Originally Posted by
IndyRC_Racer
I am still running a Tamiya F104 at my local club. This car started life as a pile of free extra parts that I've slowly upgraded to basically a Tamiya F104 X1. The only Tamiya blue aluminum parts that I'm missing are servo mounts (Part# 54203) & the pivot post (Part# 54169) - both have long since been discontinued.
I am racing indoors on black carpet using CRC F1 premounts. While the car is fun to drive and reasonably competitive, it tends to push on power and lift the inside rear wheel through the corners. Does anyone with experience racing the F104 have any general setup advice?
- T-bar? (Currently using a 3-racing 1.8mm 1-piece t-bar)
- Front springs? (Currently using Tamiya F1 gold front springs)
- Upper deck? (Currently using long carbon fiber upper deck but can switch to separated FRP upper deck)
Here is a pic of the car and thanks for any advice.
You may want to try a couple things on the T bar. You can actually run without the center screw in the t bar. I preferred this when not running in TCS races (they make you run the screw). We used to glue the foam included with shock bladders on top of the t bar to maintain proper ride height.
Alternatively, I would run the Tamiya medium t bar (green no cut out) or maybe like a 1.6 mm. You have a pretty stiff t bar and that contributes to lifting tires. A softer t bar lets the suspension twist a little further before it lifts a tire.
The long upper deck mostly makes the car more reactive off center. Switching to a separated upper deck will make it steer more, but it may also make it too crazy to drive. It's not a ton of work to change though, so you might want to try it.
The thing that may help you is taking the 2 plastic spacers out from under the camber plate on the front end. Dropping the plate down allows you a lot more adjustment as far as setting camber gain.
The other thing is the steering knuckles...those look like 3.5 mm offset knuckles, which can kill too much steering on an indoor track. The standard inline knuckles will help a lot with steering.
I also felt like the servo with the spline pointed forward didn't steer as well as the servo with the spline up.
https://rcf1blog.blogspot.com/2010/1...-tbar-mod.html
https://rcf1blog.blogspot.com/2011/0...up-how-to.html