Very nice, OSherman!

Huh, usually when I don't put tire sauce on the rear the car would spin out too easily while off-throttle in those driving conditions.

Good idea you used dual rate to cut out some of the steering. If the car is turning like in a V instead of a smooth U pattern, it could be that your inner tire is lifting off the ground mid-turn causing that snappy boomerang kind of turn from the stiff diff setting. If that is the case lessening the diff stiffness can help, stiffer front damper setting (harder springs, stabilizer) can also help, giving the tires a tad more droop can also help.

For beginners the near open diff setting is probably easier to drive, meaning use only one additional shim per side or just add one extra shim on one side for slight LSD action. Might want to give that a try first. And don't worry about finishing in the top 5. Practice until you can run a whole battery pack without hitting anything... well, unless there are other drivers messing up your apex.

What type of surface are you running on??
We've found that sometimes is good to sauce only the outter half of the from tires and the whole rear tires. This all depends on the track conditions of course, but it might be something for you to consider Since you're saying your pushing.
Keep us updated of your progress! And remember this is fun too!

Ohhhhhh. Daddy Like !

A quick step back in time to my M01, installed a rear stabilizer bar to supplement the custom front bar I made a while back.

I used the front silver bar on the rear as there was just too much play with the thinner black bar that was supposed to be used on the rear. Turns out the stiffness is pretty much perfect with my custom front bar. Car runs quite nice now with minimal roll through the switch back.

We race on carpet. Went to the bigger track today and the openNess made it much easier. After a few laps I was getting through with only the occasional barrier incident.

After heat one my car failed scrutineering for being too low. Raised it up and for heat 2 it was much harder to drive and I was 4 laps down on my heat 1 performance.

For heat 3 I put stiffer springs front and rear to try to get back some of the feeling I had in heat one. Much better with me being on the same lap as a couple of the other more experienced guys. My fastest lap within 4 tenths of the guy who one the B mains the last 2 meetings.

For the race them I left it as it was and was taking some parts of the track much better than others and had made up some places in the first couple of minutes, then I put it roof side down though and couldn't catch back up. I'm pretty sure my fastest lap will be faster again.

My 7 year old daughter had a go during free practice and now wants her own mini

Sounds as if its coming down just getting more practice on getting around the track now!
Good Luck

BTW on your 7yo! Go For it
Golddust started when he was 10 and hasn't looked back!
Its a great way to make memories with them!!!

Hi need help urgent im building my m05 mini cooper racin and i got it with everythin included it has a standard motor and a tamiya brushless esc tble-02 im unsure what cables go to what and the manual doesnt help at all any ideas many thanks

Hey Osherman
Here ya my Old Skool zoom zoom lol

minijay- You wont be using the orange wire since you are using the silver can. Just hook up the yellow to yellow, blue to green.

As for setup, I'm just going by memory so I hope this is correct. Once you have your motor and battery connected, you want to make sure that the TBLE's LED is lit GREEN for your silver can.

Then push the setup button once on the TBLE, it will flash RED slowly, pull your transmitter throttle trigger all the way (forward throttle caliberation), then press the setup button again, it will flash RED rapidly, push your throttle trigger all the way forward (brake/reverse caliberation), then push the setup button again to end setup. That should be enough to get you going for now.

Make sure you take the time to read the TBLE manual though, I know it can appear frustrating. Majority of the features listed in the manual are for brushless motor setup though.

There's an online manual and mode setup video on Tamiya's website.

If you're wondering about plugging into your receiver, that will be specific to the receiver you have. Can't help you there. Generally speaking, however, steering is CH2, throttle is CH3 and the darker coloured wire (ground) generally goes to the outside edge of the receiver.

Edit: found a cool video on dealing with Tamiya's silly lifepo4 voltage cutoff. Probably a similar procedure available for their other models.

+ YouTube Video

Are you sure about those channel numbers, Monk?

Nope. All my receivers are marked with ST and TH, so I've never had to think about it. They'd appear to be in those positions though.

It's usually CH1 - ST and CH2 - TH. I'm pretty sure my 2 channel transmitter wouldn't work if I used CH3 for throttle

The way I remember the channels are
R transponder
S. Steering
T throttle

or as I was told, once upon a time by Mr. Tekin

1 to turn
2 to burn