32819toon

iTrader: (1)

Thanks DBM & Valk - I'll get some ordered

greenpea76

iTrader: (28)

Love my R2. Got to try it for the first time on TQRC's carpet track last night. Had to take out some steering and add in some rear, then it was better than my 417!

valk

iTrader: (13)

we are running a 2hr enduro this week before our regular racing schedule. 1 hr touring car 1 hr pancar hotswap heh.
gonna be good times and in prep, i reassembled my r1 using s1 plastic parts to help shave off some considerable weight. with cf panels where possible, plastic bearing carriers, driveline, s2 dif and shocks, the car weighs 1378gr lol. but then i added the pinion and was perfectly 1380.

this body has duct tape on it and hand brushed sections with way too much paint so the car could be even lighter lol. this was a 7200mah lipo as well, going down to a 6000 or smaller even could have it significantly underweight lol.

was hoping to reduce the drag on the car and hopefully extend the runtime on a battery between swaps. running my 40amp speed passion esc, less timing in the motor ect, hell i even considered putting a pancar servo on it. unfortunately, my batteries are crap and i was only able to push 20 minutes. competition can do up to 28, but we were only running 20 minutes in the vancouver enduro in the summer so an extra swap is ok i guess.
25 seconds to do a battery swap on the spec r.

enduro is not everyones cup of tea for sure, but fun times. anything can happen and it is never over til the end.
last year when we ran it with RRR in vancouver; the nitro enduro for 3 hours, the winning car was off the track for the first half hour with a broken suspension arm in the front within the first five laps. second place made several tire changes and replaced a rear belt, no small task in a nitro car.

our stratagy was a simple one and would have prevailed. one tire stop with the battery swap.
we changed a side belt, messed with the brakes on pitstops, changed transmissions, but the one thing we didnt want to bother with was the rear belt lol. first place to 4th overall, where the guys who DID change the same peice finished second from like 5th place for a lot of the race.

i was skeptical at first, but they are a lot of fun. great team building exercise with your fellow racers.

.crispy

Was at a big carpet race this weekend and admiring my bud's Xray steering rack and bemoaning the crappy rack in the Spec-R. Why is it SO bad, when others swing back and forth like a Swiss watch.

How have you guys been addressing this? I hear to shim it, but what shims and where? I would think that would bind it up.

Butler02

I've been trying to come up with a solution for the rack as well. From what I can tell, most of the slop is from the rack bearings moving inside the rack parts. On one of my cars I tried a small amount of ca glue to hold the bearings in place. It worked quite well actually.
I don't have the same slop in the plastic rack though. I was considering switching my aluminum racks to plastic.

DBM

I swapped the plastic rack arms from my S1 into my R1 to remove slop. Worked well. Kept the aluminum rack though. I had originally skimmed the bearings with plastic bag, but eventually used CA glue as well.
I'm curious how much slop the schumacher mi5 rack has. Neat design

valk

iTrader: (13)

i stuck a bunch of orings and various shims in mine. servos have plenty of torque to move it that it doesnt have to be super smooth and ballraced even. if there were bushings available id switch to those in a heartbeat.
im gonna investigate some better bearing options when i get the r2 possibly. basically you just have to shim the crap out of it.

.crispy

Is there anyone else's rack that would work? From the posts, to the arms and bearings, to the rack, I'd switch it all out if I knew which one would work.

Actually, I have some aluminum rack pieces that someone gave me that I put on my original S1 when the plastic one broke. It is all Frankensteined up and has worked fine since then. Just don't know what it came off of.

funked1

iTrader: (10)

I also found the plastic rack to have less slop when shimmed properly.

On the aluminum rack there these 3x5x1mm spacers that go under the 3x6x2.5mm bearings, but the plastic rack has a molded feature that works way better than the spacers. The spacers only prevent slop in one direction, but the molded setup works two ways.

Gluing the 3x6x2.5mm bearings into the arms is a must on the aluminum rack.

A lot of the slop does come from the 3x6x2.5mm bearings. Just putting a decent aftermarket bearing in there will help a bit.

But gluing the bearings, shimming, or using the plastic rack will make a bigger improvement than just upgrading the bearings.

I don't have the car handy but I will post a pic of my shim setup when I get home tomorrow.

32819toon

iTrader: (1)

I ran the plastic rack in the S1 for about a year and found that the slop gets worse with age and wear. I put an aluminium rack in and it does need shimming. A lot of the slop comes from the top brace screws loosening. You have to keep an eye on them and make sure that they're the correct tightness. If they're overtightened, they restrict the movement of the steering. I put a tiny spot of threadlock on the tip of the screws, set them to the correct tightness and they've been ok since. There's no slop and the steering is great. There must be variability in the bearings as my two cars don't have the bearing slop that you guys are talking about.

valk

iTrader: (13)

I had to shim the inner races between just like axle bearings to get the swing arms to work right. They are packed very tightly. They rub everywhere but still ball raced.
The actual rack is a problem as it only has one bearing and it is sloppy. I used a combination of 3 racing micro shims and red 0.5 mm spec r shims to pack it enough that it couldn't wobble but still free. Not an exact science but worked. I think if It was up to me a thrust bearing would ve more appropriate for a swingrack.

greenpea76

iTrader: (28)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFQXNQX3uwE

Not sure how to embed videos.
Here's a vid from Yesterday's race at TQRC. Mine is the one starting on the grid. It's an R2 with the Orange front and yellow fade at the rear. Great car. Needs more track time for fine tuning, but this was it's first race. Switched over from my Tamiya 417 V5.
Eric Epp of Protoform is the Red and Black dart. He's fast.... He had the race after I bobbled and smacked a rail. He was already gaining fast. Eric finally made a few mistakes, which allowed me to collect and move up again. This was a points series race at TQRC using ROAR legal ESC's and 17.5 motors on Sweep QTS32 spec tires.

Podium cars were Spec-R, VBC, and Yokomo BD7. Great race action!

.crispy

Anyone installed the new floating steering conversion kit yet?

http://www.tqrcracing.com/shop/produ...asp?p_id=10043

Trying to figure out what it would buy you?

Butler02

I plan on buying it. It should allow for a bit more flex at the front of the chassis because the steering posts are no longer attached to the chassis.

valk

iTrader: (13)

dude, thats badass, getting two.