Yeah, we could make a "Welcome to the 1/12 thread" package with:

The rollout primer

Rich Chang's tuning cheat sheet

A link to Mark Payne's blog

A picture of OD's monster caliper

Excellent, Thanks Man!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I Would love to get my hands on that information. Where can I get it. Oh and by the way Scottrick you should write a tutorial or something great work!!!!

Where's OD's monster caliper? That's the only one on the list I have not seen.

do any of you old school racers have parts for this car or know of anywhere ican purchase parts any info would be helpful and appreciated

There should be a phone # here... http://www.deltainc-usa.com

I can get my 12th around the track pretty well. But I am working on making sure I put the same car down to race every time. As little as there is to change in set up in a 12th scale, I have found there are many areas that fall into the "execution" of a set up that make large differences. I don't mind replacing worn parts, chunked tires etc, but I am having some issues with consistancy and don't know what to attribute them to. Can anyone offer their insight into the following thoughts . . .Any other info about things y'all check when you "blueprint" your cars would be great too. Im running a 12r5 on low to medium grip carpet, but any info would be great.

Collapsed springs; myth or not?
If not what method do you use to identify it? How often do they collapse? Do y'all check every run?


Unequal "droop" in the front king pin. Assuming new springs and tires, when one side has vertical play should you shim both sides the same or just add shims without regard to the number untill the play is gone?

Tweak: On my Rev5 I never checked tweak. I just left the springs all the way up and it seemed to work fine. With the AE it takes A LOT of turns on one screw to get the car centered, but then on the track it spins one way and pushes the other. If I just back both springs all teh way up the car looks tweaked on the tweak board, but drives equally left to right. Im sure I have a problem, but Ive already checked what I know to check: tires same size, new front springs, front end, side links and center link not binding, rear axle centered, front rear and middle right height at 3.5 mm, new bearings in diff, rear axle, and front wheels, and I can't find the issue.

Thanks guys!

Wanna buy a spare for parts? LOL I still have mine, aluminum front beam and all! Was a great car in it's time. Only real weak point was the flexi chassis. We fashioned a brace set up but the problem then became the randomly adjustable tweak that occured when you tapped a board.

So what are the big differences in the cars that are out now from my 4 year old IRS Rug Rat t-bar car? It has the same Assoc. front end and t-bar that seems to be still used. The only thing I can see is the lack of romm for a brushless motor. Granted, it's nothing like the BMI DB12R, which is very cool by the way, but does not look that much different from the CFEX that is out now.

AE springs do collapse and it doesnt take much. You need to keep an eye on them after each run. .020 arent terrible but the .018 you can almost guarentee they will give in after each run. Being that the coil diameter is so small, the wire is overloaded and the spring will collapse. You can try our Linear front springs if you like. They dont collapse because we went with a larger diameter spring and the pitch is more coarse. This makes it so the spring doesnt come close to coil bind. We also preset them to length so they will never set or collapse. They will work on all cars and we offer them in .020,.022,and .024. They do have a softer feel than the AE spring but in our testing showed excellent results.

You need to set the tweak on the car. What this does is level the chassis with the pod so the car has identical spring tension thoughout its motion. If not set correctly, the car will spin out to one side. Make sure your car is balanced before setting the tweak. Otherwise the car will once again drive wierd. An MIP tweak station works fine for setting the tweak. You can do the coin trick on the front wheels but if your car isnt balanced properly, this can be a difficult way to do it.

Also make sure that your pod is level. If the pod is angled down meaning lower at the front of the pod, this can make the car loose.HTH

hi andrew - have you tried the centered pod yet for the associated 12r5?

as for tweak, are you checking the tweak w/ the side spring disconnected? if not, that will impact your measurement (just like the side damper tubes effect traditional link cars). sometimes i don't trust my tweak board so i just use quarters on the front tires and lift from the front center to verify tweak. if you are seeing a tweak have you tried adjusting the side springs too?

one last thing, have you checked to make sure your axle is 172mm wide _and_ centered?

good luck w/ your new car!

[QUOTE=andrewdoherty;5097129]Tweak: On my Rev5 I never checked tweak. I just left the springs all the way up and it seemed to work fine. With the AE it takes A LOT of turns on one screw to get the car centered, but then on the track it spins one way and pushes the other. If I just back both springs all teh way up the car looks tweaked on the tweak board, but drives equally left to right. Im sure I have a problem, but Ive already checked what I know to check: tires same size, new front springs, front end, side links and center link not binding, rear axle centered, front rear and middle right height at 3.5 mm, new bearings in diff, rear axle, and front wheels, and I can't find the issue.
QUOTE]

One thing to keep in mind here... if you back the tweak screws off so the springs are all the way up, the car will NEVER sit level on the tweak station, but will drive okay in both directions, only it'll be lazy.

If you're sure your tires are equal diameters side to side, try backing the tweak screws up, set the car on its wheels on a flat board (batteries, ini, ready to go without body) and turn the screws down until each spring juist toucjes down on a ball. That should get the tweak pretty close to right, in most cases, good enough to not require a tweak station. If you do this and the car still pushes in one direction and spins out the other, there's something else going on... My bet would be the rear wheels are not centered on the chassis. My 12R5 came out of the box needing very different shimming on each side of the axle to get it centered properly on the car.

If the rear axle isn't centered properly, don't even waste your timine trying to get the tweak set, the car won't be right until the rear axle is centered first.

You race at Mikes, right? I worked there a few years ago (in the old location) and it looks like I might be moving back to the area... how is the carpet track? I moved to the northeast before he had a carpet track...

All: Rear axle is definitely centered, but I'm not runnig the new BL cone, hub, or graphite pieces.

Trips: Yep I run at Mikes. Carpet is great. Lemme know if you're coming and Ill introduce myself. PM me if you want my number.

Jason: I had my suspicions about that happening with the 18's. Its relieving to hear I'm not going crazy. Ill try your springs. Yang swears by 'em and the .18's I'm running now have a good 8+ runs on them. Good point about ensuring chassis balance before using the coint method. Ill have to take some pics of my layout, but I estimeated I would need roughly 45 grams on the right side to balance the car using the hudy balance pins. I run the 9650 offset to the right, the spektrum micro ffset to the right, and the sphere on the right side. My PT sits in the center up front. Seemed weird I wuld need so much lead to balamce the car. It came in at 875 rtr so I didn't wantt o add any lead, but I might have too.

Hanulec: Thanks for the help. Im liking the new car. Are you suggesting I remove the side shock or side springs when I check tweak? I have been checking the tweak with a speedmind bubble level station. I will back that up with the quarters next time I go out.

One of the oddities I have noticed lately since I have been paying lots of attention to my 12th is that the side springs wobble as I rotate the tweak screw. So the bottom of the spring only really ever touches on an edge unless there is significant tension. This kinda makes it hard to tell when the spring is just barely not touching the link. In fact I am not sure I can get the spring far enough off from the link to keep it from touching entirely. I tried a few new sets of the spring retainers, but I ust couldn't get the screw in it perfectly or the screw isn't going throughthe CF perpendular or something. Kinda bugs me. . . .

the weirdest thing to me is that when the tweak station says the car is tweaked, both side springs seem to be applying equal pressure on the pod and are back off an equal amount of turns. It also drives best like this. When I adjust the tweak screws so the tweak station says it is not tweaked the car drives like its SEVERELY tweaked and it requires turning the right side tweak screw almost all the way in to get it there. But as hanulec mentioned perhaps the problem lies in measuring the tweak on the levels with the center shock attached. I would think with te AE shock not applying any reboud with the through shaft that it wouldn't matter. Hmmm . . .Ill keep y'all up to date if I make any revelational discoveries

Try moving your PT on the right as well before adding weight That way you won't have to add as much weight to balance it. My old link cars with springs I could never get to run right with the springs just touching the links...I always ended up putting just a tad of pre-load into them and checking the tweak. If all is fine there the you might have an issue with the wires causing tweak.

Wires touching the body can cause a terrible tweak on any car. Once you get the tweak set put the body on and recheck it. If its off, try rerouting the wires to the motor.

Can you borrow another tweak station to try? It seems odd that the car drives well and the side springs appear to have equal tension but your tweak station gives different feedback.