Introducing the F104-BC Edition. :)

Just finished this today...

Idea developed over a couple of days... designed and built in 2 nights.





This change in design hopes to achieve a couple of things:

- I run some weight on the rear of my normal F104... with the saddle pack configuration, I'm hoping to be able to run a lighter car but achieve a similar balance front to rear.
- locally our F1 runs include a 60-lap final. The typical 4000mah lipo that fits into a standard F104 doesn't allow me run anything else besides a standard silver can 540 motor - any hotter motor and the car has a high chance of running out of juice. This change should allow me to keep up with the guys running chassis which can fit larger capacity packs (e.g. Exotek conversions, HPI F10s, etc.)

Hope the weather allows this car to be tested sometime soon... we have a F1 run this weekend...

Finally got back to machining some stuff

Took a break from machining for a bit but over the weekend I finally got round to doing some of the parts I've had churning around in my head for a bit... Here's a quick rundown.

First off, the Tamiya TRF511 was taken off the shelf. It's been sitting there ever since my 23mm tall saddle pack lipos were decommissioned and I bought some 25mm tall LRP ones. The reason is that the taller packs didn't fit in the 511. I've seen some very creative solutions to fit the taller packs and the one I liked best was to slightly shift the packs back to clear the center bulkheads. These would shift the weight backwards as well which in my opinion is a good thing for the somewhat aggressive 511 buggy. So I machined the outer Lipo retainers, a center "spacer" as well as new battery straps.

The other advantage is that this mod allows me to use the heavier 5000mah packs which are about 35g heavier than my previous packs. I used to run 45g of weight around the batteries so now I can remove most of that *and* gain more runtime.








Next up the TRF502 also got a new mod. After the recent race I found that I could use a tad more low speed steering. I've heard about the mods that Lee Martin in Europe had done to give the 502 better steering geometry like the 511. So I machined a center steering link to move the ball studs forwards and slightly outwards to allow the 502 to get similar ackerman as the 511.






Lastly, the 2WD section also got some of my attention. I've always wanted to get the Cougar to work better on the dirt tracks that we run on and I've suspected that the loose rear on the car is generally due to weight distribution. I wanted to move weight more to the rear so I decided to go to a saddle layout. Schumacher sells their own version of these as an option but I went ahead to machine my own. Preliminary tests show that the car is a *lot* more planted but the rear shocks now need tuning as they are way too soft for the increased rear weight bias.

Here's a before/after view...

BEFORE



AFTER



Testing to be done on all cars as soon as I get the chance! :)

Vids from our NOOB Series 4WD Round 1 Race

Took the win today with the TRF502X. Run 1 was won by the always competitive Tein with his DEX410 but managed to snag the win by taking Run 2 and Run 3.

A Main Run 2




A Main Run 3

Mudblaster V2.0 bash and hop ups

Here's the Tamiya Mudblaster that I bought in a great second hand deal sometime ago. When bought it the shell was still unsprayed but it was in bad shape especially where the front bodymount had pierced right through the front hood.

After lots of puttying and a tedious paint job, she returned to her former glory ready for more bashing fun!





The above pics were taken just a week ago when I brought the truck out for a run. It was a blast and the car handled far better than I expected it to. Maybe it was the slow speed of the silver can, but the car actually negotiated the track pretty well (see video in earlier blog post).

Unfortunately the joy was short-lived... note to self: take hard-shelled vintage car off track when high-powered modern 4wd buggy comes on the track. The carnage is as follows...


The bodyshell is shot.




After combing the track I find the remnance of the windscreen...




Oh well... you know what they say... crap happens. :)


Although a tad broken hearted, I went home with good feelings of how well the car ran. I decided that I wanted to see what the car could do with a little work - especially in the upcoming local vintage race, the NOOB CLASSICS event.

So off went the cracked up hardbody (to be glued together another day...) and on went a lighter lexan shell. I found the HPI Wheely King shell a perfect fit for the Mudblaster wheelbase. A custom bodymount had to be machined to fit the shell but that's all sorted now.

Also off went the standard chevron threads and in their place a set of JConcept Goosebump tires on HPI star rims. I found a set of these rims at the local hobby store but the fronts were in black chrome and rear were in gold. After a few hours of chrome removal followed with dying, I got all 4 rims a nice black.

Here's how Mudblaster V2.0 looked at the track test yesterday!



The shell's yet to be painted of course, but I think you get the idea of how the truck looks.

A pic with my other buggy I was track-testing, the Yokomo YZ834B RPS SE!




In this body-off pic you can see the custom body mount. I don't like hacking up stock parts unless I have to - moreso when they are vintage parts... so the mount was designed to fit without any modification to stock parts.




How did the truck do?

It ran great, tracked well, felt really good!!! For the whole lap and a half that it ran before I hit a pipe and well...




I thought it was strange that the knuckle would break so easily since it had taken worse knocks than this. I'm guessing either (1) it was one of those murphy law incidences where the angle of the crash managed to break this part or (2) the previous collision that totaled the shell might have damaged this part before this crash did it in.

Disappointed I loaded up ebay to look for the part only to find that it was going for a *mere* SGD80+... not to mention the 2-3 weeks of shipping time it would take to get the part. I was understandably simply "ecstatic"...

So out come the calipers, the autocad gets fired up and the ol' mill gets dusted off. Thanks in part to the very basic design of Tamiya parts of yesteryear I was able to do this...



A new steering knuckle machined out of delrin that has a lot more material for reinforcement than the standard part. I'm hoping that the slightly more forgiving nature of delrin plus the extra material will make this knuckle bullet-proof. I found the stock knuckle to be a tad on the aneroxic side and brittle too.



More testing to follow to see how this baby holds up to the rigours of offroad bashing...

stay tuned. :)

There's a local Vintage RC event - called the NOOB CLASSICS - planned on 12 Dec 2010. It's the first event of it's kind and here's a couple of vintage cars that are doing some laps on the local track! :)

Another Rally Vid!

Here's another vid taken recently by a friend while I was running the Mini rally!

As you can see the car is pretty speedy on a black can motor and it is capable of managing the jumps on the track - although I clearly need more practice!

The nose down attitude in jumps is still something I'm working on - but it would appear the jump timing becomes so much more important so the nose drops at the right time to land on the downslope of a jump. :)

Enjoy the vid.

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. :)