Hi Fellow 1/12 scalers,

I'm trying to get my head around the side spring locations.

What is the difference between having the side spring further out on the link or more words the centre of the car on the chassis?

That changes the effective spring rate seen at the tire contact patch. The rate varies as the square of the distance between the spring and the center pivot.

i got to see this car up close at Snowbirds. it is VERY nice.
i especially like the rear pod. its very light, much like the TOP Rebel 12.

Hi guys, I am racing in the UK on the national series and am doing ok.. (making the top end of the A final quite often) However, I was wondering if any of you guys could offer some advice as something is missing from my car and setup knowledge.

I wondered if I could get a variety of generic setup/ equipment causes to cause the rear inside wheel to lift when cornering. (like grip roll, but usually the early feeling of it, where it lifts and diffs out/ makes the car spin out)

I know that supergluing the tire sidewall can help this, but I want to make my car work without gluing them, as the feeling of gluing the tires to me, makes the car feel slower and offers less potential for fast laps..

The one very good thing I have found to help, is to remove some caster and camber.

Thanks guys.

In layman's terms please

The more outward the side springs are located, the stiffer.

Less caster and/or camber does help but also stiffer front springs and/or softer rear side springs.

Also if it's doing this, come in and pop off one of the damper tubes and go back out. If it's better, you are too thick on the fluid. Rebuild them both with something lighter.

Also, if your spur/pinion combo has the motor way back in the pod, go to a bigger spur and pinion for the same rollout.

Thanks for those tips,

Also I was wondering as well as set up things on the chassis, if there is anything you guys do to prevent grip roll without using sidewall glue, via tyre preparations, such as compound, truing, radius shape, additive application?

thanks

On a grippy track, the tires need to be cut pretty small.....certainly under 42mm max. to begin with, and sometimes even down around 40.5 at the rears. When the grip is really high, it can also be helpful to reduce the time that the sauce sits on the tires. At bigger races where there's a distinct black groove, I've found that wiping the sauce off pretty much right after applying it makes the car much smoother and easier to drive. By contrast, at my local track's club races, it is usually necessary to give the tires a good long soak (like 15 or even 20 minutes long) in order to keep the car from loosing grip towards the end of a run due to the tires drying out. Such is not the problem at big races, where figuring out how to deal with having too much grip is more often the challenge. Smaller tires and less sauce time does seem to help when the track gets grippy.

Less caster and camber, as you have already noted. Softer front springs and softer side springs will calm the car down and make it roll more rather than hike. If the inside front starts to lift, add side spring preload.

Smaller tires, less of a radius (more squared), and less time for additive application are all tire-specific items you can do to reduce hiking. At my home track I usually do 30 minutes for rears, at Snowbirds I was only doing 15-20.

One could say it's like moving the shock position out one hole on a touring car.

Yes, it is quite similar, except that the damping remains the same (whereas the damping changes along with the spring rate on the Touring Car when the shock is moved).

Shanks.

Hey Guys,

A local shop just finished their on road track. Due to constraints the surface is concrete, and VHT is being used to make it sticky.

I ran my Associated 12R5.2 last weekend with a 17.5, and was having a hard time putting power down. Anyone with rubber tires hooked up fine, but us foam guys not so much. I was running Double Pink fronts & Soft Pink rears straight out of the box from Contact. For sauce I tried SXT and black can Paragon, and the Paragon was substantially better.

I'm wondering what brands/compounds I should look into that may work better for this surface? Also I'm struggling to follow both CRC and BSR's color coding as it doesn't match what is on their website. So if anyone could layout the hardness progression with rubber type that would be awesome.

Asphalt is why 12th scale died here. Nobody liked not having traction like a slot car that carpet provides. I would try a harder compound in front like purple and only sauce the pink rears at first. Also turn down your dual rate to like 20 and work up from there.