader: (11)

EVERYBODY has the ability to remove weight from their cars - From super-expenisve lightweight parts or batteries to dremeling their chasis into swiss cheese.

Fortunately, the minimum weight rules are there to 'level' the playing field and keep costs down and the racing fair.

And as a side benefit they also protect us from ourselves.

Francis M.

iTrader: (2)

The current weight rule is reasonable and allows you to move weight around which imo is a lot more technical than just removing weight.

Like Joel Legace aleady pointed out, "racing with out rules is just bashing".

mac853

Thanks for Hi_808 to pay mine attention, because this figure(Shikamaru) make me remind my Secondary School teacher's advisory after my scholar IQ test: Hey "Mac", you should be one of the bests IQ grades ever of Our School History, but you never could prove it on the exams, you are a Super Lazy, never hang on the books to study, so you have been expelled!
Anyway, could somebody tell, word "dremeling" really exists, have you got another kind word to replace it, because as my remember (almost 10 years ago) we don't use exactly the stuff off Dremel to lightweighting our YR-4M or Xpress.
But in actual era we could see almost our chassis with 6 nimh cells, can not be as light as car from before, almost 1520g even with alluminium screw, shaft or smaller bumper, delrin outdrives, because the actual era, the cars is more metalised not so much with plastics, we have also must understand the Brushless system is also heavy than we add Brushless fans to cooling the motor (maybe 2 of them or more), put battery holder instead of tapes and European plugs on battery and motor for the driver be more relaxable, putting noizy killers in negative cables, so in actual era we just didn't care so much about the weight anymore.

syndr0me

iTrader: (32)

Americans are fond of creating new verbs. "Dremeling" isn't a real word. It's just a word that's used to describe the process of using a Dremel tool to work on something, sometimes an R/C car. If you used a Dremel to drill a bunch of holes, you'd be "dremeling" your car. It's similar to how Google is used as a verb. "I'm not sure, google it," for example.

syndr0me

iTrader: (32)

I've driven the Type-R a few times with a light LiPo (3200) and no added weight, and it felt like a 1/12th scale in some ways. :-)

bxpitbull

iTrader: (6)

Now hear this...I KNOW THEY HAVE RULES TO LEVEL THE PLAYING FIELD, I SAID THAT IN THE VERY FIRST POST!

That said, what my question is (was), with all of todays touring cars, pretty much the same (go Team Magic and MI3 for breaking the mold, yea Losi too), how much shaving can one do that will make a noticeable difference in the upper levels? People please stop saying "guys cant afford", because if you are running with the sponsored guys, you can afford it. And ANYBODY who owns and follows XRAYS definately shouldnt be making that point. If a guy can afford to buy lighter batteries and it gives a "slight" advantage, why should he make his car "heavier" to accomodate guys who lets face it, REFUSE TO CHANGE! You guys that are beating the drum referencing li-po are some of the same dudes who are saying that todays crop of Nimh is just as competitive, so why should one "anchor down" their car to lessen their advantage and give you an upper hand? If one more person say level the playing field or people cant afford something, I'll find you, tie you to a tree, put honey on your face and smoke out a beehive downwind. Creative spending, set-ups, skills and knowing your competition makes winners, not necessarily lighter cars!