Raman

iTrader: (94)

@4Roller

My setup is similar to fyrstormer. Front shock is 60, rear is 35. I use the firm xv01 Silver Spring in the front and go between Tamiya red (soft) or topcap (yellowish/green) which is super soft. Rear Diff I use 1000. Front if you are running on Asphalt, I would use 2.5 million to make it almost locked. Ground clearance is 4 in front and 5 in rear. Camber is 0 front and 2 rear. Rear shock position, counting from inside, #2.

This is the basic set up I use when I have raced it on asphalt and works really well.

Regarding shocks. Get the TRF dampers.. look on here in the for sale section, you may pick up a pair cheaper. Yeah racing are decent, I have a pair on one car.. what I find is their plastic is really brittle and I have ended up using ones from Tamiya shocks.. also their o rings are not that great, again I end up using tamiya clear o rings

Get rid of the 3003 servo. Pick up a digital servo thats accurate. These are very good for the price, just make sure you have a 3 amp bec on your esc. They draw a little over 2 amp

http://www.valuehobby.com/power-hd-1207tg.html

If you want to stick to brand then stick with Futaba but go with their digital high speed high torque servos

fyrstormer

iTrader: (1)

You can get a front spool if you want. I have it on my FWD rally car and the faster of my two road cars. It really cleans up the handling on pavement, at least on the faster road car, which also has a rear-motor conversion. The slower road car and the 4WD rally car both have 30K oil in the front diff and 10K in the rear diff.

I don't keep track of my toe and camber in terms of degrees, but the front wheels generally benefit from a half-turn of toe-out on each of the steering turnbuckles. The camber I just set for the smallest amount of camber-in I can see when holding a ruler upright next to the wheels, and then adjust as necessary to achieve even tire-wear. All of my road cars end up with slight camber-out on the rear to keep from wearing the inner edges of the rear tires too fast, due to suspension squat when accelerating. Meanwhile the front tires always end up with slight camber-in, because the primary factor causing uneven tire-wear on the front is scrubbing the outer edges of the front tires when leaning in corners.

So basically I adjust the front toe for stability when exiting corners and accurate straight-line tracking, and I adjust the camber for even tire wear. I don't adjust the alignment to control cornering grip, I adjust the suspension stiffness and the tire compound instead.

4roller

One of my co-workers was saying that at the California Tamiya track, there is a box of beater bodies for anyone to use. These bodies are all loaners to drive on the track and have multiple mounting post holes drilled. The reason they are there is because faster drivers might accidentally ram you from all sides when passing, thus ruining your nicely painted scale realistic body. I guess crazy collisions can happen.

4roller

Before reading this, I was messing around with my car last night. I reassembled the rear end and yes. It indeed helped. Even ride height!

I also figured out that with sway bars the grub screw ball end adjustments aren't really all that useful. But the real adjustment for getting equal sway bar sag, is to move the sway bar side to side via the collars.

I ended up getting a Futaba S9452. OMG its so much faster and so much better.

I find a lot of slop in the kit servo saver. I am considering the Kimbrough 201. But I also saw an Integy aluminum one too. The guy at the hobby shop was saying that most TC drivers just use a fixed aluminum servo arm. What kind of servo saver or servo horn do you guys run?

4roller

I've been looking at ways to reduce suspension and steering slop.

I've found that the rear a-arms have a lot of play. I've shimmed them as best I could with the plastic spacers provided in the kit. But I noticed that the stock A-arms have a lot of slop in the hinge pin hole AND in the ball pivots.

I was thinking about picking these up (can't post links yet):
tqrcracing /shop/product_view.asp?p_id=4347
tqrcracing /shop/product_view.asp?p_id=7468

For the ball pivots, do you think they will fit the XV-01 aluminum suspension mounts?

I also ordered the carbon reinforced a-arms (one stupid me) which is a front and rear, so you need to get 2 sets. I fit the hinge pin in these carbon reinforced a-arms and the fit seems much tighter.

My co-worker also recommended using o-rings under the ball joints too.

So using all these shims, ball pivots, carbon a-arms, o-rings and a solid servo saver, I hope to have a car that will nice and tight. Do you guys have any other tips?

I am really enjoying setting up this car! I know its no TRF, or TA car, but at least I can get close or spend money trying

fyrstormer

iTrader: (1)

O-rings under the ball-cups will reduce suspension travel. You can use foam donuts to trap dirt so it doesn't get into the ball-cup and grind things up, but the amount of suspension play in the ball-cups is miniscule unless they were severely deformed somehow.

Shimming the A-arm pivots with those thin metal shims is helpful, but if you ever run on dirt you'll want to leave a little play, otherwise dust will work its way into the shims and make the suspension bind. Learned that the hard way.

Those suspension pivot balls look like they're the same as what Tamiya sells. If you have the stock plastic pivot balls, the metal ones are a significant improvement.

It's as good as a TA car. It doesn't have a carbon-fiber chassis with adjustable chassis flex, but that's the only difference I can tell between the TA/TB/XV series vs. the TRF series. Everything else is upgradeable to use TRF-grade parts.

Metal One

I was wondering... "What slop? This is the tightest stock steering system I've ever built!" Then I remembered that I went with a Kimbrough servo saver and never touched the factory one.

Welcome to the XV-01 fun times! Man, I love this car.

fyrstormer

iTrader: (1)

The A-arms can slide back-and-forth on their hinge pins slightly. To some people that counts as slop. I try to minimize it myself, even though I know it doesn't really affect the way the car drives.

4roller

The rear my car had some massive slop like close to 5-6mm. The end result of this slop was 2-4 degrees of toe in-out. Most of it came from the arms moving on the hinge pins and the plastic pivot balls in the aluminum suspension mounts. My package came from tq racing today. And I shimmed up the hinges with 3mm shims, and replaced the pivot balls with steel ones. I put some 5mm shims in the axles. I also put in a Kimbrough servo saver. The car is much tighter now and doesn't swing around and fish tail so much now. Worth the couple dollars and time.

fyrstormer

iTrader: (1)

???

That sounds like you didn't have any pivot-balls installed on the ends of the hinge pins originally.

Anyway, at least it's sorted now. Now you can actually enjoy the car. Btw, if you're running matched swaybars front and rear, try putting the stiffest one in the front and the softest one in the rear. That really helps even-out the handling with the boat-anchor hanging off the front of the chassis.

4roller

This car is an absolute blast to drive.

My original intent was to do on road and off road, but it seems that living in central Los Angeles, there really isn't much of a choice to run it anywhere but on tarmac or parking lots. What I really like is that the drivetrain is almost completely sealed. Open belts and pebbles seem like a nightmare. That being said, this car isn't the lightest compared to other dedicated road cars. Whatever. I took off the fenders, since I don't really need them for the street.

So I've been driving this car pretty much on road. And setting it up for on road. I am enjoying the whole 5mm slammed experience and can't wait for the TRF dampers and springs to come. Suspension tuuuuning! I'll be trying AE 80wt in the front and 50wt in the rear with 3 hole to start. Hard springs up front, something softer in the rear.

About differentials. Would be be okay to run say bike grease in the front diff? It's much thicker than the shock oil provided. Or should I just pay the money for a bucket of silicone 1,000,000cst? Has anyone tried different diff weights for road driving? I am particularly interested in keep the front diff from diff spinning on hard turns. although my driving style has improved some where this doesn't happen as much. I'd like it to hook up faster on exit.

Has anyone put drift tires on this car yet? I will probably run it on rough concrete and asphalt. I picked up some ABS tubing, hoping to make my own drift tires. It should be fun for my small backyard parking driveway thing.

Does the tb06 parts for the XV-01 TV give anymore front end and rear end adjustments?

Also what does everyone think about the screws on this kit? Stainless (from rcscrewz) or titanium from Yeah Racing?

The shims make this car ultra tight. The carbon reinforced arms will make it even tighter.

fyrstormer

iTrader: (1)

I've been using Tamiya's steel hex-drive screws, the ones with the dark-chrome finish. One of my XV-01s just took its inaugural drive in the rain, so I may switch that one to stainless.

Titanium is nice, but lots of titanium screws are made from really cheap alloys that are barely stronger than top-quality aluminum. Stainless steel is stronger than cheap titanium, and non-stainless steel is stronger still. Titanium screws aren't really worth the money unless they're advertised as being made from a high-quality alloy.

Another option is to buy Traxxas black-finished steel screws. I have those on my FWD rally car. They go well with that car's blacked-out look.

Regarding diff oils, viscosity isn't the only thing that matters; greases may be thick, but they usually shear easily, and thus don't actually provide much limited-slip action. Silicone sticks to the gears *and* sticks to itself, so it produces a large and predictable amount of fluid-drag for any given viscosity. Stick with silicone diff oils because they're a known quantity; only use grease if you want to make a diff completely open without letting the gears run dry.

Since the XV-01 has a lot of weight up front, it doesn't need a super-tight front diff like a lot of touring cars do; the weight keeps the front tires anchored to the pavement to provide (relative to other touring cars) lots of traction without a spool or super-thick diff oil. My FWD rally car has a spool in front, but that's because it only has two drive wheels and needs every last shred of traction it can get; my rear-motor XV-01 also has a spool in front, but that's because it doesn't have the motor sitting on the front axle. My two "normal" XV-01s run 30K oil in the front diffs, and the rear diffs are filled with 10K off-road and 3K for on-road.

4roller

Hey thanks for the insight into the diff oils vs grease. I had been reading a lot about mid motor TCs and your are right, the front end of this car is well planted. I do notice on ultra hard turns the inner front wheel lifts and spins. Adding the front hard sway helps a lot. But I will probably get even less of that effect once the front hard springs come in. I'll look into some mid weight silicone instead of the heavy based on the front mount motor info.

4roller

I don't think I can appreciate drift as much as some of these drift fanatics. I made some ABS drift wheels tonight, it took about an hour of making a mitre jig, cutting, and sanding. I went for a run. Yeah it's kinda cool seeing the car drift/power slides around corners. But that's because the wheels have such low traction. With drifting, you don't drive forward very fast, In fact all you do is spin your wheels and go sideways. It also sounds terrible on concrete.

So drift. Yes you can be a precision throttle featherer. I guess there is some skill in that. But other than the street car style looks, it doesn't very much appeal to me. I am glad I made the wheels instead of buying them. I can cross drift off my list of RC things to do.

Power sliding with rubber tires around turns is much more legit. Tuning suspension to get optimal handling is fun too.

/Drift

fyrstormer

iTrader: (1)

As far as I can tell, drifting is the synchronized-swimming of RC -- it's only cool when you have a bunch of friends to drift cars around a polished-cement track as a squad.

I also prefer "drifting" on pavement with rubber tires. The XV-01 is good at it. Just slap some D-compound rubber on there and you can go sideways any time you want.