Sunday 1 May 2011

Getting Ready For MNC round 2

MNC is Malaysia National Championship for RC car racing. Its basically the creme de la creme of races.
With the great handling of my Alcyon II Ultimate, i am now confident to join this open class race, in the boosted 10.5T class. The race is on 29th May 2011.
I bought a new Mazda 6 body, and going to buy 2 sets of sorex 36s for the race. I also will install one more of my own designed lightweight aluminium diff cup for the rear diff. I also installed the Tamiya Blue lightweight 46mm bones. I also must buy 1 more IP 5200mah 45C saddle pack to race.
The diff cups each save 20g, and the dogbones 10g. That doesnt seem much, but they lower mass in the most important area, the drive train. My Kawada should accelerate faster and brake faster too.
Take a look at some pics.





Yesterday bumped into Micheal Loh at the track, he is a very rich guy and can buy anything he wants. He looked at my Kawada and commented that my cars weight distribution is "off" . He also said that the Top Photon, Tamiya 417 and many other newer cars arent good designs. According to him only the Schumacer Mi4 is the best. The funny thing is, he did see me rear ending 2 Yokomo BD-5s in the fast corners, but did not say anyhting about it. If my Kawada is so bad, how come its able to carry so much speed into the corner and can hit those newer cars? He extolled the virtues of the Mi4 to me, and he showed me a buddies of his Mi-4 on the track. It was sliding at some corners. I pointed that out to him and he said it was the way he drives. He also said a fast car slides a little. That may be so, but i cant drive a sliding car. i want grip all the time, and my Kawada grips all the time. i drive aggresively too, i punch hard out of the corners, and brake hard coming into them, no sliding at all. So never mind Mr Loh, i will keep my Kawada. It just too much fun being different. You may even see me pull a surprise this coming MNC. Who knows....
latest updates, there are about 60+ entrants into the open class, and more than half are the best drivers with the best equipment in the country, lets see how it goes !

So i havent updated anything for months ..wha happended you asked ? Well the race went quite well. In the first heat with ratio 7.0, i managed to stay in 3rd until the end. I felt the car pushed too much, i did  set up the car for glenmarie, but it seemed the hard setting was still giving the car too much traction roll and understeer. But i wanst the only guy having that problem, the car felt sluggish when accelerating. In the second heat, i asked the Hobbywing Guru to tune my ESC for me, and he told me to use a ratio of 6.5. i also put in new tyres this run, and i led the race from 30s mark to the finish! eventhough i never got track burning time that landed me in the a Main, but in my heat grouping, i set the fastest time ever that nobody could beat that day, at 21 laps 5.17s. That is amazing considering all the other guys are using much much newer cars. i felt so damn proud at that moment. In the 3rd heat i screwed up by not checking the car properly, a front turnbuckle nut came off the front left wheel was wobbling, causing understeer, so that blew my chance of burying every one else. Eventhough i  DNF the 3rd heat, no one else
Yep, thats me, RAMA. 17 laps in 5.11. also set the fastest lap in my heat, excellent condisering my car is the only car that is from pre -2008 !!!
 in my grouping even came close to overcoming my second heat results. These old saddle pack cars really do have good balance!!
I ended up qualifying 24th out of 43, which was in the C main. Not bad for a 10 year old car!
In the final there was something wrong with the car, i couldnt quite place what was wrong, but the car kept sliding when i punched the throttle out of any right corner. ended up 6th in the final C.
After a week, i decided to clean up the car ,then i discovered why it was losing traction, the rear left arm was partially broken at the hub mounting, causing the arm to flex !!

1 comment:

  1. Just wanted to say it's nice to see someone still campaigning this older car. I'm actually using one of these in the USGT 21.5T series locally. So far I'm still trying to dial it in for rubber tires. It has the non adjustable shocks on it right now, so that will be the first thing to go, I also need to lengthen the rear shocks as it sits too low without a lot of pre-load on them. Good luck.

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