Originally Posted by 32819toon

To get better turn in the obvious things to do are to increase weight or weight transfer to the front wheels. The other is to use tires with a higher coefficient of friction-----stickier tires. 454s are what I usually use, but traction roll can become a problem unless you add glue to the side walls. While both tires are important, the outside front wheel is the oe that's most important.

Let's go through the things you can do to your set up one by one. The first is the one you mentioned which is to go to a softer spring. The second is to lower the front ride height in relation to the front. The 3rd is to increase the length of the rear shocks. These are the obvious ones.

There are some others, but I don't know what option parts you are using. The stock hex drives are 6mm, you could use the option 4 or 5mm alloy hexes----expensive, but nice parts to have. If you have the option shock towers, try the second hole on the front and play with the shock angles in the rear. If you do't have the rear shock tower you could try a spring one step softer. If you have the roll bar on the rear, you could go to the softer one or remove it. You could also bump your ride height up a mm or two all around. As you can tell these are to let the car roll a bit more so you'll have a little more lateral weight shift, which will load the outside front wheel.

The one most overlooked by less experienced racers is the toe out and also the most disputed. I'll give you my take on it and you can try both ways and come to your own conclusions. If you want better turn in, I reduce the amount of toe out. Often I use almost zero. Guys with a TC background think you add or increase toe out. I think this makes the car sluggish. This is also the one that affects the turn in the most.

I recently posted a tip on the way I check toe out cause, for me, it's very difficult to check by eyeballing it while the car is resting on all 4 wheels. I turn the car on it's side, then put the front tire resting on the table, flat against the table. Then check the angle of the upper wheel. This will in effect double the angle you're judging, thus making it much easier to gauge your toe out.

Hope this helps and I don't mean to sound like your high school math teacher.

Originally Posted by M05 newbie

So more or less pack it a little bit. I'm going to try this. See if it helps out a little bit. It'll get me rolling sooner when I get my gears next week considering the diff isnt even ordered yet. I'll post pics if I can and show the process of what i did. Hey I know I've been told about gears a few times but I think in going with the tamiya reinforced (black). Any other favorites out there when it comes to m05 gears? Mainly for toughness.

Originally Posted by patorz31

RW Racing in england make a machined fast gearset for the mini. It is machined delrin like the TC spurs he makes.

Originally Posted by monkeyracing

The number one killer of M chassis gears is the crappy stock aluminum pinion Tamiya supplies with kits. Those things go all shark toothed in a hurry and destroy the spur gear. Get a Robinson Racing or a Kawada pinion, or even Tamiya's own hardened version. They're cheap and you'll replace far fewer gears. I'm running the same, stock, white gears I did last season and expect they'll last another.

Here's the key to M chassis pinions: The pitch of the gears is 0.6 mod, .6 module, or some variation on that. They are not 48P, no matter what the dude at the hobby shop says. Robinson Racing sometimes uses the term "48P metric" but it's inaccurate.

Originally Posted by sakadachi

For me, I use toe-out mostly to stabilize tracking. These M03's and M05's (with the exception of the V2 behaving better than the others) have a hard time tracking straight while going on/off throttle for me unless I give them ample toe-out.

I don't know which chassis we're talking about, but the M03 and M05 both have fast turn-in in factory form as long as the tires are gripping. I would practice the off-throttle timing on top of the tips Granpa posted about softening the front suspension and lowering the front ride height, giving more rake. If you are using stiff diff setting and under steering, then you will need to find even grippier tires for the front, put some traction compound on the outer treads. May cause traction roll.

Originally Posted by M05 newbie

But wouldn't the machined metal eventually wear on the plastic body and cause wear that will cause the body to be replaced? And wouldn't metal with no oil to lubricate and cool cause overheating which would cause the metal to soften and strip easier??

Originally Posted by monkeyracing

The Robinsons are noisy (STEEL!). The Kawadas (duralumin) are the quietest I've tried and last forever.

Originally Posted by patorz31

They are machined Delrin, not metal.

Originally Posted by M05 newbie

And delrin is.......???