2016 Racing Experiences

[Effigy3 1267]

Saturday is supposed to be a race day but the weather man has some pretty poor news:

Even though track is covered, we found out last week that rain can still blow in and stall racing.  Just because the track is covered, the parking lot is dirt.  The dirt in TX is a clay mix which is a major pain with it's wet.  So we're going to skip this weekend race.  Next scheduled race will be on June 18th which is a few days prior to my boys birthday.   We got him a new race hauler bag for his Losi.  It's big enough for the truck to fit in the top drawer and there's plenty of storage for all his spares, tools, tires, and chargers.  We'll probably give it to him early so he can use it on the 18th.  Since it's his birthday, his buddy is going to go racing with us using our "loaner" Arrma Fury SCT. 

[twisty 8]

You have some great looking tracks over the pond,please do keep us updated 

[Effigy3 1267]

On 6/5/2016 at 2:55 PM, twisty said:

You have some great looking tracks over the pond,please do keep us updated 

The next scheduled race day is June 18th.  It's the start of a new series.  They haven't posted any details yet.  They're too focused on the 1/8th scale track and the national nitro race and Pro-Line tire "hand out" race.  All I know is that they plan on changing the track layout somehow.  I think they're going to make a larger straight away because it was a pain to line up cars for the mains with the previous configuration.  They have also split the 2WD 17.5T "blinky" buggy class into two classes: Expert and Sportsman.  So my goal for this next series is to get myself into the A-main.  That's a big jump goal from last series goal of "not last".

[Darat76 265]

good luck with that, I foresee much time spent tweaking the settings on your car over the next few meets

[Effigy3 1267]

We celebrated my boys 9th birthday at the track yesterday.  It's the only 10th scale race day for the whole month.  He invited his buddy Eli to race and of course Eli's dad Jon joined us as well.  We equipped Eli with our bone stock Arrma Fury BLS short course truck and Jon got my somewhat modified Arrma Fury Mega.  The Mega is now a bit nicer than a Fury BLX having a Castle Sidewinder SCT ESC and Castle 3800 kV motor, shock tower braces, a beefed up differential filled with 1K Tamiya shock oil (vs stock setup which is a very light coat of grease on the gears).  Sadly my day was 100% pit master because the wire to the ESC capacitor on my brand new Novak Impulse ESC broke as I was powering up for my first qualifier. I didn't even get tires on the track. 

The day started out with 9 in the beginner class but not all 9 were standing on the rostrum during qualifier #1.

When Garrett and Eli get together they get a bit hyper.  Boys will be boys and they feed off each other.  So I was a little worried that they wouldn't have good decorum on the track.  My fears were unwarranted and things were fine.  But the untested and brand spanking new Fury BLS proved to be a bit problematic.  Well, the hopped-up Mega was giving me fits as well.  Eli was complaining about his truck just stopping.  The steering was working fine, but it wasn't turning the drive wheels.  Turns out that the screws for the motor had loosened up and the pinion was no longer in contact with the spur.  Easy enough to fix but he was DNF in qual 1. 

During practice runs Jon was reporting that the Mega was pulling hard to the side.  When I inspected it I realized the the servo horn was slipping on the servo spline.  SIGH  The Mega is a 2013 model and it takes like 43 screws to get to the steering servo.  That fact alone was the reason why I upgraded to an Arrma ADS-7m servo when the stock one stripped it's nylon gears after a year of use.  So 30 minutes and a sore wrist later I realized that the servo horn screw was simply loose.  So I tightened it and reassembled the thing.  Turns out in my haste to finish the job before the 1st qualifier I hadn't centered the servo.    I adjusted the trim to center the steering as well as I could so he could run his qualifier round.  Once it was over, I disassembled the front end again, replaced the servo horn (which I realized was stripped from earlier when the screw was too loose), centered the servo, tightened down the screw, reassembled the front end and adjusted the trim.  Man on man was my wrist sore!  I'm so thankful that the 2015 version Fury only requires 6 screws to get to the steering servo.

Qualifier round 2 went ok.  Eli was being a bit rougher on the truck that I would have cared for but that's why we have a loaner truck!  His Fury didn't finish, stalling out on him about 2/3 of the way into the 5 minute heat.  I blamed a low battery or excessive practice laps prior to the heat actually starting for issue.  Thankfully the Mega was on point and Jon was being judicious with the throttle.  THAT is why I couldn't loan it out to Eli, at full power that Castle SCT system is crazy powerful, especially on such a small track.  My son's Losi XXX-SCT was running great.  The "practice" run JConcepts Pressure Points I picked up on sale looked like they were working quite well.  Considering I got them for $8 a pair vs. the $20 per pair that ProLine Electrons cost, the more we can run these JConcepts, the happier my wallet will be.  As you can see, they look quite decent.

I got a number of pairs in clay compound because this track destroys tires.  The image above shows what they look like with about 20 minutes of practice on them.  Here's 2 race days worth of wear:

During qualifier round 3 I was marshaling close enough to where Eli's BLS failed at the 2/3 mark again.  I retrieved it and noticed that the ESC was one solid red LED (power is on) and one blinking blue LED (over heat protection engaged).  Drat!  It was over heating.  I suppose that's to be expected. It was racing in 97 degree Texas heat with no fan.  Sadly, the Arrma BLS ESC has no provision to add a fan.    He was just going to have to run it easy and hope he didn't push it into thermal lock-down during the 10 minute main (yeah right).  In the mean time, the motor screws on the Mega had loosened up resulting in Jon getting a DNF in the qualifier.  An easy enough fix.  All three trucks were on the track ready for the Beginner A main.

Here are the results:

Eli made it all of 3 laps before he over heated his ESC.  Not only did he not take it easy, but he was so amped up for the main he was launching his truck off jumps across 1/2 the width of the track!  I was actually thankful when the ESC locked up.  Amazingly the truck appears to have sustained no damage.

Jon ran a full race which I think is quite good considering he has NEVER driven an R/C race before.  His only R/C experience is borrowing my daughters TT-02B Pink Special for a battery pack worth of fun at a different track.  No racing, just bashing about the track.

Garrett let his buddy amp him up a bit.  I could see it in his driving.  He was over driving his truck resulting in more errors than usual.  That said, the race for 2nd-4th was a tight race with less than 4 seconds between all 4 racers.

I've got a new cap on order for my buggy.  I should be good to go for next months race.  I'm now wondering if I should try to fit a cooling fan on my ESC though!  Here are a few pics of the trucks I took while marshaling the qualifying runs.

Jon going into corner 2 which is a hair-pin leading into a steep double jump with a very short landing zone before going into a hard left.  His son Eli is hot on his tail!

Here is Garrett coming into the step-on step-off.  IMHO it's the most difficult jump of the entire track.

Here's Eli, followed by Jon, followed by Garrett.

 

[Effigy3 1267]

Update on the Arrma BLS ESC.  The flashing blue LED indicates low voltage protection engaged, not over temp as I assumed.  Since it was in NiMh mode, low voltage protection should be disabled.  Arrma customer service rep has issued a shipping label so I can send the ESC and motor back for diagnostics.

[Effigy3 1267]

Race day!  Yesterday was race 1 of the 5 race summer series.  The track has broken up the crowded stock 2WD buggy class into Sportsman and Expert classes.  There are about 8-10 racers in each class so my goal for this series is to get the bump into the Sportsman A-main race at least once.

Try as I might to replace the bad capacitor on my ESC, I couldn't get the factory solder to melt.  I posted on the race track forum and one of the fast guys offered to help.  Rather than desolder the ESC capacitor wires off the main board, he clipped the cap off the wires and replaced the cap on that end.  I should have thought of that myself.  I was pretty happy.  I removed the TBLE-02S that I had been using before I bought the Novak, installed the newly repaired Novak only to have it not work.  I guess the failed capacitor was a symptom of the problem, not the root of the problem.  The ESC is displaying a red and white solid LED accompanied by a constant tone.  The heatsink was also getting warm.  I'm so bummed that I bought this.  One race day on a $200 ESC and the company goes out of business within 6 weeks of my purchase.  Talk about bad luck!  Then I noticed the LED error code was different.  I looked it up in the manual and it was the code for a disconnected sensor wire, but it wasn't.  That's when I discovered this:

Luckily the on-track hobby shop had a replacement in the correct length.  When I reconnected up, the undocumented error code and tone returned, so I pulled the Novak back out of my buggy and reinstalled the TBLE-02S.  Thank goodness for back-up ESCs!  So I was ready to race, with 15 minutes to spare until my son's first qualifier run.

His SCT on the other hand was pretty much perfect and ready to go.

He did great in his qualifier runs.  He got 2nd, 3rd and 3rd and started the main in position 3.

I on the other hand ran into more bad luck.  I was on my last lap, destined to finish in the middle of the pack, and I landed nicely on the table top in the middle of the step-on / step-off.  I could clearly tell something was wrong so I let the throttle trigger to go neutral.  This is what the turn marshal handed me:

My front-right suspension arm shattered at the hinge pin.  I figured I could easily swap it out for a replacement before my next qualifier run.  Except that I didn't bring my spare suspension arms.    My day was over and maybe that is a good thing.  My luck had been pretty poor all day.  Maybe this was a blessing in disguise.

This is July in Texas, so race day was endured in 99 degree F (37C) temps.  Thankfully I got these fancy cooling fabric hood jobbers.  Wet them down, ring them out, and put them on your head/neck.  It REALLY helped!  Surprisingly Garrett's SCT didn't experience any heat related (or any other) problems.

Garrett ran such a clean race.  Starting off in 3rd position, moving up to 2nd for a lap and held steady onto 3rd, unchallenged for the remainder of the race.

If you're interested in watching his run, here's the video.  I couldn't get 100% of the track in the frame.  That's as wide as my old camera will zoom out.

 

[Rb4276 803]

The arm breaking sucks, look what I did yesterday to my rear arm after spinning out in front of my house hitting the curb with the rear bumper. The impact also knocked the pinion off the spur. The arm is still drivable, I ordered the reinforced arms finally. I've been slacking. 

[Effigy3 1267]

8 hours ago, Rb4276 said:

The arm breaking sucks, look what I did yesterday to my rear arm after spinning out in front of my house hitting the curb with the rear bumper. The impact also knocked the pinion off the spur. The arm is still driveable, I ordered the reinforced arms finally. I've been slacking. 

The only R/C cars that don't get broken are shelf queens!

There aren't reinforced rear arms are there?  I can't find a part number.  Can you share it with me?  You might not want the reinforced ones on a basher though.  They're less flexible but more prone to breaking.  which is good for a racer because flex is bad on the track and breakages are to be expected.  On a basher the flex isn't detrimental to handling but the added flex is a welcome measure to help reduce breaking.

[Rb4276 803]

No there aren't rear I believe. I have only seen the regular rear, and front reinforced always show up on searches on the net and eBay. 

[Effigy3 1267]

Race 2 in the summer series went down yesterday.  It was a bit of a cluster most of the day.  The races started late.  Cars seemed to be dropping out of the qualifiers left, right and center.  My boy was up and down emotionally.  We ended on a good note and that's what's important!

His Losi XXX-SCT was on point all day.  I got at least 2 unsolicited comments from racers about how well Garrett was driving his truck.  Proud papa moment right there folks. 

This track really is a tire muncher.  As you can see, the rears are almost bald and they've only got 1/2 a race day on them at this point.  We even use different tires for practice, the qualifiers and the main.

So his race day went:

• Qualifier 1: 2nd w/ 14 laps
• Qualifier 2: 5th w/ 13 laps
• Qualifier 3: 2nd 2/ 14 laps

This put him starting in 3rd for the main.  He got a couple of bad breaks in the main.  First bad break was getting tied up in the first turn nightmare pile-up.  To add to that bad luck he was marshalled last out of that heap which put him in dead last place.  While he was working his way up through the pack he was knocked off the track at least 4 times by the same driver.  Other than one 2WD stadium truck, he's got the only non-4WD rig out there.  So if he gets sucked into a wrestling match his lighter 2WD is going to lose every single time.  So he did manage to work his way up to 4th but finished in 5th.  The 8th scale eBuggy naturally finished first.

Here's his main race:

 

[Effigy3 1267]

I replaced my defective Novak ESC with an LRP Spin Pro and am quite pleased with its performance!

I don't know if it's because I've been racing here now for a number of months or what but people are starting to recognize me.  I've had a number of great conversations about how I'm racing a Tamiya.  People are like, "You're the ONLY guy racing a Tamiya." they say with a smile.  "That's pretty cool..." and then we get into conversations about the Tamiya's they've owned in the past or raced in the past.  I'm also the only guy at the track with a rear motor chassis.  One guy I was talking with said he's a bit proud of the fact that a few years ago he was the last person to make it into the A main with a rear motor mounted car (AE B4).  So while my current goal is still: not last, my new goal is to make it into the A main with my 201. 

So my race day went:

• Qualifier 1: 6th w/ 14 laps
• Qualifier 2: 5th w/ 14 laps
• Qualifier 3: 7th w/ 15 laps

Not exactly awesome but 2 times I wasn't last so mission accomplished.  Keep in mind that the last 2 race days out I didn't race.  So it's been 6 weeks without a controller in my hand and a car on the track.  Regardless I was loving how my car was driving and I was having a blast.  I started the main in 6th position.  For the most part I was running pretty much solo for a good bit of the race.  I had a few unforced errors but all-in-all I was pretty pleased with my performance.  I had worked my way up into 4th position.  I didn't see when I was passed by Drew but we had a good run there for quite a few laps before he overtook me.  I finished in 5th so Garrett and I were 5th place twinsies.  He was bummed at his finish and I was please with both mine and him.  He didn't let all the bad luck shake him on the rostrum although you can hear the frustration in his voice calling out to the marshal in the previous video. 

Here's the video of my main:

 

[Effigy3 1267]

Race 3 went down yesterday.  Going over my boy's SCT on Friday night before the races I noticed that the leading screw holes in his front bulkhead were cracked.  Nothing to do about it but cinch down the screws and hope nothing goes sideways during the race.  I also noticed during the examination that one of his front lower suspension arms had cracked where the shock mates up to it.  So I changed out the arm.  I put on a new set of JConcepts Pressure Point tires on the rear.  Finally I got an Associated SC10 differential seal (which is a close enough of a fit for his Losi XXX) and changed out the 5K Kyosho diff grease with 10K Associated diff oil.  The heat of running must've liquefied the 5K grease and it had leaked out of the unsealed diff essentially resulting in a well lubed but free spinning diff and transmission.  The seal and thicker fluid should maintain the diff action we need on this high traction black-groove track.

His race day went:

• Qualifier 1: 4th w/  14 laps
• Qualifier 2: 2nd w/ 14 laps
• Qualifier 3: 1st w/  14 laps

People use all sorts of stuff to increase the traction of their tires.  From the typical special tire traction additives like Sticky Kicks to the custom formula "Thorny" and "Spiky" brewed and sold at the track-side hobby shop to more esoteric options like Liquid Wrench.  We just use Simple Green.  We keep a small bottle of it in the car hauler and scrub up the tires with a tooth brush dipped in it.  Mainly I do it to clear the dust off the tires.  I'm not sure if it interacts with the rubber of the tire like those traction sauces but it works well enough for us.

Sadly the LiveRC system appears to have glitched out during the Beginner main race.  Garrett started in 2nd but dropped back to finish 4th.  Overall he was happy with his race day and came off the rostrum with a smile despite finishing lower than he'd hoped.

 

[Effigy3 1267]

My race day was a bit of a mix.  I didn't do much to my 201 before the race.  I redid my rear shocks and upgraded the front suspension shafts to TiNi coated jobbers.  Seriously, are there any suspensions out there smoother than Tamiya?  I think not!

So my race day went:

• Qualifier 1: 6th w/ 16 laps
• Qualifier 2: 6th w/ 16 laps
• Qualifier 3: 4th w/ unknown laps because the system was glitchy

I've increased my lap count by two over last race day which is pretty decent I think.  Maybe the track was just faster though.  We'll need more data points to know for sure which means I need to race more!   During my marshaling stint of the Beginners 3rd qualifier round I was struck in the foot by an errant 4WD SCT going at quite the clip.  I was posted to the table top and facing on-coming traffic like I'm supposed to be.  A truck went past but landed oddly on the table top so I turned my head to see if it was on it's wheels or not.  That's when the SCT slammed into my right foot!  Open-toed shoes are banned on the track.  I was wearing my Vibram shoes like usual.  Needless to say, 4WD SCT > Vibrams.

I'll be wearing my Keens to the track from now on.  

I started out in 4th position, dropped to 5th at the end of lap 1 and regained 4th when Alex had some issues and ended his race on lap 8.  I think I could have done better but my steering arm ball cup popped off not once, but twice during the race.  Thankfully the marshals were able to pop it back on for me.  Obviously I'll be swapping in some new ones before next race day! 

4th place out of a field of 8, that is definitely NOT last which is my first goal.  If I can pick up the pace (actually get more consistent) I think I could get an A main bump which is my second goal.  If I could of squeezed 2 more laps into my pace I would have been in contention for the bump so that's where my focus will be.  Not sure I'll get there in the summer series but maybe by the fall series I'll be in the A main.  I truly hope to get bumped into the A main at least once by the end of 2016.  It's been years since a rear motor car has been in the A main.  I wanna be that guy so a Tamiya can be the most recent (and likely the last) rear motor buggy to make the A main!

https://youtu.be/6BnWyNn_X4A

[Crash Cramer 617]

YEEEEOUCH, that looks pretty gruesome.

[Effigy3 1267]

9 hours ago, Crash Cramer said:

YEEEEOUCH, that looks pretty gruesome.

Apparently RC off road racing is a contact sport!

[Effigy3 1267]

There's a Pro-Line national race on the big track that'll take up the track owners time to prepare for so yesterday was the first and only race day of August on the small track.  It was a big cluster pretty much all day long too.  Once we got our pit area setup and a battery fully charged for my son he went out to get in some practice laps.  His SCT was driving horribly!  No acceleration, no speed.  He couldn't even make it onto the table top jump!  I waved him in and we went back to the pits.  Turns out his spur gear was totally stripped!

Since he's driving a Losi the on-track hobby shop actually carries parts, just not for the XXX-SCT.  It's too old of a chassis.  Luckily the spur for the Losi 22 fit just fine.  They only had an 84T spur though (his was an 86T).  So all we had to do was purchase slipper pads and a 24T pinion (his was a 25T) to keep his FDR at roughly the same spot it had been.  After some fiddling with the throttle travel (he had been running at 65% throttle throw) to accommodate the slightly different feel on the track he had a decent but not stellar 3 qualifier runs.  He ended up finishing in the middle of the pack earning a 5th spot seed for the main.

I had done a lot to my TRF 201 prior to this race day.  I upgraded to the aluminum steering rack and servo horn, added flourine coated suspension balls and TiNi suspension shafts.  I rebuilt the rear shocks and went from hard to medium springs on the front shocks.  My goal was to make this as smooth handling of a buggy as possible.  The idea was to be able to carry more corner speed without pushing.  After some initial adjustment I really started to drive well until about 2/3 of the way through 2nd qualifier.  I couldn't turn right.  Left turns were no issue, in fact it was pulling a bit to the left down the straight but every right turn was a no go.  I stopped by a marshal and motioned for him to pull my car off the track and I got an DNF.  After some diagnostics I realized that my servo was shot.  The gears look fine but it will only accept left turn input from the transmitter.  All right turn input is duly ignored.  I popped the top off to inspect the gears and with it apart I connected it up to the receiver.  The servo motor constantly spins with no input from the transmitter what so ever.  When I reassembled the servo, the left only turn situation was still there.  Out of options and with time running short until my next qualifying run I purchased a new servo from the hobby shop.

Here's a pic of the new Savox Black edition servo going into the chassis.

One of the big issues we were all having was an amazing amount of no traction.  I was fishtailing out of the final right hander before the straight.  My back end was coming about in the hair pin before the table top.  I wasn't the only one either.  So between Q2 and Q3 I pulled the JConcepts Pressure Points and swapped in some AKA Handlebars.

Holy cow!  The combination of new (faster) servo and actual grip on the rear made my Q3 quite satisfying.  I still finished 5th but I can tell that with a bit more practice this servo might be the thing that gets me the bump into the a-main!  Taking a cue from dad, my son swapped out his Pressure Points with Pro-Line Electrons.  The Electrons are known to be one of the highest grip tire for this track but at $20 a pair they are an expensive option considering they only last one race day before balding out.

There was a 30 minute break between the quals and the mains.  At about 20 minutes into the break, the skies opened up.

A 60 minute rain delay turned into a cancellation at about 30 minutes in.

So I didn't get a chance to really run that new servo.    They're going to use the spot we seeded into the mains as our final spots for the main point calculation.  This is a bummer because both my son and I typically finish higher than we start in the mains.  Oh well.  There's always next month!

[Rb4276 803]

Seems like you or your son can't buy a break

[Effigy3 1267]

1 hour ago, Rb4276 said:

Seems like you or your son can't buy a break

Maybe not.  Either that's just how it is racing, or we haven't gotten our feet under us yet.  Regardless, we're having a blast racing together and that's what it's all about.

[Effigy3 1267]

It's been nearly a month since we raced.  Yesterday was the last race in the summer series.  The long hiatus off the track showed in both of our driving.  All day long Garrett was sitting in 5th place out of a field of 9.  He finished 5th in all 3 of his quals and in his main.  He ended the series in 4th out of about a dozen or so regular drivers and just missed getting a 3rd place plaque by 1 point.  ONE POINT!    We have transitioned him to Pro-Line Street Fighters.  They seem to work pretty well on this track, not as well as the Electrons of course but they show zero signs of wear after a full day of racing.  People in the pits tell me these will last a full season.  So that's awesome.  Here is is waiting for his main to start.

While the black edition Savox servo I bought at the track hobby store last race is surely a beautiful servo, the thicker wire and plug were not awesome in my buggy.  As it turns out, it's exactly the servo I had in my wish list for Garrett's 4WD SCT we plan to get him this year so he can be a bit more competitive on the track.  So I went ahead and bought a replacement servo for me and will use the black edition for him in the future.  I went with a Savox SV-1273TG Ultra Speed jobber.

Just hanging out near the staging area waiting for my qualifier round to start.

My main was the exact opposite of Garrett's.  Where he started out in 5th and pretty much stayed in 5th the whole race long, I had a bit more excitement in mine.  I lined up 7th (dead last) in the main and patiently waited for the tone.  It was a mad house first lap.  I did a cute little pirouette after coming out of the first single jump but got marshaled quickly and was on my way.  The hairpin following the table-top was a nightmare but I somehow managed to come through fine and entered the straightaway in the lead.  The lead didn't last long because I got tagged and twisted about heading into the step-up jump.  This even caused a chain reaction that I was marshaled out of last.  I went from first to 5th in the span of a few seconds.     A little bit later something similar happened and I found myself dead last.  I did manage to earn back one place but I simply ran out of time to make any real headway.

Once I crossed the loop finishing my race, the same guy who started my chain reaction downward spiral from first position to last tweaked me again, in the same corner pushing me into the pipe causing me to snap my front suspension arm and lower shock connector.  You can't see it happen because it's just out of the cameras angle of view.  It's right around the 8:15 mark.  You'll see him spin out in the lower-left of the frame, then I enter cleanly, disappear from view, the SMACK into the pipe.  I'd be really PO'd but that driver is only like 10 years old.  He does quite well for a 10 year old but this day he was the spawn of the devil himself! 

 

I assume they'll run a fall series but I don't know when that starts.  I would really like Garrett to have a 4WD SCT for that.  I don't want to sink anymore $$ into his 2WD but his body is getting a bit tattered and he might do better with a faster servo.  He's currently running a Savox SW-0250MG which I bought for durability and not speed.  Experience has shown me that a racer needs a fast and durable servo.  When I drive his truck on the track, it feels sluggish.  Like it's asleep in the turns.

[Effigy3 1267]

It's been over a month since we've been racing.  In that time I bought my son a used Losi Ten SCTE 1.0 from a buddy at the track.  It has a fair number of upgrades including the TLR race conversion kit.  There were some worn bits that I replaced.  The motor mount and top are now new King Headz items.  I also installed a new Castle Mamba Max Pro and external 10A BEC, the Savox black edition servo I had bought for my TR F201 (which didn't fit too well), a new Spektrum SR4210 receiver, and a new Atomic Red 7.5T 550 motor.  I mounted up a set of J-Concepts Pressure Points onto a set of new AKA Cyclone rims.  Luckily the body from his XXX-SCT fit perfectly so we reused that.  The only issue we discovered was some stuttering under hard initial acceleration.  One of the fast guys in the pit lent me his sensor tester and it showed that the wire and motor sensor were fine.  So either the motor and ESC are incompatible (unlikely) or the sensor in the MMP is bad (sadly more likely).  So thankfully the MMP can work in both sensored and unsensored modes.  I simply yanked the wire and we ran it unsensored for the day.  It drives MUCH heavier than the XXX-SCT.  So much heavier, which is good in this Beginner class.  The time off from racing and driving an unfamiliar truck took its toll.  He finished 5-3-5 out of 9 racers in the three qualifying runs.  He took a final 5th in the main.  He was pleased with his performance.  I need to work on his rear shocks.  They don't have the rebound they need.  They'll compress fine but won't hold the truck up under its own weight.  If let to sit on the tires for like 5 minutes it'll be bottomed out.  :/

Here's his main:

 

[Effigy3 1267]

My TRF 201 was setup about as good as I can get it.  It's running quite well but simply pushes like a bulldozer, especially in the hair pins.  I had 2/3 worn J-Concepts diamond bars up front with Pressure Points on rear.  Even with tire sauce I have to come to near a complete stop to setup for the table top.  The other hair pins are no better.  The worn Pressure Points were causing the back end to slide out on the longer sweepers.  For the 3rd qual I swapped them out for 90% fresh AKA Vektors front and back.  I used Simple Green to clean them up real good and in the qual they were noticeably better, but still not awesome.  For the main I sauced them up real good but they didn't hold traction for the whole 8 minutes.  I finished dead last in all my quals and in the main.  Caboose in da howz! 

Here's my main: