The Rev

iTrader: (3)

Home work assignment... EVERYONE (not just those who wish to voice their opinion about a class of racing they know nothing about) grab a 4.5 (being reasonable) and a 5000, 40C pack and go drive. Get 6-10 people out on the track and try and race.... Tell me how much fun you have and how much money you spent doing it.....
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I'll send this to our club. should be a riot!


There are waaay too many "sponsored" drivers anymore; anyone look at redrc lately? i'm probably the last sponsored driver in the US.

And for what it's worth: 13.5 lipo is slow on anything but a small carpet track. But that's still what we run....

syndrome: when we gonna run some 3.5 super touring?????

Scott B

iTrader: (47)

Already did it at the REEDY race, I had a BLAST, I didn't break anything all week, oh ya and I did make the invite class and I am in NO way a PRO driver just someone that has put in the time to improve my driving..

syndr0me

iTrader: (32)

I spent a few weeks running a 7.5 on the rug, and it was kind of ridiculous. I learned a lot though, particularly about how my setup I thought was pretty dialed was actually a pile of s***. I've got a whole new appreciation for what the mod guys are doing, especially on foams. Maybe we can convince some guys to do 10.5 rubber on the rug once the new track is done.

skypilot

iTrader: (14)

oops

Josh Cyrul

iTrader: (1)

That's great, you are one of very few... Unfortunetly we had US, European and Asian drivers there and combined struggled to even get 41 entries for Mod (only 11 were supposed to be "Invite" Mod).... 13.5 had what 85 all from the US and RCGT had about 35. Take out the international drivers and Mod is the smallest class. It has to be more attractive to racers to get the numbers balanced or in favor of Mod. Improved competition, prestige and focus from the mfg's rather than having paid/pro guys in the 13.5/17.5 classes....

jiml

iTrader: (3)

I have a question, mostly for Josh, but also for anyone who has run mod and has enough experience to know the answer to this.

First of all, on road touring car on carpet has one thing no other class has, and that's a tremdous amount of traction. Foam tires soaked in Paragon grip almost as well as velcro on flypaper. It's for that reason that a 3.5 turn brushless motor is almost in the realm of possibility of being a race motor. Traction is to the point where the car builders have increasingly made their cars stiffer by using thicker and thicker graphite. The use of this much graphite is what has driven the cost of a TC up to and beyond what a nitro TC costs.

I'm not sure but I believe that foam tires are only used here in the US. Everywhere else they use natural rubber tires.

So imagine for a moment we made the following drastic changes to touring car.

1. Make touring car a rubber tire only class

2. Completely ban the use of graphite as a chassis and structual part of a touring car (ie shock towers)

This would I believe reduce the amount of traction available where a low wind motor would only spin the tires, much like on a nitro track or in off road. Further, it would reduce the cost of the car, and the tire truer would be thrown on the trash heap right next to the comm lathe and the battery matcher. Unless of course you run 1/12 scale. Or nitro.

The discussion of why there aren't any mod drivers is fascinating, but the answer is not one single thing. We all need to get together and figure out what would work the best for our sport.

PartTime

iTrader: (10)

Ya, most do run 10.5's but thats still considered mod.
Off road doesnt have the traction so it cant get up and go like onroad but they do have a pretty good top end.

I guess what i was getting at is that off road has mod and stock. From what I have seen in the past couple years off road will pull way more mod entries than onroad. Maybe cause they still look at it like stock is for the new guys and mod is for the pro's?

Very well put.

DK

lochness42

iTrader: (1)

This doesn't change anything - we use 3.5T motors with 5cell here as well. With lipo that much power isn't needed.
That will help with traction, but I'm not sure if it's best choice. Yeah there are cheaper cars made from fiberglass (or fiberglass with some additions) but I'm really not completely sure if it's best as they flex too much - usable mostly only on low grip carpets and asphalt.

jiml

iTrader: (3)

Yea, that's my point. It makes the cars cheaper, and slows them down. Makes racing more about driving ability and less about which car you have.

seaball

iTrader: (9)

here's something to consider:

racers are no longer cutting coms, rebrushing, tweaking hoods, or matching batteries. we have all the rip we could want...

yet,

there is scarcely a mod class, and the remaining stock classes are weak (in numbers not necessarily talent).

you know what those rule changes did? they made racing easier, not better. and yet, the numbers would suggest that it's still not easy enough. at what point do we realize that the guys mashing the keyboard all day might rather continue doing that than packing up their gear and heading out to the track?

where's lemieux on this? he's the only guy living in the u.s. that's currently running mod correctly indoors. where are the guys that have years of quality experience to pull from? instead, we have to read this garbage about bullet connectors, or pushing technology forward, (what.. is that going to cure cancer or something?), or even the implications that people need to be at least average on their first day at the track or they will quit.

btw - (we need to start keeping score in little league again).

"yeah craig, little bobby looked real good out there... so long as he wasn't swinging the bat, or throwing, or catching the ball".

there is so much broken right now. (and not just my heart)

Scott B

iTrader: (47)

I think no matter what you do your going to have the same paid/pro guys in the 13.5/17.5 classes because they want to WIN and so do there sponsors. I completly agree that running a 4.5 on the smaller carpet tracks is to FAST, also I think no matter what you do Mod will still be the smallest class.

Josh Cyrul

iTrader: (1)

jiml - I agree 100%. It is not just one thing but a combination. Most of it does revolve around the speeds though - Increased speeds just magnifies the importance of everything in the car to be set-up correct and as close to perfect as possible...

1. I used to be really against rubber tires back in the days of tires/rims/inserts and the combinations of which you could test/find to give you tons more grip. Foam was an easy answer but that's also at a time when we ran 4 purple tires or purples/plaids. Now, we have hand out rubber tires with open foam (using magentas mostly) where new tires is the norm. There's a lot of reasons rubber now is the right choice - Handouts for fair competition, no truers for reduced cost, less tires actually used at a race for again reduced cost and gets the US closer to the same page as the rest of the World so our drivers/racers can be competitive on an international level.

2. This one I think is tough because molds for chassis and all the parts are quite expensive. Especially in a lower volume/high end racing market it doesn't make sence to invest so heavily in a mold that you have to be stuck with for 3-5 years just to get your costs back. Especially in a changing time of racing formats (motors, batteries, speedos, etc). You can use G10 but then again are you going to spec people's chassis material to see if it's G10, Kevlar or Graphite... It's going to be a tech nightmare...

Getting rid of graphite on a foam tire car would grealy reduce the drivability believe it or not. The can would simply flex too much making it vague, inconsistant and usually "dig" unexpectedly in the center of the corner. You would then see upper dec stiffeners, standoffs, more chassis coverage from the bulkheads (aluminum) to make up for the loss in stiffness from the graphite again driving the cost up with new development.

seaball

iTrader: (9)

i too, love this quote.

but people will defy the odds of logic every day.

seaball

iTrader: (9)

if stock were the speed of trans-am it would be seemingly impossible to use race results to sell products. that's the heart of the idea. we need to have a class for 'little bobby' where winning is just an exercise in discipline, not a showing of advantageous gear.

this class should be so unappealing to manufacturers donations, that they would lose money sponsoring 'little bobby'. for one, specing the horsepower takes a big part of that away.

brad johnson won stock in vegas with a trinity motor. the more important part is that anyone else would have won with a trinity motor because that's all we were allowed to run.

(we've undone some good things with the new power we so graciously invited into our home).

jiml

iTrader: (3)

Thank you for an intelligent answer Josh.