1/18th Outdoor Off road track design advice wanted
I am in the putting the final touches on my backyard 1/18 scale dirt track.
Currently it is about 20' x 30' The lanes are 4 ft wide, and a lap is about 150 feet. Right now the track is more or less flat with slightly banked turns at the end of straight portions.
My big indecision is about jumps and other obstacles. Without jumps and with the wide lanes, I have been able to log several hundred laps with my Vendetta ST without having to do more than blow the dust off and change batteries. I enabled the reverse on my ESC and I can often run 5 or 10 minutes without having to marshal the car once. If I charge 3 batteries in advance, I can go out and run my Vendetta ST for 45 mins with very few interruptions, then do the same the following night without having to mess with the car.
When I told a friend about my set up, he said: "you got'a have jumps". When I read about other peoples indoor or outdoor tracks, it seams like jumps and other obstacles are standard or an expected part of the design.
Obviously they add to the excitement (particularly for those watching) and the fun. The downside which isn't discussed that much; is that, you need have a couple track marshals out there to put cars back on the track
and
you break drive shafts, hubs, knuckles and other suspension parts.
I don't have any real experience in off road, I just know that running on a 1/10 th scale on-road paved race course, I broke suspension parts, 3 cvd drive shafts and had a hard time keeping the wheels on.
I read a lot of posts about people busting up their 1/18th and some of those stories may be related to running them on big 1/10 1/8 the scale tracks.
Any advice from those with experience would be helpful.