Lee,

Thanks for the info. it's a great post. I am going to start with the notebook and I know what you mean with the little fingers playing with daddy's toys. My 19 month old just Loves to play with my transmitter when the car is on to see the wheel's turn.

The biggest problem I am having is consistency. or if you are mathematically inclined Standard Deviation. My fist few races my SD was about 1.9 Now I'm getting it down to .9 to 1.1 But I Have only raced at 3 club meetings. So I am improving. I have good batteries (well good enough for now) and possibly for next year going to matched cells.

I have a link car (CRC Carpet knife 3.2R) so I don't have that problem but I have had screws back out on me and I have started to use Locktite. It's wonderful stuff.

I have been told by a few of the racers that I Have to go SLOW to go FAST! I never know what that meant until I geared down (smaller pinion and larger spur) and saw the difference. I had Way more control and my consistency went Wayyyyyyyy Up.

Again Thank you all for all your posting and input

i have a RC12 L3 and have had it for a few years and im looking for a new 1:12th preferably somthing that uses metric nuts and bots instead of imperail cos its just annoying cos i cannot buy things for an team associated at my local shop is there any other 1:12ths that are quick and around the £200 mark, any other sudgestions would be greatly apreciated.
but i would be willing to get the RC12 R5 if its anygood.

I just picked up a 12R5 to poke at and play with. Seems like a pretty nice piece of kit and definitely meets your metric fastener requirement. Not sure what UK price would be but I can't see it being 200GBP as the street price here is $200. That makes them the least expensive "current" kit I'm aware of, advantage to production coming from China where all the other players (BMI, CRC, SpeedMerchant, etc) are producing right here in the US afaik. I know for fact BMI is.

As far as driving technique, the things I find most important are staying ahead of the track, and being able to expand your focus...

The first, staying ahead of the track is the simpler of the two. Coming from off road, you're probably noticing that in foam tire carpet racing things come at you FAST... approaches to corners are at much higher speeds than in off road. If you're not using reference points, you're likely to overshoot a lot of corners. I find my best lap times happen when I can have the car rotated and pointed in the direction it needs to be going by the time I pass the apex of a corner... take a simple hairpin for example... if I get to the middle of the corner and my car is not pointed in the direction of the next corner, I have to waste time getting the car rotated... it should already be rotated most or all of the way by the time I clear the board. If it's not, I tend to think it's because I'm reacting to the track rather than anticipating or "staying ahead" of the track. And on the rug, if you're reacting to the track, you won't be fast. Things just happen too quickly and reaction times add up.

THe other matter, expanding your focus, is the harder to explain... When I'm concentrating on my car, it';s like my attention or awareness zooms in on the car itself and a small "bubble" around it. The harder I concentrate on my car, the smaller that bubble of awareness gets. It's like tunnel vision. I tend to not see what's going on around me, and it's very hard to anticipate things... a stuck car on the apex of a corner won't "appear" in my visual field until it's too late to avoid hitting it, or I'll overshoot a corner because I don't see it until I'm past the spot where i should have let off the throttle or turned in... it'll feel like everything is happening too quickly and I'm fighting just to keep with it all.

If I try to "pull back" my attention from my car itself, I am sometimes able to take in a lot more of what's going on... some days I can "zoom out" my concentration to the point where I can almost see everything that's happening on the track and still see what my car is doing... when I can get in that mode, it's much easier to drive a good line because I can see my car, my reference points and everything else around and process it all without having to think about it. On really good days, cars have crashed a little bit in front of me and I've been able to make a small correction to avoid getting caught up in the incident almost before I'm consciously aware of what's happened. It's like my subconscious has spotted what's happening and made my hand make the correction before the crash has even registered in my conscious mind... The older I get, the less often I seem to be able to get into that mental state though... I'm not really sure what used to help me get there when it came a lot easier, but I'd love to figure it out... I used to be able to get into a relaxed state right before a run where I could just empty my head (not that there's much in there these days) and let the subconscious side take over...

As far as things to look out for... Always check for any interference between the body and the car that might impede free movement of the pod, make sure your wiring can't impede the pod movement in any way, and look in the body for tire rub marks after a run... any of these will cause inconsistent handling problems and have you chasing the setup... collapsed front springs can cause odd behavior, so check and replace often, especially the lighter springs like .018 or .020's. Check the rear axle bearings regularly by taking the pinion off and giving the axle a spin. IT should spin freely and as it stops you should see it rock back and forth a bit as the heavy side of the tires settles to the bottom. Any slight bind there will have a bigger impact on performance than you might expect. Look for no friction and minimum slop on any pivot balls, or your handling won't be as good as it can be. The only place I'll tolerate some slop is in the steering tie rods. I always like a bit of slop there, but nowhere else. The older Corally cars used to come with a warning note in the build manual to NOT remove the slop[ in the steering linkage or it would make the car harder to drive. I didn't believe it until I DID remove the slop, and they were right... the car got harder to drive and my lap times got slower.

One other thing I can think of right now... forget feel. Go by lap times when you evaluate setup changes. I've put cars down and felt absolutely DIALED and been a second a lap off the pace... and I've put cars down that felt nasty and been had the best lap times that day, so don't be fooled by how the car feels... a slow setup can often feel GREAT to drive, only the lap times will tell you if it's really good or not.

Very good posts .... but I'll add the one thing that always seems to jump up and get me .... did again Sunday:mad: Always check all the fastners as they seem to back out at the most in-appropriate times, like being 2nd qualifier in the mains and TQ is broke ..... so here's my chance until the car started handling like a "Big Wheel" on Ice!! :lol::lol:

One of the best writen descriptions of this that I've ever seen! Well done, and I would have never thought of telling this as a driving tip before but should. After reading your post, I realized that this is exactly what's going on when you're the fastest and why I have a tendancy to hit stuff when it isn't. I started racing again yesterday after a 5 year lay off and found that I was not doing a very good job of this at all. I was focusing too much on the car and over shooting corners a lot. This will make next weekend a lot easier I think. Great stuff and thanks for posting!

WOW!!!!!!! So totally true. I raced on Sunday and started to be more consistant. Going slower is totally the way to go. And Looking more forward really helps. I'm still going slower then the top 5 guys but I made it to the A-Main this week which was cool and came in 4th.

Just a couple of questions about setup.

How (with out a setup board) do I set camber and Toe or the CRC 3.2R. I Think I may be having basic setup issues. On power up THe car tends to pull to the left.

Thanks Again

I have a feeling you'll find this thread interesting. I know I did.

clamping
 

i noticed while viewing some pictures of 1/12 cars that some of the drivers have a large vise like thing holding the car while they work on it .. is that something that is still around or was this something that someone made up?

Anyone have a pic?

I should know the answer to this but I've been gone a while.......how does changing the roll center affect a 1/12 scale car and under which track conditions do you want either higher or lower roll center? I am using the IRS caster blocks that have four mounting points for the upper arm hinge pin and want to experiment a little. I'm currently running the pins in the upper outside position which gets you the shortest upper arm length and the least amount of camber gain. This should also give me the lowest roll center available, I think.

Moving the pin to the inside upper position will increase camber gain and should raise the roll center slightly. What conditions would I want to use this and how will it affect the turning capabilities? And to add more confusion, when would I want to use the lower mounting points, both inside and out?

Shorter version of the question could be....if my car is pushing, will changing the upper arm pivot point help?

Steve...how sure are you of the above? I'm certainly open to correction but I believe you get more camber gain with a shorter upper arm, less with a longer (seems the opposite of what you've indicated). This is one of the reasons "real" race cars use very long suspension arms compared to what was true in the past.

I believe roll center only changes if you change the angle of your upper arms from parallel with the ground (or at the rear, as with the Low Roll kit on Carpet Knives, by raising or lowering the pivot ball). You can also affect roll center by raising or lowering the center of mass. It's been a LONG time since I looked at this but it strikes me that pointed more down at the inside ends effectively lowers the roll center while bringing the upper arms up closer to parallel with the ground would raise the roll center. I believe you want to raise roll center if traction is low, lower it if traction is high (ie. traction rolling, "tripping" over the front, etc).

Again, MOST open to correction...so have at ye knowlegeable mass!!

A more parallel upper arm will yield a lower roll center. A more angled arm is a higher roll center.

Shorter arm more reaction/intial cut
Longer arm more overall steering, not as reactive.
Parallel arm will reduce traction roll, take some side bite out
Angled arm will increase side bite, camber gain

Not sure at all, that's why I'm asking. Ay my age, I've forgotten a lot. Just trying to figure out what the changes will be if I move the pivot points around. I don't get enough track time to just try them all and hope what happens is right.

The end of a longer arm travels in a wider arc then the arc of a shorter arm. Because of this the amount the top of the king pin moves in toward the center of the chassis is less then the amount the top of the king pin moves on a shorter arm. Thus a shorter arm will have more change in camber as the suspension compresses.