I'm on hole 1 in front with 1mm under the outer camber link stud. Because that's what the fast locals use. I'm still at the stock hole 3 in the rear with 2mm under the outer camber link.
So to be clear, I put 1mm under both the forward and backward mounts on the front arms. That will effect track width, shock angle, probably roll center a bit, maybe even ackerman and bump steer for all I know. But the main goal with that change is to widen the front track width. Using 1mm spacers between the wheel and the hex would make a similar change without as many geometry side-effects, and I'm honestly not sure why one approach is preferable than the other. My understanding is that the wider track in front generally takes away some roll, maybe takes away a little grip, stabilizes the car, and makes it harder to flip.
I should start filling out setup sheets to track my changes. But here are some notes from last night's racing:
- I ran the gear diff with 500k traxxas oil all night. It diffed out a lot on corner exit, so I know I was loosing some accelleration there, but it was controllable. I think I had a radio calibration issue that was making it really hard to get on the throttle smoothly that I later sorted out. But overall, the car was much smoother into and through the corners, and was easier to do consistent laps with.
- Started on Spec-R C2.9f/2.5r springs with TRF shocks (with clear silicon o-rings) on AE 35wt oil. That car was decent bit maybe a little nervous. I switched to AE Silver/Green springs on TRF shocks (with 50* tamiya x-rings) with AE 45wt oil, and it was a huge improvement. It really settled the car down, especially in the high-speed transition. I think next time I'll start with 45f/40r, and build the extra set of shocks as 1 pair of 50wt and leave one at 35wt, and experiment with the fluid split.
- I copied another local guy's dynamic brake settings for the Viper ESC. I had it off before. This made it easier to be aggressive on corner entry while still maintaining what little consistency I had
. It was kind of weird in a way. I was used to using a lot of brake to slow down a lot to keep from over-shooting, but I found that I could go into the corner a lot faster if I just trusted the dynamic brake. I need more practice with it to get used to it.
- Late in the night, with the car working decently (better than the driver at least) I reduced front up-travel from my initial setting of 3-3.5mm down to 2-2.5mm. This helped the car on corner exit a lot, really reduced the diffing-out problem, and made the car work even better through the high-speed transition.
- In the last qualifier my fast lap was 14.2x with the average looking to be about 14.7ish. Some bad luck with traffic threw me off my pace so I pulled the car to avoid frustration. The only change between then and my B-main was less front droop and fresh tires. I only did 8 laps in the b-main, because I got caught in an accident in front of me in the first corner dropping to 8th / last place, drove 4-5 smooth laps to get back up to third feeling like I had the pace to at least catch 2nd. Then I caught a dot and traction rolled, then started overdriving and making more mistakes, went all
trying to stay ahead of the people that I didn't want to have to pass again, and eventually just pulled the car. But... during those 4-5 smooth laps, my fast lap was down to 13.9 and the average was looking like it would shape up to be 3-4 tenths faster.
So a good night from the point of view of getting the car working better, but a bad night in terms of actual racing. :/
-Mike
EDIT: I had mistyped hole 3 in front before, it's actually hole 1. Fixed above.