Project Vaterra V100-C USGT/VTA
 

Just for kicks i decided to purchase the Vaterra GTR RTR for my kid as he is a serious GTR lover!!
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USGT/VTA is starting to pick up at our new indoor facility and i like a challenge so i decided to see how much work it would take to get the car competitive so here is my story:nod:

I am a fan of shaft drive for low power as it is more efficient then belts so this was a plus. The kit is a nice step out of the box for realism while still having some of the needed options to compete well. True double wishbone suspension large oil filled difs, caster adjustment and adjustable droop. However there are a few things that i was concerned about and that was lack of height adjustment with shocks, grease dampened shocks, no camber adjustments possible and no roll center adjustments. Later on i also realized that even with optional speed gears you can only get down to 5.13 FDR which is no good for 21.5. I can deal with the other issues but the gearing had to be attacked first! i designed and machined a simple spur gear adapter for it and my FDR is now 4.13 using and 88spur and 54pinion.
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The suspension arms are beefy and i dont think they will be an issue unless of course you are running into curbs with modified motors! At this point i have not had any issues with anything quality wise! i like the suspension design except for the lack of camber adjustment but once again it has not been an issue it comes set with -1* front and -1.5* rear which is where i usually set my cars to anyway.
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The difs have metal internal gears and plastic external gear, they are a large pitch but are quiet and strong. the difs come with just a small amount of std grease in them. I cleaned them out and went with 200k in the front and 1500CST in the rear. the brakes are a nice touch:nod:
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The shocks are actually a clever design, they are grease dampened but locked so they will not twist. They come with some sort of green grease on them but i felt it was under dampened so i started off with Kyosho 30k grease and then installed them upside down so the grease would stay inside the shock!
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The kit tires and springs are very soft which works excellent on asphalt but on carpet it was too edgy and very hard to drive. I now have the USGT spec tires on it with 2.6# front TC spring (they do not really fit right but luckily the ride height is the same with no collars).
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http://youtu.be/YdIwbhzWAgE

First time out with the car, it really drives nice! although VERY heavy 1600g!! because of the shaft drive it accelerates quickly and you really cant tell its that heavy, runs a bit warmer though which makes sense. First night out fast lap was a 13.0 (VTA 13.1). Since then I ordered the GT3 body mainly because it has a wing and the black is too dark for me, converted to run a shorty pack changed the radio and installed a better servo.
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Last night the VTA EOS winner showed up with a very fast VTA car(Xray T4) he cranked out some fast 12.5's in the first round but I was able to get some 12.3"s with good batteries. So for the next round to keep it fun i dropped in an old slow battery. His fast lap was 12.526 to my 12.522 and i took the win by only a tenth!! Great fun as we were literally bumper to bumper the entire race, he actually would have won but he choked on the last turn of the last lap about 6' from the loop and that was all i needed:lol: No vid of that race but I am downloading the first race right now!

First race vid, you gotta watch the entire race!!
http://youtu.be/ZGvfcHKCnSQ

Wow......

Nice!

Wow.......

Just trying to understand here, you were running your 21.5 against a 25.5 VTA car? Or is VTA a 21.5 motor at your track?

cars are built to spec, mine is detuned. If i run my car in race mod with good batts/timing the car is about 3tenths faster, maybe more. Both classes are just now emerging so we run them together. On the bigger outdoor tracks here the GT cars are about 7tenths per lap quicker so that sounds about right on a 25sec lap.

Also in the practice vid there were 2 GT's and one VTA. Not the same cars on both vids.

Made a new upper deck today. Grip has come up alot on our track and the chassis has way too much flex and it was making the car hard to drive. I also incorporated a fan mount to keep the motor temps down!
Also figured out a way to mount a camber link on the new upper deck so rear camber can be adjusted.
http://i770.photobucket.com/albums/x...ps2a33c847.jpg

Nice to see someone sharing their results upgrading this car. Keep up the good work.

Any upgrades planed? Maybe a cheap set of oil shocks? Even tamiya mini cva's are better than friction shocks.

They make lots of upgrades for the car. I just havent had the need to change anything!
I actually like the friction shocks, If you think about it all pan cars use friction shocks and they are the fastest cars on carpet, very consistent. my only gripe is lack of collars, eventually i will upgrade them but as of right now the car has the lap record for the class!

This is sort of true to an extent. Part of the reason they are fast is the foam tires and fully adjustable suspension. Almost all modern pan-cars use links and a standard oil filled shock and some kind of torpedo tube.

Still very cool for trying something new and different. With the shorty what were you able to get the weight down to?

I wasnt referring to the actual speed as much as i meant the consistency but i understand your point! As last years EOS champ and current UF1 points leader in rubber tire F1 I can tell you that one of the current trends is to actually run 1k friction grease in the center shock for the same reason!

Also TC style chassis have more adjustments than any pan car, you cannot adjust rear roll center, camber or toe on a pan car and it is debate-able weather front roll center can truly be altered due to the solid lower arm/ stationary kingpin, but thats another topic all together!

I actually havent weighed it lately but will this afternoon! I think i recall the battery being around 40g lighter but not sure.

Are these 190mm or 200mm 1/10 scale?

190