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RC-Dad

RC-Dad goes racing

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So, after a great time at the DT02 Challenge held at SHRCCC on 28th September, its time for me and William to get into racing at our local club (TORCH).

We've already been down once and ran our (at that time stock) Holiday Buggy round the track a few times.

Since then I've acquired a rolling chassis Sand Viper and also an additional Sand Viper body shell and wing.

At the moment I'm in the process of converting the Holiday Buggy into a Sand Viper using the additional shell I got, plus some spares ordered online.

I'm also turning the rolling chassis into a runner for me to use. Here's where I'm up to so far:

William's car:

- Removed the 540 Sport Tuned motor and replaced with a silver can 540 - this was at William's request as he was a bit overwhelmed with the speed of the ST motor at the DT02 event

- Replaced the HB shell mountings for the Sand Viper mountings

Still to do:

- Replace the HB wheels and tyres for more suitable ones (Super Gripper has provided links for these, Rob from TORCH has also been very helpful in this respect)

- Trim the body shell so it fits around the Carson front shock tower brace

For now I think that will suffice for William...I want his skill level to rise so it is equal to the performance of the car before doing anything else. I think once William progresses much beyond this setup I'll buy him a Sand Viper so that we can keep the HB for fun times - JWeston made this recommendation to me a week or so back and now I'm starting to realise the level of hop-ups that will be necessary to make any DT02 competitive I can see his logic.

My car:

- I've rebuilt the gear box using new A-tree parts as the original had seen some action and a couple of the screw holes used to mount it onto the chassis where shattered. Nice surprise when I opened this up to see it already has the ball diff hop up fitted :D

- I've put new bearings in as part of the gearbox rebuild - don't think this was strictly necessary but as I had some spares hanging around I figured I might as well whilst the whole thing was in bits

- I picked some white Sand Viper wheels up from Smitchos at the DT02 event - the rears are on and fitted with some cheap Pro-Line RED tyres I bought (£2 so seemed a bargain!). The rears are fitted, just need to swap the fronts over

- Installed the 540 Sport Tuned motor

- Replaced the bearings for the rear wheels - the rear left wheel seemed to be binding and wasn't spinning freely - all sorted now :D

Still to do:

- Fit electrics. I've bought a TEU-105 ESC, an Etronix Pulse Transmitter/ Receiver, and a Acoms AS17 Servo that all need to be fitted

- Fit same wheels/ tyres as will be fitted to William's car

Lee (Super Gripper) has given me an extensive shopping list of items needed to properly prep the cars so they're competitive at TORCH...I'm looking forward to working my way through that list as our skill levels increase and we start to feel limited by not having these items in place.

I will put a photo up of the two SV's once they're prepped and ready for a blast around TORCH this coming Sunday afternoon

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Its been a little while since last update, so here is what we've been up to:

Sunday 5th October:

Went to TORCH and had another chat with some of the members there. Another warm welcome was received, race control even cleared the track for 10 mins prior to the finals so we could have a quick blast round with the Sand Vipers - much appreciated! :)

One thing became clear...the Vipers just aren't up to the task of running round the TORCH track...there's a large jump that all the members cars fly off and land on top of the following table top(?) - some even nearly clear that too and seem to land virtually on the down slope. Unfortunately the Vipers weight and lack of speed mean they fly off the jump alright but come down hard half way up the up-slope to the table top... They land with an almighty slap so I'm not sure how much of that they'll take.

We had to make our way from the track at 1pm due to other commitments... plus William's steering was locked on hard right after he had an 'off'...it seems the servo saver had slipped round 30 degrees or so...having realigned everything and given a quick test run up and down the driveway it seems to be holding firm...it's a dead cheap servo though and certainly not racing spec so not sure how much more we'll get out of it.

Sunday 12th October

Went to SHRCCC today and had a blast! :)

William did really well despite the issues I'll detail in a bit. He is really getting into things and I could see his driving skills improving throughout the morning today - I think the main issue now is that he learns to take it slow whilst trying to recover from going off the track...he tends to go full throttle to try and clear obstructions which invariably leads to another high speed crash without having managed to rejoin the track properly first.

I feel like I've learnt loads as well as having a great time...here's the summary:

1) The repaired servo from last week didn't make it around 1 practice lap :( so initially I only booked William into the day's racing...however SHRCCC member Lee came to the rescue and sold me a spare servo - I just managed to fit in time for Heat 1 and was able to book in at the very last minute.

2) I fitted the servo saver using an inappropriate screw, and without using any thread lock (new servo has a metal spline) - this came loose in Heat 2 causing an early retirement. Luckily Dave kindly let me use some of his thread lock however the screw was too short and narrow so this didn't help much...the car didn't make it through another round despite starting each round then having to retire due to loss of steering.

3) Tyres - boy do they make a difference! I was a touch sceptical about how much difference they'd make at this scale/ weight but flipping heck...William's Sand Viper (as well as having all the servo issues) was still also running the stock Holiday Buggy wheels and tyres...I've ordered Schumacher tyres and foam inserts (to go on some newly acquired large dish wheels) but these haven't arrived yet as they're on back order at the supplier. The track was soaked in dew first thing and it was like driving on ice with those HB tyres!

So, to keep William running we've now swapped and the yellow Sand Viper is his - it has some cheapo spiked tyres and the servo works/ is reliable. On that basis William had a great day's racing and I managed to start every heat (and the final) but only finished the first heat...after that the servo caused us issues each time out. William finished every round and as well as thoroughly enjoying himself he also improved as the morning progressed.

I've ordered thread lock (Tamiya branded stuff) and also some M3 screws (10mm and 12mm lengths) - the thread inside the servo spline looks still to be in good condition so hopefully the 12mm screw with thread lock applied will create a firm fix. Will take the car out for a good "bash" at the local BMX track once we're all fitted (and the ground is dry) to test things out.

Roll on the 26th October so we can go racing again!

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