John Stranahan

iTrader: (27)

Bill-Thanks. Thanks also for the invite. Travel is not in my budget nor possible healthwise for me.

CRC Gen X 10, Petit Lemans Editions, 2S LiPo, Novak 10.5

I had a really good day at the track today. We had shirt-sleeve weather, bright sun, low wind. I swept the track with a new device for me. It is a 32 inch manual sweeper with twin counter rotating roller brooms and twin circular side brooms. I could manage it well. In 20 minutes I did more good than 1 hour of sweeping by hand. I can't actually sweep for 1 hour by hand. It is good to use a blower after this device as its main purpose for me is to loosen that stubborn dust that will not move with the blower, but always sticks like mad to a foam tire. I put 6 more pounds of sugar on the layout. Traction was medium.

The water in the moats had subsided for the most part. My car survived the immersion yesterday with only a cleaning needed. Picture the car on TV that was driven into the lake as the wrecker pulls it out. Speedy Chris got to his and mine before I could. That was the condition of the car. Caked mud. Water pouring out. The only thing missing was the seaweed and the dead body. The electronics were OK. Some Windex cleaned up the rest on a wet rag.

Changes to the Setup
As I make changes I will update my posted setup in my previous post.
I got in 40 glorious minutes of track time on the Gen X 10. My spec pac which contains 3400 mA-H would run the car for 10 minutes today. My 5400 pack would thus have run it a long 16 minutes. Traction was good enough to quicken the car quite a bit over yesterday. My gear remained at 24/72. Motor temps were only 110F. We are still cool for Houston. I was getting the performance I wanted out of the motor. Very good and quick acceleration up to speed on the straight with no wasteful tire spin. Just starting to get into very good throttle mid short straights on the track as traction improved with use.

I was getting slightly less steering traction than I wanted on the sweeper. I went from the stock red progressive .021 inch wire spring to a blue helical (standard) Wolfe 3# Spring with .020 inch wire. This was just the ticket. I may go one stiffer to white 4# to be sure.

I was getting some bounce of the rear tire into the air on the straight and the latter portion of the sweeper. As the tire cannot grip while airborne this needed attention. I went from a .057 inch stiff black Losi JRXS stock spring to a .049 inch wire Green Associated TC3/TC5 12 lb/in spring. I may go a little stiffer as I had some contact. I would have used some blue 17.5 lb/in springs, but they are on my touring car. Problem solved. The tires stayed in good contact now everywhere.

I lost the slightest amount of steering from this center spring change, but I thought there was enough left.

Last problem: If I took the inner line on the straight the bumps were rougher. The front dam was making contact as the car came down. I could see and hear all of this, as I was driving from the ground on the end of the sweeper. The drivers stand was locked. The holy key was in Dallas.

Normally I would just increase the front shock oil stiffness, but I looked under the body and, DAMN, there were no front shocks. So instead I put a little less droop in the car. I tightened each kingpin up one full turn and then retightened the little brass setscrew. That was pretty convenient. I had used blue locktite on these brass set screws so I still had them. I checked travel. Silky smooth. Kingpins unbent. Axles unbent. Great. So what did this do. When the car hit a bump now the hood does not go quite so high and thus does not come down quite so hard. Instead of bam bam bam, I got tick tick tick. That is OK on the straight. You can tell that dam on this body is doing a great job of keeping that front end planted. That will be very important later when our straight increases from the 140 ft I used today to 240 ft. I expect good speeds from the car with that super long straight. Droop was still at 1/16 inch. You can easily eyeball droop just by setting the car down and looking at how much space is between the lower arm and the steering block/arm (knuckle). A little less droop made the car more responsive in the infield at the expense of maybe a little steering traction.

I started yesterday with full size tires. There is noticeable wear now, I rotated the fronts once. It is really nice being able to use all the rubber you payed for.

Kingpin Pookey/slime- I have tried this on our outdoor track. You put this on the kingpins lightly (you do a similar thing with dampeners). Here is what happens on the kingpin. First, I barely notice any effect on performance, then I notice after 10-15 minutes of running that the whole front end has become black and nasty. If you use the removed kingpin to move the lower ball in its socket it is all gritty and hard to move. That costs you dearly in the traction department. So there will be no snot on my front kingpins outdoors. They were so silky smooth after 2 hours of runtime today. I had a similar experience with the dampeners outdoors. Before the pack was finished they had so loaded up with grit that they popped off the ball on one side. You could feel the grit and lack of movement. Well that is why my car wears RC18T rear shocks for side shocks instead of dampeners. Indoors there is way less grit. On other outdoor tracks there may be less grit. That is a really easy $28 shock upgrade, and well worth it outdoors.

What a great run today. Nice car. I love not having to tape in the battery.



Damage-Scratch another graphite bumper. I wish we got something a little softer as stock equipment. See any touring car as an example. Even a smallish graphite bumper that is one 3/4 inch shorter all around the radius would support that awsome hard foam bumper well. the car would then have a 3/4 inch cushion before solid meets solid. That Kydex bumper that is available should fit the bill, but I would like it to be shorter as well. (I think I read graphite bumpers were illegal in the Roar Rules). This was not a body post related failure, just a hard crash into the (what boards). Boards are down for resurfacing the track. I got a nice gouge into the chassis yesterday by sliding backwards and sideways into a 2 inch metal pipe. A nerf wing would have prevented this damage. I moved the pipe today. Conditions were really difficult yesterday. Not too bad today but we had some water seepage at the end of the straight. Lack of traction from a water spot caused the wreck that killed the bumper. My RPM bumpers survive this abuse. The resurfacing will fix these problems with the track. The car handled them all very well unless I let my concentration lapse from the long runtimes.

3 GFR body posts are drilled now for standard pins. The other two wear screws. I am happier with the Remove time for the body now in spite of using a power driver to take out the screws. It is substantially shorter. I think of all those just before the race screw ups that keep everyone waiting.

Pic Gen X 10 after about 22 heats worth of use. Note changes. Antenna on short stalk instead of wrapped around receiver. This was neccesitated by the lack of a drivers stand. Range is reduced. Spektrum capacitor added. I was getting some shutdowns before the battery should have been empty. This helped. Electronics are 1/2 inch up on little platforms made from the old short side plates. Holes are already there. Lead ballast and rear electronics gave this car an edge over a very similarly made I-force. Front tires are wearing even at -1.5 degrees camber. 3 of the GFR body posts now wear body pins instead of screws. The Hitec mighty mini is surviving some abuse.

John