monkeyracing

iTrader: (10)

Hey Bert, you've piqued my interest with this diff lock lube. I can't seem to find much information on it, except for one blurb that mentioned it's thicker than 500,000wt. Do you know how much thicker? How does it compare to the standard Tamiya or 3Racing anti-wear grease?

Does it actually stay in place in the ball diff?

alcyon

iTrader: (8)

monkeyracing, when you were talking a about the eternal struggle, is that kirk and spock?

monkeyracing

iTrader: (10)

You betcha!

marcos graveyar

I believe that would be the only logical conclusion.

bertrandsv87

iTrader: (2)

The Ofna diff lock lube #10230 is like a mastic glue, and was made to lockup 1/8 scale Off road differentials. It is the thickest thing out there , that I know of !!! You have be careful not to slim it all over the place, and wear gloves please, it will take quite some Work to come Off your fingers.....

Granpa

Jim, I've tried the stuff and it will give you a tighter diff than antiwear grease. However, after a day or two running, the diff action loosened quite a bit. Overall, there wasn't enough of an advantage, if any, in performance to justify it's use except for certain track types or conditions.

These were the main negatives. Needed a rebuild very soon to maintain the tight diff action. The stuff is just nasty to clean off for the rebuild.

I'm not saying the stuff is so bad that no one should try it. It's just not the panacea for building the diff. My initial impression was positive, but went in the toilet after trying to clean the diff up to rebuild. It may be worth a try for some .

jha07

iTrader: (3)

I read a lot of people saying that a free drivetrain is very important for good performance. I just finished building my M03 and checked how free the drivetrain was. With the tires attached, if I spun it up by hand, it would continue to spin for about 3 seconds.
Is that good or should it keep spinning for awhile longer?

monkeyracing

iTrader: (10)

Thanks for the info Bert and Bob. Short of rebuilding my ball diff the wrong way, it will never get as sticky as I want.

Jha, that should be plenty!

bertrandsv87

iTrader: (2)

Three seconds is good enough to start, it will get looser over time.
The ofna diff lock lube is meant to stay in the diff indefinitely, and you should add more lube in rebuilds rather than trying to take it Off, to get a tighter diff. The initial diff tightness will never last long, because of physics, and it will not get as loose as anti wear grease if no oil got in there. Oil got into mine and both Tires spin in the same direction with the motor if you try to spin only One tire: that's evidence of a tight diff(you can't do that with anti wear grease)...

Core Creations

iTrader: (108)

Grandpa..its been a long time! Can you explain why most fast guys are choosing the TA03 diff over the M05 ball diff?? I have been very happy with my M05 diff, but willing to try new things for a better feel. Or are we talking M03 only.?

Granpa

Charlie, it has been awhile. I'd heard that you weren't running Minis anymore, but glad to see that rumor was untrue.

As far as the M05 diff goes, we had a bunch of diff screw breakages in the beginning. If you remember, when the M05 first came out guys were still going really stiff on the diffs. They were trying to get a similar "feel" with the M05 diff and were cranking down on the screw too much. Nothing wrong with the M05 diff at all if you don't get too crazy on the screw tension. But by then almost everyone had switched over to the TA03 diff.

The big reason none of the "fast" guys run the TA03 diff is that none of them run the M05 anymore. Sure, Gordy Tam won with an 05 this year, but Danny Eggar was faster with an 03. Bad luck and circumstances worked against him and Gordy might have driven better with what was the slower car. Mark Brown killed everyone at the Regional here at TQ. TQ, if you didn't know is a smaller indoor carpet track. Mark was running an M03, at least that's what he told me. I skipped the carpet event so did not see his car, so have to depend on what he told me in a PM.

Most of the guys are running a medium diff now and have gone away from the "cranked" down diffs we used to run. I started polishing the diff rings and went to the ceramic diff balls since we're not nearly locking up the diffs like we used to years ago. I go months before a rebuild and a # of the "fast" guys are copying me.

Are we going to see you this year?????

rctoyguy

iTrader: (21)

I've just resurrected an M03, and in the first "driveway test", I found that it has an unusually large turning radius. Servo endpoints are set correctly. I got the car used, and the servo horn is one of the old round servo saver type - I'm wondering if it is part of my problem, but since steering linkage to both sides have to connect to one point, I don't know of another servo horn that would do that - any chance someone could point me to a "proper" servo horn/steering linkage setup?

Tim K

Is that with the motor attached? take the motor out and spin the front wheels, 5 seconds or more is what you should be aiming for.

There are some minis that are just over the 10 second mark.

For rear wheels over 30 seconds is good, but some minis are over 1 minute.

This is with the $1 metal shielded bearings or the $8 ceramics.

jha07

iTrader: (3)

3 sec is with the motor out. Hopefully it'll get better after a few runs.

jha07

iTrader: (3)

I'm trying to find a better servo saver for my M03. Is the Kimbrough large a good fit? And is it better than the stock one?