dave - thanks man...

Foams- Mention me as a reference. You're not out of line, no problem, hope things work out. Did you see all of those typos, aaaaahhhhh.

Kevin- Hope you make the NORRCA Nat's I think I will be there this year so that will be fun if you and Rob are there. When you get your Trinity car let me know and I will tell/show you everything I did to mine although you know more about suspension setup in general than I do. Tonight went well. Jucha ran fast with a Ti 8turn which was faster than mine but we never timed myself and we never timed him for more than 4min because traffic was really, really bad. We ran together for about a minute nose to tail once before I pulled off. That was about all that came of it. Check out my next post for more info on my evening.
Kobo-Glad to help come and post often please.

IMPORTANT LESSONS- It seems that in the quest to go faster no matter how hard I work and how much I research I still learn something new and still make dumb mistakes. Tonight is a case in point and hopefully this will help everyone else as well.

Start off with the car being pretty good. I have been noticing the past two weeks from the Grand Rapids race until now that my car has been a little inconsistent, a little harder to drive where I am making little bobbles here and there but nothing that would kill a run. I figure it's me and my schedule of late. I have also noticed that my car is starting to not hold it's tweak and chalk it up to a t-bar although careful examination shows no fatigue spots. I also notice that I still only run 6.5-7min with the new Quantum and rx pack in and chalk it up to the main pack being charged on Monday and not having been run until tonight. The heatsink on it is cool as a cucumber.

Second run I am out and Jucha comes out so we get to run together for about a min. Then my spur strips and I am not sure why but I did get beat around some by the newbie TC's and chalk it up to that.

Third run I go out and due to some Trucks on foam tires being overly aggressive, and non considerate (using reverse and jumping the track) I have my chassis split in the front when I nail a TC that was knocked over the track by one of these trucks and is dead in the middle of the straight!!!! On top of that I strip another spur!!! Needless to say I am steaming so I go back to the pits to repair the chassis. I wind up being even more furious when I realize that three runs have been ruined and I am running out of practice time.

First off I find out that the stripped spurs were due to the bearing that they ride on moving into the hub from the impacts with the TC's. This was able to happen because I had removed the inner flanged bearing when another had gone bad and hadn't replaced it yet. I just bought some a couple of days ago so in goes a flange and that problem is solved.
Next I fix the chassis and have it actually looking new again but this took about an 45min. Then while I am doing this I notice that one of my ball studs for the upper links is bent!!! It turns out that when one of the originals broke at the treads about 3wks ago I replaced them with the type of ball studs that make up the damper tube mounts on the motor pod top plate. These type of studs have screws that go into them and the screw being aluminum had bent! I undo the front suspension and replace both of the aluminum screws with steel ones and tweak the car.

Fourth Run- AWESOME!!!!! All of a sudden I have no tweak problem, the car gained noticable corner speed, and it became WAY easy to drive and I go 9min with my 9turn!!!
Fifth Run- Last run so I put in the 8turn and time my run. I go 8min on the head with a 500sec/20amps pack of HV's!!!!!
Lessons: The bent suspension mounting point was binding the car up just enough so that it was loosing MAJOR EFFICIENCY of about 1-1.5min!!! Also, it was making the car tweaked and harder to drive!!! Even WORST I had fallen prey to the dreaded COMPENSATING ERROR (or what I call "driving around the car") and what makes this so bad is that I didn't realize it was happening which is usually what happens it seems like. I also learned with the differential that I needed to run that inner flanged bearing, better now then later. Some things are best left stock! Finally, I was missing out on a lot of fun and performance due to a few simple things. Grant it there was a lot of commotion with the track and drivers stand tonight being packed almost everytime I went out. People running out on the track and blocking my view making me drive corners blind. And others just being downright wrong with their playing out on the track although it was probably unbeknownst to them what the consequences were as three of us including Jucha broke our chassis due to them slamming into us or someone else which caused them to have a dire altercation with us. Even with all of this the little things still count and must be watched and even when it seems like we're running well we may not be running as well as we can. Hope this encourages and motivates people to put a little more time into their rides and keep an eye on them. I should no better, oh well might as well laugh at myself. LOL

12L3 Manual
 

Does any one have a copy of the 12L3 manual? I bought a used 12L3 with no manual and I want to tear it down and rebuild it from scrach! I dont care if its a online copy that can be e-mailed! Thanks

12L3 Manual
 

APR - you should check the Associated Website. I think it is www.rc10.com They have these manuals there that can be viewed, downloaded and copied. Good luck. :D

Up^^^^

Darnold....Just goes to show..its in the details.....clean bearings....smooth pivots......nothing binding.......;) .......are you running an Associated??????if so...do you run the cross brace on the front end?????

Nope, I run the new Trinity car. Just finished racing last night in our first 12th mod class since the summer. Ran well. Jucha ran stock and really went on a terror almost going 40 laps. Jucha went 39/ 8:099!! Bob I think qualified with a 39/ 8:10 and James did a fast 38. Good job by those guys. So we had 3 heats of 12th. Pretty good considering everyone didn't show up due to the snow storm.

dave did you get my other PM? I plan to contact them on monday. Is there a recommended method of contact?
IKE
P.S.Got all my stuff loaded up on my Switchblade just waiting on my Quantum comp. and I need to build a receiver pack.

Foams- Got one but if you sent another I haven't got it yet. i just got home from two days away about an hour ago. Best contact method IMO is e-m first. Yeah I had a really good day yesterday and the car is really good.

Dave,

I picked up one of your old motors from some kid that ai it was yours, it only had a few cuts on it and he said you dyno tuned it. I don't know if this is true or not, but either way it was super fast, even though I hardly got to run due to a-holes not turning their radios off. I didn't even run the the main because of such problems. After ging through the pits and turning off 2 radios that were on my fequency, I discovered that and esc wire was knocked loose due to the hits it took during the glitching, soit was turning itself on and off when the wire wobbled around. So I got it back together and ran a pack through it when all the mains were through with, and ran with another mod 12th scale who turned a 38/8:02 that night (not the fastest by the way) and had more power everywhere, and he had a p94 9x2. well I made about 9min with a 36 rollout, I measure tire diameter in mm's, (millimeters, not the candy). I was happier than a 2-peckered billygoat with this motor. So I think I got somethin for 'em next week.

my brother's (Dave S) traction roll problms were cured. His car was too high off the ground, about 6 mm's of ride hieght! He ran a new Core 11x2 last night but either it was under geard or was slow because had a good line and was consistley a second behind the leaders.

Do rx pack really make a big difference? do they even compensate for the extra weight, because right now, my car is actually too heavy.

dave,
I just sent you an e-m using the link in your tool bar thingie. I dont know if that works or not but it is on the way.
IKE

Petinis- Rule of thumb is that you use one if you are under or at weight or using an LRP/GM speedo. The LRP Quantums and GM's V12worlds even though they now come with a BEC still keep the main packs voltage up longer and better if you use an rx pack. Cyclone's actually seem to get hurt by the rx pack because their BEC is supposedly a little stronger. Actually now for 12th mod most guys don't even worry about being an ounce over weight. I'm about .75oz over with the rx pack accounting for .5oz of it. The LRP Quantum and KO rx help a lot in keeping the weight down along with the JR Z3550 servo and the new Trinity car design.

Oh, I forgot to let everyone know that the HV's that I use are about an ounce heavier than SMH's so if SMC was still doing SMH'a and I used those (I probably wouldn't because of the extra runtime of the HV's IMO) I would actually be under weight by about .25oz. Concerning the motor Petenis, if it was mine it was probably a 10turn. I sold off a bunch of D4's and a couple of my Ti's at this past Oktoberfast. They were all stuff I paid for with my own funds so it was ok. I think that the P94 of your friend was probably miss-tuned or wrongly geared. The P94's seem to make their power in a higher part of the rev range than the Ti's and if you gear too tall than you miss all of the mechanical torque on the track and wind up running under the max power part of the curve. I am currently testing some P94's for Integy since they are under consideration for possibly offering them. I am running my 9turn P94 at 23/100 which is a good tooth to tooth and a half under what I normally run our Ti 9turns and the P94 10turn I am gearing the Same!!! This is a good two-three teeth under what I normally gear the our 10turn Ti's!! What is your actual gear and tire size?

So how was everyone's race weekend? Slight correction on the results of our saturday night racing: Bob went 38 at 8 min flat instead of what I posted which was a slow 39 lapper. People were really fast getting ready for the 4th U.S. Triple Crown Series Race at Indy. Who's going to that one and who's going to the ROAR Carpet Nationals in California? I'm going to both it looks like.