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. :)