Back to the track - part 3 - let's off road

[Mad Ax 9306]

So the summer season is now upon us, and Chippenham Model Car Club (CMCC) are venturing out from the safety of the school sports hall for the first time in 2016.  All over the county, people are dusting off their buggies and charging up their grass-stained hardcase lipos ready to hit the turf.  And, in true English fashion, the good weather of the weekend had broken, the clouds are rolling in and the forecast is for rain!  

I've spent the winter racing indoors at West Wilds Model Car Club (WWMCC), but Chippenham is only another 15 minutes up the road and it's much nicer to be out in the fresh air than stuck inside a windowless civic hall.  So last night, much to the annoyance of my wife, I passed up on a round at WWMCC so I could drag my B4.1 Factory Team down out of the loft and make sure it still works.  It's been a couple of years at least since it was last run, maybe longer.  It was put back in the box after the last race and, apart from taking out the receiver and transponder, not touched since.

I was surprised (and obviously pleased) to find everything pretty much as I left it.  Nothing has rusted or seized, everything turns smoothly and there weren't any forgotten breakages.  With a bit of Walking The Himalayas to add some white noise to the background, I grabbed a spare receiver and transponder and got it all wired up ready to go.  First thing to find was my hardcase stick packs, expensive Turnigy Nano-Tech 5.3s that I bought some while ago and didn't use much.  Imagine my dismay at seeing them both slightly bulging - naturally I stored them with full capacity, expecting to use them again, and because they don't fit my Tamiya bashers, I never did.  They've had a few top-ups since they were stored but I haven't cycled them in probably over a year.  Anyway, they both read near-full charge and the Core RC charger topped them off without making them explode, so they can't be too far gone yet.

While they were sitting in the corner doing their ticking timebomb thing, I set to sorting the car's electrics.  I actually went through 3 new (unopened) ORX receivers before I got one to bind - for some reason they were all on strike but eventually (after switching from the Etronix brushless speedo to the Probe WP in my M03) I got a signal out of one of them.  Transferring it quickly to my B4 before it could unbind itself, I had some action.  I threw in a charged pack and went for a test-run.

I don't have any grass in my house and the nearest green space (only 5 mins walk away) is too overgrown for a 1:10 buggy, so I had a very careful run up and down the tarmac.  I think I should get some tarmac tyres for the B4 so I can run it on the lane behind my house, just for setting up.  Those tyres (I'm pretty sure they're the super-soft Prolines that we use for the final race, after the temperatures drops below the dewpoint) will shred themselves in seconds on tarmac.

It's a pity I didn't think of getting the buddy out earlier, as I'd have liked to have my 2016 paint scheme on the shell instead of the crappy one I have (a personal favourite design of mine, but I accidentally picked up the "dull ruddy orange" instead of the "fluorescent red" when putting on the final colour so it looks totally lame), but there just wasn't time to get a new body ordered and painted in time.

In other news, the wife was terribly upset that I interrupted her plans by staying home last night, so I promised I'd be out late tonight to give her plenty of space to do whatever it was she was planning on doing.  This was before the weather reports started forecasting rain, so there's every chance I'll be looking for a pub to sit in for a few hours if the race is called off...  Rain is just starting to hit the windows here!

Anyway, fancy paint jobs don't win races, and I haven't raced buggies in some time, so I'll probably be back to basics in the slow heat and challenging to relearn my car.  Watch this space for updates of "yay!  racing outdoors is brilliant!" or "boo, it rained all night!" or "I broke my car again" soon

[Robert5000 928]

Brilliant! Looking forward to follow your adventures outdoor (or a series of reviews of your local pubs depending on the weather.) 

[Mad Ax 9306]

So the working day ended with mild drizzle, but since this is Britain I figured there was little point in hanging around feeling sorry for myself, and I set off on the 45 minute slog through traffic to get to the track.  There I met up with 6 other water-insoluble types and we stood around chatting for an hour, discussed the awesomeness of the inaugural RC rally championship in Bristol that we'd all love to get involved with if we had more time, drove our buggies around on the grass for 10 minutes, then went home.  It would appear that everyone else in the CMCC is made of salt, hence couldn't come out to drive in the drizzle or they would have dissolved.  That's probably just as well since it would make a real mess of the grass under the drivers' podium.

My buggy handled well on our little impromptu bash despite the grass being a bit too long, but after few minutes it cut out with the motor doing some weird brushless cogging thing.  Given power (forward or reverse) the motor would glitch and cough and the wheels would randomly turn forwards then backwards.  I had this on an older sensored brushless system which turned out to be a duff speedo (a new speedo has resolved it), but this system is not sensored.  Given a few minutes it started to work fine again, ran for a minute then stopped a second time.  Oddly enough it did this in the workshop when I first tried to run it on Monday evening, but then it started to run properly, so I guessed it was something related to being left sitting for a couple of years.  It could be a heat issue, but the speedo is fan-cooled and didn't feel hot.  I guess it could be a bad connection (it always starts working again as soon as the shell comes off), or could be something in the motor can.  I'll strip it down when I have time and have a closer look.  I hope it isn't wrecked as it wasn't a cheap system and I didn't really use it much.

The only other thing to note, which might interest those of you who are interested in interesting things like high tension power, the track is situated directly beneath a set of pylons carrying 400kV, and when it starts to drizzle the whole atmostphere becomes filled with this awesome, pervasive crackling sound.  Cool, although quite pointless.

So having left the track, my evening consisted of driving back to the office, stopping en route for a takeaway, and watching Amazon Prime until 10pm.  Since this is not really the right place for reviewing chewy quarter pound cheeseburgers, I'll leave this entry here and come back when I've had time to sort out my power train

[Effigy3 1267]

On 5/17/2016 at 10:25 AM, Mad Ax said:

Anyway, fancy paint jobs don't win races

Says who?  You totally can't win unless you have some "go fast" strips, flames or skulls on your car.  Everyone knows that!  Welcome back to off road buggy racing brother.  Our cars are very similar so I can't wait to hear how you fare. 

Subbed.

Edit after reading your 2nd post:

What ESC and motor are you running?  What class do you race in?  Would you be able to post a pic of your outdoor track?

[Mad Ax 9306]

ESC and motor is an Etronix brushless combo, a few years old now but didn't have a huge amount of use.  I need to look at the wire routing and see if there's a loose connection somewhere, failing that I can strip the motor and see if it's corroded or dirty inside.  The problem with racing on grass in the UK, especially in the evenings, is that things get wet even on dry days.  We usually have to switch tyres for the last hour to account for the grass being wet after dewpoint.

I race in 1:10 2wd buggy, the club also has 1:10 4wd buggy, 2wd and 4wd trophy truck and possibly rally cars this year.  Sometimes they also run vintage buggies depending on how many people turn up, although it's not serious vintage racing, it's just a few people with re-re Hotshots in standard trim

I'll grab some pics of the track setup when we finally get a track - this week they just put some old tyres out to mark a rough course so we had something to avoid

[Mad Ax 9306]

I figured I'd best put an update on here - rain has stopped play every night so far this year, usually starting off around 4pm when everyone is jut about to commit to a night of racing!  I'm not sure if I'll get much (if any) outdoor racing time at this club for a while as I've got a lot of other things going on.  Mondays at the indoor club are proving to be a much more reliable way of going racing!