Ty very much. I will try :nod:

There was 9mm of spacers inside each shock. Removed 3mm on the front and needed 6mm removed on the rear. Now I have 5mm front and rear with the sweeps. And about 2-3mm of drop

Selling my M06. I'm getting into some faster classes and this has been sitting on my shelf being unused for too long. It is very fast and is set up very well for medium grip ozite carpet.

http://www.rctech.net/forum/r-c-item...5-shipped.html

Make me an offer!

kit bearings
 

Just an update...
My M03L kit DID come with OEM wheel bearings, but not gearbox bearings.
Go figure ....

Any idea's on how to keep those kit plastic wheel hex things on the axels when chaging tyres/doing maintaince. The slip off & the pin falls out

Local rules dont allow clamping hex's

Cheers

You could apply a little grease to the pin so it's more likely to stay put.

Hi All
I've been reading this thread for a long time but never had to ask anything as it was all there already.

Thanks to Ivan many more questions for me not to ask.
However......... ;)

I have an M03M and the ball diff is as tight as it will go, but still feels loose when you hold one tire and spin the other.
My mini pushes hard in the corners which to me means the ball diff is tight.
I run S-grip- F, Slicks- R. I will be testing M grips all around as I recall M grip with hard front gives more grip than S-grips on carpet..

Some have said I don't have enough droop. This confuses me as I've read 5mm under piston and most seem to run .5mm - 1mm droop.
I have removed all rear spacers and left the front alone and will test again.
Shock length was 56mm now 59mm.

Also I did put o-rings on the shock mounting screws, but are the shocks suppose to be tight or move up/down on the mounting screws?

Oh and for the record, Ivan drives circles around me too, even with his supposedly unmaintained mini. :nod:
Maybe Jim needs some more rehab and another car to look at. :lol:

Thanks

I would try different tires in the rear. A slicks if that's what you are using is Tamiya's softest ones. Best this to do is check what your fast guys at the track are using. I guess ask Ivan.
The reason some have suggested more rear droop is to give more weight transfer to the front off power coming into a turn.
I would try higher rear ride height than the front and see if that helps with you push.
On my shocks, (Al ones) the shockends can wiggle on the balls to avoid binding. Using step screws to mount the shocks, still should be loose enough to avoid binding. If there is a lot of up down slop then are the plastic end holes worn and now too big?

@BoneCrusher

How does CAing the side walls and the outer tread affect handling? It is to reduce traction rolls basically by reducing side bite on the tire. You might feel a loss in turn in but if your rolling........

The CA creates a trade off. The car gets comparatively looser (plows) but also becomes more predictable. It's easier to control understeer than to catch the tail end of a short wheelbase that's trying to pass the front. I've found it about as running a spool. Actually, when I run a spool, the car barely changes.

Thanks
I'll check my AL shock/caps tonite. I believe my rear ride height is 1 mm higher than the front already, but I'll double check.
I think Ivan runs s-grips front, m-grips rear, but I've been running my tire combo for a year and this push just started.
It must be in the droop and or ball diff gone bad. I switched back to a gear diff to rule out the ball diff being worn out.
If I could get out to practice i would know more. :rolleyes:

Jimbo, the CA trick only creates more push if the CA is more onto the tread of the tire. If you start with a thin bead around the edge of the tread (not on the tread, on the sidewall, but right at the edge of the tread) and try it, you may find the car doesnt flip anymore, but will stand up on two wheels when driven hard. Another 1mm of CA onto the tread ive found doesnt make the car push at all, but eliminates the inside wheels coming up. Using too much onto the tread will make the car push badly, and ive stupidly done this on some S grips. Using a dremel with sanding disk u can easily remove the CA and the tire will be fine. Its a great trick to use when you want to use sticky tires, you get the best amount of grip, and when your hard driving gets fast enough that the car would normally flip, the CA wont allow it :)

My idea with the excessive weight is actually due to the amount of large bumps we have under the carpet at one of our local tracks. I used the weight to make the suspension work harder, and with soft springs, my tire is in contact with the track more often.

Jeff, could be that your front tires have lost their 'goodness'. I have found that a tire that is less than 3 months old will perform alot better than something 5-6 or a year old, but usually its not too much that more sauce wont cure it. Sorry I wasnt able to help you last Friday night, i hate it when i have to say no to helping someone, but i was flat out working on a broken stock TC, buildinga 12th scale and finding out why Tom's rec kept resetting.

I've got my CA habit nicely under control these days. I like the mild push I'm getting. I really only roll when I do something stupid (frequently) or hit a really sticky spot on the tape. (less frequently) My issue now is consistency and dealing with traffic. I'd love to have more pull out of corners, but that's a whole other bag.

No worries we all have our demons. :lol:

Sorry I didn’t follow up on my testing last weekend but here it is…

Before the weekend club race, I changed 2 things:

1. Rear springs from red to blue to decrease the weight transfer to the rear tires when laying down the power out of the corner.

2. Change the screws that hold the top and bottom of the front shocks to ball cups. I’ve been using the screws with the ‘top hat’ things in the hole of the top cap for a few years now but never realized that there was so much ‘slop’ or you can call it droop in the front and back. Since my problem was front grip on power, I only changed the front to decrease front droop, hence decrease weight transfer to the rear.

For our club racing that night, I think we had around 30 Mini’s. We run on regular office pile type carpet (don’t ask me how but it works) and on a track layout that’s been run for a few weeks now and I would say grip is med to high, but definitely high near the end of the night. Generally the M06’s dominate and 2 of the club’s top drivers were there with theirs and another handful of the usually fast guys including our current regional race series leader and last years champion (axle182) running their FWD’s.

Tested my M03 in the first round with the setup described above and I qualified 3rd behind the 2 M06’s and slowest fast lap in the top 8 cars unfortunately. The car handled better I believed but the M06’s still left the corner a bit faster than me but pretty fast I think for a FWD. The 1st round Tq’er (Rick), decided to make me a gear diff with white putty in it and told me to test that, so I took my ball diff out and changed only that.

UNBELIEVABLE.

The club allows you to do anything to your diff as you could even run a spool if you want. However, our regional series allows only for Tamiya “as built per instructions” so I never bothered to change it. Why not now. Long story short, at the end of qualifying, I ended up second position……0.1 seconds behind TQ (Rick). Not bad. In the finals, Rick and I were fairly equal and left the rest of the field. He made a slight mistake and I had the race pretty much won (2nd place was a second or so behind) until I choked with about a lap to go when I caught a corner dot and flipped. Oh well.

What I learned was the 2 changes before the race I think helped a bit as my car was pretty fast in the infield. It wasn’t until I used the putty in the gear diff did the car shine. The diff was still free but tighter than my ball diff at the end of the night. Weird also but I didn’t get any torque steer.

Unfortunately I have to remove that gear diff for our big regional race series this weekend (120 feet straight!!!) as the current points leader is a stickler for the rules and he has the car to beat and I guarantee you he’ll tear my car down if I beat him. I hope those 2 changes I’ve made can make a difference.

Will let you know.

I actually use S grips all around. I glue my front tires like what’s been described above. I left the “slop” in the rear shocks to give that droop for the rear. I have no problem steering in the infield. I guess slop in the back is fine but probably less in the front is better. You haven’t seen the body I use on my mini as you’ll be surprise it actually works pretty well and I’m even sporting the cover of an instant noodle package attached to a stick as a flag. Love the ruffling sounds as I go down the straight!!! You have to see it to believe it.

Ivan

@BoneCrusher

Good to hear you found out what your issue is. As suspected, the diff is your problem. I think you'll be running a stuffed up gear diff for your club races from now on.

For your regional WCICS races, if the current points leader wins, take apart his diff "just to check". Then you can see how he puts it together and copy it. :lol:

I'm guessing your car body is the caterpillar or toilet body? Actually I bet it's some sort of pickup truck. Less body lexan on top = less weight on top = less rollover. :sneaky:.......but then you mentioned a flag....... :D

Oh for those pesky M06s, a slight tap will do the trick. :p