Video of today's MINI RALLY RUN!

Here you go!

Today's Rally Action!

Had about 7 mini rally cars show up at the local track today for some mini rally action! It was quite a blast and a lot of laughs. First real run for all of us so it was a chance to see what these cars were capable of and what tweaks could be made.

Here are some pics of the cars...


Rag tag bunch of M03s and M05s... a M04 showed up later...






This M05 was upgraded to rally specs. Belongs to my friend Roger.




This is a M03 with jacked up suspension from Gasaraki.




Tein's M05ra out for it's first run!




Hellangel's M03 with cool Subaru WRX shell!




And here's my m05ra with a new Monster Mini shell!




All cars nice and shiney before getting roughed up!




Opinions...

It was an enjoyable run today loaded with laughs as the cars tried to find their way around the track. The cars did respectably although the smaller tires and lower ground clearances translated to a somewhat bumpier ride on the rutted track.

Acceleration - I thought wheelspin would be the order of the day and that the cars would be rather "slow". Much to my surprise, they had more traction than I expected and were pretty zippy which made the cars feel very positive on track.

Steering - The cars steered great! Front wheel drive cars pull hard round corners so this isn't surprising. Different driving style required though - throttle through the corner, slowing if necessary but never braking. GOOD STEERING!

Bump Handling - They were respectable, but larger pebbles or rocks could throw the car off track dramatically. We probably would sweep the track before the next run. Cars with more droop or ground clearance seemed to fare better.

Jumping - er... let's just remember that these are FFs and all the weight is forward so that equals nose heavy jump behaviour. The smaller wheels also meant that the cars couldn't really correct much in the air... generally if you got the take off right the rest would take care of itself, but get it wrong and sit back and watch the show! Smaller scale jumps were really fun to run, but bigger jumps tended to result in more unpredictable landings.


Other stuff...
I ran a front spool today from 3Racing and it definitely improved the car's handling around the track. The car tracked straighter and pulled out of corners harder. All was well... until... I ended up stripping a set of gears in the gearbox. Changed the gears and tried again and the same thing happened. Nobody else had any gearbox problems so I think it's due to the spool - probably with a spool the transmission doesn't get to take a break at all when the car lands off jumps and every impact (even on one wheel) is transferred to the gears. With a differential this is probably less so as there is still some "give" when one wheel unloads to absorb hard impacts.

Will swap out the spool to a ball diff and test further. :)

Haven't "blinged" a car in a while...

I haven't really hopped up a car with after-market options for a while now. Most of the stuff I put in my cars I do so because I have to (to fix some flaw in the car's design) or because I think they'll add something I need in the performance department.

Pure eye-candy? Been a while.

But the M05 type cars is one of those babies that just begged to decked out with needless options. They are small, cute and were never really meant to be performance vehicles anyway!

Anyway, my order from rcmart came in today and after an hour or so the car now sports the following additional options:

- Tamiya aluminum motor plate (Tamiya stuff is sweet)
- 3Racing diff lock (hope this works!)
- full set of RIDE offroad mini tires (mini double-dees baby!)
- Yeah Racing blue aluminum bellcranks
- 3Racing steering turnbuckle link (pretty much useless but it's blue!)
- 3Racing rear shocktower/upper link mount (nice bit of machining)
- 3Racing rear lower plate/hingepin block (poor thing's gonna get scratched real bad)
- Tamiya rear adjustable upper arm set
- 3Racing upper deck (this is pretty cool!)
- 3Racing suspension arm set (I have no idea if this'll last. lol!)

Anyway, here are some pics...


Pic of the whole car as it stands now...




Close-up of the steering assembly with my custom graphite parts + Yeah Racing bellcranks.




Rear of the car with the aluminum shock tower mount, custom shock towers and topcad shocks.




Underside of the car showing the rear aluminum lower plate and a full set of 3Racing arms.




Last pic with a bit of a close-up on the various cars installed on the car now.

Custom M05ra "droop" towers!

Long story short... I bought a set of "M03/4/5 shocks" from TOPCAD racing and after installing them on the M05ra I realized the front end of the car didn't have enough up travel. After some investigation, it seems these TOPCAD shocks are really touring shocks in disguise and at about 61mm long (total length) are slightly longer than Tamiya's mini-specific shocks which are about 56mm long.

5mm is a world of difference in this scale and on a mini...

When I swapped to a set of mini-specific shocks the up travel was improved, but due to the shorter shocks I lost ground clearance and droop.

I thought droop would be very useful on a rally car especially on bumpy conditions so I worked out a solution to get the best of both worlds - revised shock towers to utilize touring-car length shocks. These towers move the upper mount higher up to accomodate the longer shocks. I then can set ride height to be normal (similar to when I use the mini-specific shocks) but still get more droop!

Here's the result!

Car with towers installed.




Front towers - the towers feature 3 pairs of mounting holes at the point where they mount to the car so with 2 screws I can adjust 3 different ride heights.




Rear towers - each tower also gives me more mounting points for the upper shock location so I can adjust damping rates.




Now if the weather would only clear up so I can test these towers!

Some more rally pics...

Rained out at the track today but took some pics of my m05ra together with a friend's.

Just sharing some pics!

My friend's Honda CRV shell...




His mini with a host of blue option parts from 3Racing




Pic with my Datsun.




An update on my M05ra... see anything different? more info to come.



Looks like we're getting quite a bit of interest in this class locally...

M05ra steering mods!

Quirky little car the M05ra. The steering system seems to have a lot of inherent slop and the car exhibits strange torque steer because of this. Under acceleration the car pulls to one side and on brake it pulls to another.

Offroad this doesn't seem so apparent but I wanted to try to reduce the slop anyway, so first I changed out the servo saver to a Kimbrough one, and then I noticed there was a lot of slop where the bearings in the bellcranks sat on the pivot post. So I machined out new pivot posts to better fit the bearings. At the same time I machined a new steering link (the stock plastic one had flex) and a brace to support both sides of the pivots.

Here's the result...




Here's a picture of the chassis without the Datsun shell.




Car's been through 2 packs now at the track and it was a tad muddy... dirt makes the car look better though! lol!

Something new for this weekend!

Bunch of guys are going to try MINI RALLY this weekend so here's my contribution!

It's an M05 with a Datsun Sunny shell from ABC Hobby.

Check out my new project - a FF03-based buggy!

Here's what I've been working on this week - a buggy built from a FF-03!



Like it? More info and pictures can be found at HERE at my FF buggy blog.

Do let me know what you think. :)

Nichimo Luminous - vintage and unusual!

Check out this little RC gem from the 1980s that I picked up from a local collector recently. This is the Nichimo Luminous 4WD buggy!

The 1980s would be the golden era of RC for me where many manufacturers were producing RC cars with all sorts of designs which embodied very unique concepts and ideas. It was an age of innovation and ideas which made the cars from that time very unique - unlike today's much developed world of RC where a newcomer would be hardpressed to tell the difference between a Tamiya TRF201, Losi XXX-CR, Associated B4, etc.

It was cool to pick up such a nice specimen of this buggy - it is essentially a newly built buggy in tip top condition.

Here are some other pics. :)

The buggy came with era-specific electronics too! A mint condition set of Acoms radio gear!




Here's a picture of the buggy without the body shell.




Unique motor placement - doesn't help maintain a low center of gravity I'm sure. lol!




Servo placement on the car. It was interesting to find the manual speed control (3 speed forward and reverse baby!!!) installed *ON* the servo. I am more familiar with the Kyosho / Tamiya type MSCs that had the speed control installed elsewhere on the car actuated by a standard servo horn setup.




Aluminum shocks were considered "racing-spec" then. These are even adjustable with 3 positions for the collar to adjust ride height. I don't see the point though, the springs are so hard even in the top-most position the car sits with zero-droop! Of course, back in the 80s buggies were almost always run at FULL ride height. :)




Cool placement of the switch in the rear under the wing. The resistors for the speed control are located under the switch - very cool.




Check out the cool motto on the wing - I'm not sure if it's original though...




One last pic of the underside of the car. This huge casing houses the limited-slip center differential. See how cool the 80s were? A 3-diff buggy with a cool limited-slip diff!!!



What a cool car. Most guys will say it's the ugliest body-shell ever designed (I would agree though today's cab-forward body designs are giving this a good run for it's money) but you can't deny the car is unique in it's quirkiness!

Related blogs...

These might be of interest to you.

Here's a blog where I chronicle the build of my custom FF buggy - that's a front-wheel drive offroad buggy! :)

BC's FF Buggies blog


I was also involved in organizing a local RC race series for 1/10 EP buggies - we just finished our inaugural series and it was a blast!

NOOB Series blog

Welcome to my blog...

Hey there, this blog's gonna be my little piece of cyberspace for sharing some of the RC related projects I work on (and mindless rants and musings) from time to time.

Be interesting to see if anyone out there actually finds any of it interesting. lol!

Anyway, drop me a comment or follow my blog if you like what you read!

Cheers,

BC