Back from the race
 

Howdy folks,

I'm back from my race. The car behaved great, although lacking a little steering on carpet for my taste. I should have tried less rear toe-in but I was kind of too lazy to change it. Plus I broke a front A-arm :rolleyes: in the first round, so I wasn't too motivated to make the car even more reactive since I was breaking it in the chicanes already. It was a race based on six rounds. No qualifiers, only mains... First in his main gets 10 points, second 9 points, and so on. At the end of the day, your ranking is computed on your 5 best rounds out of the 6 you raced. I ended 14th out of 58th, which is kind of disappointing, given that my rankings in the last four rounds were 2nd-2nd-2nd-1st... problem is, I broke an A arm in the first on, and lost a body clip in the second main... oh well. the car is obviously a good base.... since a TC3 won the race in front of all the official Pro3/Orion guys (we're in switzerland, remember...)! :D :D :D By the way, the car which won is that funny tweak rod-equipped TC3 I showed you a picture of a few posts below :D :D :D Told you, it works!!!

Dingus: I raced at Discount Hobbies 3-4 years ago, and sometimes at hobbytown south... I was also a regular at Killeen, Performance Raceway in Houston, and K&M as well... I left the country just before they were done with the offroad cedar parks track (i think that's where it's at), and never got to know the place that Joor and Michalski got running for a few months... but I keep fond memories of the Austin racing scene. Say hi to John, Toastie, Drew, Mark, Ken, Joe, and all the others for me... :blush:

Speedo: the chassis seems tweaked from the factory, no doubt. AE springs also have a bad habit of all having different length, this is a classic that can throw a chassis away. And the stronger the spirng, the more effect a length difference has... the only way to do it is adjusting the shock collars on the tweak board. My car is pretty balanced (see my posts below) but all the shock collars are all over the place! Droop screw is a main factor, too. Once the droop and the collars are adjusted and the car looks good on the 4-scale board, everything should be okay on the track, even if the chassis is crooked statically... at least mine slightly is ;)

Later yall

Paul

Re: re:
 

Thanks Gator that is a nice list at least the radio is already taken care of.

I fixed the preload problem by giving the car more droop, it now has 4 in the front, and 2 in the back. Is it normal to have to use this little droop to set preload correctly, as in having the spring free when the car is picked up?

Thanks

Re: NTC3 steering rack
 

I hear some of the Michigan based pros are doing that. Why don't you post a picture of the mod you did? I'm curious to see how it's done.

Hello TC3 people,

I am looking to buy a new top-of-the-line TC and I have narrowed my choices down to the FTTC3, the Graphite Plus XXXS, or a Yokomo Special. The TC3 attracts me because of it supposedly has a very free drivetrain and many people drive it at my track. The Losi is also very popular at my track, and seems to have the best value. The yokomo I've heard is the best handling car you can buy, and I like driving with one-ways and only the yok includes these standard. Please convince me to buy the TC3!

Speedo. If you use 6 in the front and 4 in the rear your springs will seem like they are too short when you pick the car up. I don't see what good it does to have that much droop because once the spring unloads there is no more weight on the wheel other then the weight of the wheel and arm.

Right now my droop is at 6 in the rear and 8 in the front which gives me about 3mm uptravel in the rear and 2mm in the front, ride height is at 4mm front and rear and foams are at about 59.5 mm. Shocks are in the middle hole and the springs have no preload and very little "play" when the car is on the stand or not sitting on the wheels. I assume that is the right way to set the spring preload.

Anyone else care to comment on this, Tony Phalen where are you????

Good luck to everyone that makes it to Cleveland......lucky dogs.:p

OB42TC3,
I'll post a photo of a friends car that I did later today. It sounds complicated but it's really not. You really just remove some of the webbing around the original rack, then pick up 3 bags of NTC3 parts, the steering rack, the rack mounts, and the rack bearings. You will also need 3 short ball studs for the rack that are not included in the 3 bags. It's all basically grinding and measuring.

Speedo, the springs "floating" on the shock body with suspension extended is a very common issue with onroad cars in general. Most of my onroaders have this "problem". However it is no big deal. It happens because from the lightest to the strongest spring there is a such a strength difference (3 or 4 times in the AE range I think). Suspensions are designed to avoid this phenomenon for a certain spring range. When you start using super-stiff springs (AE whites for instance) it happens because it takes so little travel to make a lot of force. The spring extension does not compensate the droop. I'm trying to be as clear as I can here, it's just basic mechanics, but I never was a good teacher... if somebody wants to picth in to help, feel free to do so! :D

The ideal situation would be when it doesn't happen but it's never the case. You do not want to adjust your droop in order to reduce this phenomenon. You want to adjust the droop to make the car handle well. So much if the spring floats on the body.

Paul

Hi guys. Greetings from Malta.

PRELOAD. I always build our cars so that the springs unload slightly when you lift the car off the road.

The ideal spring should be one that compresses by 1/4 of it's length with the weight of the car. On very smooth and grippy tracks this may not apply. In fact on that sort of surface anything works.

I found this out recently with my real race car. My brother bought the car from another racer who had built it himself. It seemed to handle excellently on flat and grippy surfaces but was a real handful on anything else.

We played with spring rates, rear toe in, the lot. And still the same. Almost as quick as the single seaters on a smooth track - embarrasingly slow lap times on bumpy tracks.

We measured it front to rear and found that it was shorter one side than the other, so started to try and find the reason.

We found it last week. The front bottom arms were built totally differently. That's why we could never get the same caster. We are now building a new set of arms - in a jig this time, and hope things will improve.

Sometimes the obvious things are the ones you find last. This guy spent a goldmine on a set of con rods for the engine but didn't spend 1/10th of that for a set of professionally made, rose jointed bottom arms.

Regards

Joe from sunny Malta.

is anyone running the IRS Solid front Axle? The car should handle the same as if the diff is locked, correct?

Just wondering if anybody knows what tire compounds are being run on carpet in Stockton, CA? I want to order some before heading down there.

jack smash, not sure about the stockton track but if its high grip a good starting point is usually purples on the rear and double purples on front or orange purples which are a little softer.

also i tryed the locked diff on carpet this past sunday, i took a few laps and found you do have to ease it in to the corner to be fast with it. i think im going to try it again in another week or so when i can have a whole day of practice to work with it. how have you guys like it on carpet?

cool.

Do you know if the solid axle will accomplish the same thing as a locked diff?