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ThunderDragonCy

TA06 - First touring car build and first time racing

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25 minutes ago, Jonathon Gillham said:

I wish I had your knowledge of tuning and setup! 

Feel your pain on duff bearings, been chasing those around my sons car. I think I have that sorted, but who knows.

May as well go racing on Saturday regardless, from what you've said about the others there you will have plenty of help

I just read the setup guides. That Hudy one you recommended is good, particularly the look up table, but the rcscrapyard one is super easy to use and understand too. I also just fiddle and see what the car is doing. There is no replacememt for changing something and then running the car. 

Agreed on racing again. It's a fun night and the guys were so nice. That said i am wondering if i ought not just buy a TT01E kit for 60 quid and race Iconic instead. Less to go wrong! 

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44 minutes ago, ThunderDragonCy said:

I just read the setup guides. That Hudy one you recommended is good, particularly the look up table, but the rcscrapyard one is super easy to use and understand too. I also just fiddle and see what the car is doing. There is no replacememt for changing something and then running the car. 

Agreed on racing again. It's a fun night and the guys were so nice. That said i am wondering if i ought not just buy a TT01E kit for 60 quid and race Iconic instead. Less to go wrong! 

I have the hudy guide in my kitbox and have to refer to it every time I want to change anything, i can never remember it. The hardest part i find is the running after changing something - you really need access to the track for a tuning day.

I wonder the same thing, my onroad club runs a TT02 spec class with minimal upgrades. I have one now that is ideal, I just need a torque tuned motor and the spec tyres, its tempting to run it rather than Touring Car for a while to learn how to race onroad.

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@El Dougo Ok, here goes!

Based on a base TA06 kit with front mounted standard shock, not IFS. CVA shocks with TRF 3 hole pistons.

Front suspension:

1D/1D mounts, 4 deg caster C hubs, 6mm alloy wheel hexes, kit uprights and bumpsteer spacers, kit spec 2.5mm spacer under inner pivot ball, innermost camber link hole (longest link as per manual). Shocks on top position 2 (nearly all the way inboard), bottom position as per kit. Blue hard springs from 53163, 500cst oil, 300000cst in gear diff, stiffest gold TA06 sway bar. 0 deg toe in/out, 1 deg neg camber. If I haven't mentioned it, it's same as the kit.

Rear Suspension:

1XB/1F mounts for 4 deg toe in, kit uprights, 4.5mm alloy wheel hexes, 1mm spacer under inner pivot ball (kit is no spacers), innermost camber link hole (longest link as per manual). Shocks on top position 2 (nearly all the way inboard), bottom position as per kit. Red soft springs from 53163, 400cst oil, 3000cst in gear diff, no rear sway bar, 2 deg neg camber. If I haven't mentioned it, it's same as the kit.

The C hubs and shocks mounts are all the hop up carbon reinforced plastic versions. Tyres/wheels are 24mm wide Sorex 28 slicks. Power is from a 4600 Turnigy Graphene Shorty pushed all the way back, but secure in the battery box using foam blocks. 60A Hobbywing ESC, 17.5t brushless Surpass Rocket V3 motor, 4.4 FDR.

Front ride height is around 5.5mm. Rear ride height is 5mm. Front droop is about 3mm. Rear droop is nearer 1mm.

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That's so not good I'm not sure where to start dude and apologies if this is suck eggs but the below base will be a significant improvement over you current.

2 deg camber all round, 1-2 deg toe out at the front and anything over 3 deg rear toe in inst good. I would go for 2.5 as that's generally the happy place. Something most people omit is making sure that the steering travel is equal and sufficient, you want about 25 to 30deg travel. Build the front and rear shocks the same, I would start with 45W or equivalent on 2.7's all round built with no rebound. Ride height front and rear also the same 5-5.3 but the closer to 5 the better.

The 6deg caster hubs make a big diffidence but are not as strong (will be fine for outdoor). Put a thin roll-bar on the back and make sure that there both working freely with the shocks disconnected. More eggs but when you lift one arm the opposite should rise at the same time to the same height. Not enough droop go for 5 front and 4 on the back to start with.

Are saying that the inner upper arm spacer is smaller than the outer? As I expect you know this will give you camber gain but you generally would not want more than a .5 drop.  I would start with the even or a .25mm drop if possible as the camber gain can be quite significant under tight cornering.

Go for a spool front diff or much thicker oil 1,000,000+ and 5000 in the rear. I would also move the battery to the front of the tray. Final thing is something that most people find counter intuitive is the belt tightness as loose is better, on a twin belt car it's the number one mistake.

I will have missed something but hopefully the above helps. Get busy and let us know how you get on as I'm sure once your car is working as it should you will get hooked on club racing :)

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No worries bud,

Get them sorted then we can work on getting you to the start of the grid for the A Finals :) 

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51 minutes ago, El Dougo said:

No worries bud,

Get them sorted then we can work on getting you to the start of the grid for the A Finals :) 

I like your optimism! Can you explain a couple of things please? What did you mean by 2.7 springs and shocks built with no rebound? 

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@El Dougo Figured out the spring rate. I think the springs i have are way too soft. They are the 53163 set, but they are really soft compared to what you suggest. My current rear red springs are 0.87, the front stiff blue are 1.26. Even the 'stiff' springs from my set are half the stiffness you suggest. The kit silver springs (same as you get the TT01E and TT02) seem a lot stiffer. I am going to fit the kit springs tomorrow and reset the suspension and see what happens. Then maybe get the 53440 set. That has rate options from 1.7 to 2.5.

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4 hours ago, ThunderDragonCy said:

@El Dougo Figured out the spring rate. I think the springs i have are way too soft. They are the 53163 set, but they are really soft compared to what you suggest. My current rear red springs are 0.87, the front stiff blue are 1.26. Even the 'stiff' springs from my set are half the stiffness you suggest. The kit silver springs (same as you get the TT01E and TT02) seem a lot stiffer. I am going to fit the kit springs tomorrow and reset the suspension and see what happens. Then maybe get the 53440 set. That has rate options from 1.7 to 2.5.

I have the 53440 set but how do you tell the spring rates?  Can you measure them?  I run blue front and yellow rear on my TA07

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Well, MUCH fiddling this week. Fitted the kit springs. Much stiffer, but seems a little calmer. Ride height was a bit high at the rear, so i pulled out a thin preload spacer leaving some dead 'rattly spring' travel, but that got the rear down to 5mm. Ran it briefly and it seemed a step in the right direction so i needed to figure out how to get rid of the dead travel in the shock. 

Some surgery..... 

2019-08-22_05-41-41

I didn't really want to rebuild the shocks with a spacer inside, and as things were looking ok on the handling i wanted to dial back the rear toe in too. So, i pulled the rear arms off to install the 1X RF blocks to give 3 deg toe in (down from 4) and whilst the arms were off i took advantage of the reversible option and flipped them. The reversible arms have staggered holes on either side. The kit build has you install them so the rear shock mounts on hole 3 (outermost hole of the inboard pair of holes). Flipping them allows me to use hole 4, the widest possible option. This did exactly what i wanted and required full shock extension to reach it. I took up the slack on the spring with the thin preload spacer and dropped it onto my board. (i hesitate to call it anything as grand as a setup board - it's a spare laminated shelf). The new position had the effect of increasing the leverage and effectively softening the rear end (a good thing for me) as the ride height was down at 3mm. I shuffled the preload spacers to get back to 5mm, reset the droop (4mm) and added some droop to the front (6mm). Ran it for a good few minutes and this definitely heading the right way. I think i might be getting somewhere! I have still ordered 53440 spring set which will hopefully be here in time to do some final tweaking before racing on saturday evening.

One final thing: You might have spotted the white spur gear. I had been running an Associated spur but it seemed to be noisy and warp a bit. This is the first RW Racing i have had and it's sooooo good. Prefectly round and straight and the car just purrrrrrs. Lovely! 

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53440 arrived from Lord Tony of Tamiya Parts. Next day delivery. Can't argue with that! Bit of testing in the street and i have settled on blue stiff front, red soft rear. 5mm ride height both ends, 3mm droop rear, 5mm front. Finally seems planted! Oddly enough, droop and ride height at the front had a big impact on rear grip. Based on a finger squeeze test i would say the blue fronts are stiffer than the kit springs, but i didn't reset the ride height so it was running a little high, but also reduced droop. When i realised and reduced the preload to get the ride height down i got more rear grip! Kinda counter-intuitive, as on a buggy if you raise the front ride height you tend to get more rear grip. Only thing i can put it down to is the droop. With less droop at higher ride height there was less weight transfer under acceleration because the front hit the droop stops sooner i guess? Still, car is fairly happy, so i am happy. Tomorrow...... WE RACE! 

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Raced again. Sucked a lot less, and actually had fun. Even didn't come last in one race and didn't need marshalling in another, which i think i am more proud of! 

20190824_200342 20190824_192636

The car was just so much better after all the testing and understanding from last week. Only thing i had to tweak was ride height. It was all set at 5mm but by the end of heat 1 the shell was scraping a lot and was a little loose at the back. Got it back on the board and the ride height was 3mm rear and 4mm front! Something to do with 5 solid minutes of flat (ish) out driving plus some heat had really settled everything. I guess that's the issue running with CVAs with their preload clips. Anyway, reset everything to 5mm and all was good. 

Was definitely driving slow and steady, but was progressively running more throttle through the corners, getting a feel for the car. It's such a fun track. Steering still feels a little responsive off the straight ahead even with the exponential turned full negative on the Tx, but it was manageable enough to get on with this week. I wonder if putting steering arms in the front holes on the steering knuckles would calm it down?

Anyway, I'm happy and it was a really fun evening. Thanks for all your thoughts and help everyone. 

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2 minutes ago, TwistedxSlayer said:

Will you be trying it again as RWD or keeping it 4wd?

Been wondering about this. I am leaving it 4wd for now because i might be able to fit racing in next saturday. However i am stuffed for weekends for about 6 weeks after that due to family and business trips, so no racing. No i have it handling nicely enough i am very temped to at least pull out the main belt and see what happens. 

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Spent the last couple of days learning about rebound in shocks. Having built mine like i do my buggies thry had pretty much full rebound (i.e. compressing them without springs the pistons push all the way back out again). I needed to refresh the shocks because i got some TRF diaphragms because i nicked the green ones for my RR-03Ra new shocks. Anyway, after much trying of various methods i got them back together (still with 500 front 400 rear) giving about 3mm of rebound (so they only extended back out 3mm from fully compressed with no springs). Got them on the car and i have to say it seems way more planted. Much easier to handle and more congidence inspiring. I also happened to run it with my full size race pack instead of the shorty. It was so much better i pulled he shorty off charge and gave it a run in its rearward position and it wasn't as good. It was still good, but the back end definitely got away quickly if it got swinging in fast direction changes. So, if i race again i will run the big pack, and i am going to test running the shorty all the way forward instead. I need to drill a couple of holes in the tub for that to access the battery plugs.

@TwistedxSlayer I did run it for a couple of minutes without the main belt. It was hard! Turn in was smooth and nice and braking was ok too, but getting on the power was hard. Basically if the car wasn't straight it just goes massively sideways and semi spins. Would probably improve with some setup, but my feeling is a rwd touring car is quite a handful! 

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I would guess the car seems more planted with the extra weight of the larger battery, not the preparation of the dampers; it's typically a 100 gram difference between full-size and shorty LiPos.  It's kind of the same reason F1 and Group C cars do better with older NiMH packs than modern LiPos.  The extra weight affects the ratio of unsprung weight to sprung weight.  Tamiya designed those cars when NiMH and NiCd were the main battery technologies.

I guess I'm not sold rebound is a bad thing given rebound forces are so small compared to spring forces.  It should hardly make any difference, at least mathematically.  If there is anything measurable to worry about, I would tip the shocks in one more hole on the stays and that would cover it.

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7 hours ago, speedy_w_beans said:

I would guess the car seems more planted with the extra weight of the larger battery, not the preparation of the dampers; it's typically a 100 gram difference between full-size and shorty LiPos.  It's kind of the same reason F1 and Group C cars do better with older NiMH packs than modern LiPos.  The extra weight affects the ratio of unsprung weight to sprung weight.  Tamiya designed those cars when NiMH and NiCd were the main battery technologies.

I guess I'm not sold rebound is a bad thing given rebound forces are so small compared to spring forces.  It should hardly make any difference, at least mathematically.  If there is anything measurable to worry about, I would tip the shocks in one more hole on the stays and that would cover it.

It is a good point, but i was quite surprised how fierce the rebound was on the short on road shock. For off road i think it's a good thing as the flipside of the rebound is progressively stiffer effective spring rate in compression as the 'air spring' above the diaphragm is compressed giving good bottom out resistance to landing just like the intetnal floating piston is high end 1:1 off road shocks. 

I have to say it's a few days since i have run the car so it's hard to be sure, but i would be just as easily persuaded by you mass argument as i know this does help. It will be interesting to give the car a quick run with the shorty all the way forward and therefore effectively completely central. 

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Hey Guys, was attending a race today on a very nice grippy track in Eindhoven, Holland.

During midday break I took my RWD TA06 out for a test. It ran awesome!

Now I need to find a real RWD body... first thing coming in my mind is Protoform Ford GT.

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