I also said there would be a post about about what I planned to use that in. Well, so maybe I didn’t post up soon, but I am posting about it now.
The kit was ordered from TQRacing in Southern California and it arrived in 3 days! They shipped it within hours and the USPS had it on my door step in plenty of time to get it all sorted out before the next race! Package of goodies from TQRacing
What’s in the package? 3 things. A Speed Passion ESC (aka speed controller), Speed Passion 17.5T Club Spec motor, and the required mini programmer. And the thing at the top is a well worn Team Associated Factory Team B4 buggy, circa 2007. If there was a VIN on thing thing it would show many, many owners, me just being the most recent. In fact it’s quite amusing to run it at the track. Already two different people have come up to me and mentioned that they used to own my buggy at one point. So it’s not the freshest horse in the race, but it was well maintained by the previous owners, so it was a very worthy purchase:
B4 Factory Team Roller: $90
SAVOX High-speed Servo: $25
Speed Passion 17.5T (Club Spec Stock) kit: $90
Futaba 603FG 2.4 GHz FHHS receiver: $45
3 full tire and wheel sets: Included Total Cost:$250
Quite a savings over the $260 cost of just the factory kit alone. Parts for next race class - 2wd Stock Buggy.
Only one problem with this kit. The sensor wire is WAY too short! This kit is designed for on-road vehicles primarily which use mid-mounted motors, as opposed to the off-road designs that use the rear-engine (ala VW Bug) mounting. This was the only problem I had getting the buggy running that night. Time was short and I didn’t get to the track / hobby shop in time to get a longer sensor wire until race night.
Speed Passion 17.5T motor and sensor wire loom
This little hitch was not enough to keep me from getting everything else mounted up in the buggy. It’s a nice thing that the ESC is so small, the dimensions of the buggy are pretty tight! Assembled B4 2wd Race Buggy
You may notice that the batty wire leads are still bare. That was the 2nd thing I need to complete, was purchase of a male DEAN’s connector and adapter cable. Or, at least that was the plan! It turns out the deans connector costs $4.00. The adapter cable for my batteries cost another $12. BUT, for only $8.00 I could get an 8-pack of 4mm plated bullet connectors (good enough to do two vehicles) and eliminate the 2nd connection resistance in the DEANS, and go direct from ESC to battery. And that’s exactly how I solved the problem. Sorry, no photo of that at this time. I’ll try to add one later.
So.. finally, here it is. Ready for action. Most of the guys said I should practice my first few hours with the tires as is, before I go ahead and convert the to slicks, which our off-road cray track is best suited for. So, you see the worn Panthers in this photo. B4 built up, and almost ready to go (sensor and battery soldering would be completed later)
Here it is ready for action, with it’s bigger team mate, the might SC10. SC10 and B4 ready to run.
More to follow about buggies. I won’t say exactly what I have in store next, but it’s going to be one trick kit. I just hope the rumors of shipping to the hobby stores before the months’ end is true!
It didn’t take long for me to figure out that I had A LONG way to go before I belonged running Open Short Course trucks. Even though I had the monster motor in the class with a 7.5T Novak (most other racers were running 10.5T or 13.5T – lower the turns, the faster it spins up and higher the max RPM, more akin to 2-stroke, as opposed to the torque motors in the 17.5T and higher windings, which are more akin to a big displacement thumper).
Even with quite a power advantage… I was.. well.. toast. 5 laps down on the leader. This is no place for a rookie.
Open Short Course Racing
Still being fairly new to the hobby, I was a little light on motor options, having only a 13.5T Novak and the 7.5T Novak I was already running. Having been kicked up form novice, I was either stuck racing Open class with those motors, or I’d have to spend about $100 on a new 17.5T motor. And in stock class you can’t afford to skimp on the motor, you need the best 17.5T motor you can afford. Add that to the fact I HATE THE NOVAK GTB speed controller. It’s so complex to program with the little push-buttons and lights. And it never seemed to really take the programming, even though the status lights clearly showed that I’d done it right. It was frustrating to say the least. So, in a state of excitement, frustration and resignation to my own personal quirks (let’s just call them imperfections, shall we, at least I’ve learned to recognize them, if not yet fully control them), I knew I’d stew over the purchase for weeks and weeks, eventually it would become the source of anxiety and finally depression, after which I would spend the money. So, I saved myself the 5 states of loss and took the $270 medicine up front: Tekin RS + 17.5T Kit
Thus, I set about removing my Novak GTB system and installing the RS. However, I had one unresolved matter I had to attend to first. My last race with at the wheel of the uber-powered truck, had really done a number on it: Serious damage to chasis. Trucks are not supposed to be 'Two Piece' afairs.
The cost of a new chassis is not really a consideration (under $30), however, it’s the chassis! That means everything mounts to it. To replace this part would require a 50% rebuild of the entire truck. That’s potentially hours of effort. Effort that would have to be duplicated again if I have just one really bad landing, or under-dump and lawn dart the thing.
However, I did have a solution. One that requires the purchase of a $19 aftermarket front bumper kit, of which 2/3 are discarded, and the other 1/3 requires modifications to perform the job of taking the place of the broken chassis nose.
RPM to the rescue! RPM SC10 Heavy Duty Front Bumper Kit (only lower section is retained)
Following the Frankenstein repair to the front clip, the next order of business was a complete rebuild of the front shocks including a re-valve, new springs and silicon oil change. Here is the final setup: Rebuilt SC10 Shocks. Rear (l.) & Front (r.)
Front Dampers
Rear Dampers
Valve Piston:
#3
#2
Shock Oil:
40 wt.
30 wt.
Spring:
Red (3.90 lb./in.)
Silver (2.10 lb./in.)
Down Stops
4 (.120″)
7(.210″)
Mounting the motor was very mostly straight forward. However, there was not enough adjustment in the motor mount plates to get the 29T pinion gear I needed to fit with my 84T spur, so I bought a new gear set with a 75T spur gear and 27T pinion. With the 15 degrees of physical motor timing (see photo) I have on pretty quick stock truck. Sure I’m topped out on speed by the end of the straight compared to the Mod trucks, but I have gobs of low-end torque that gets me up and over the jumps with almost no run-up. 6′ of air time is no problem at all with this setup. I can easily clear the 4-hump rhythm section with a quick punch of the throttle.
Some of you new or simply unfamiliar with surface brushless systems might wonder what the extra cable bundle is near the bottom of the motor. That’s the sensor harness. This measures the inrunner’s RPM, feeding back position and speed to the ESC, which allows it to automatically detected cogging at low RPM, and smooth the pulses, giving the driver very smooth and easy to control power compared to non-sensored systems. Having had both, I can say first had that this *DOES* make a difference. You lose some of the potential torque of the motor, since some magnet space is given up to the sensor, but power is nothing if you can’t get it all to the ground. The sensor provides the ability to do just that. Tekin 17.5T mounted.
Mounting of the speed controller was simpler than the big and bulky Novak I was replacing. The profile is so low it barely extends above the sides of the chassis. The solder posts on the controller are also a thing of beauty. Vastly superior to the solder points on my Novak and most other ESCs I’ve seen so far. Easy to heat, plenty of post length, and slotted so you can mount wires horizontal (as I did) or vertical, depending on whim. The three wires on the left control the motor, the two on the right (with capacitor) are the battery power leads. Sensor harness plugs into side of ESC (right). Another bonus on the Tekin is the topside status LED bar, not on the side like the Novak and XP I’ve had in other vehicles. Another example of learning from racing. Put it where people can see it! Seems simple, yet.. so difficult for some companies to ‘get’ Tekin RS Speed Controller
The last two updates made with this conversion, was the witch to the light-weigh 2/3 height SAVOX SC-1251 Metal Gear Digital Servo. This is a lot smaller than the stock XP (sloooooow) or the black body SAVOX I was running before. Also in this photo is my personal truck transponder. Other than the ESC, this was the single most expensive part in the entire truck. This is the newest RC4 compatible hybrid transponder from MyLaps. A lot of tracks (including the one that I use) had track transponders available to borrow for a race. They are basically free. So why buy my own at such great expense? 3 reasons: 1) I can get my practice day times logged for analysis 2) the RC4 hybrid is about 2/3 the size of the others and also lighter 3) I can permanently mount it anywhere I need for best signal. SAVOX 1251 and MyLaps Transponder
I’ll say this right now, the position in the photos is good, but not ideal. The metal gear servo interferes with the transponder (another advantage to owning your own, you can test transponder positions to find the optimal signal). I have since found a better position for the transponder. However, it’s exact position is now a closely held secret and an advantage I have on the track.. so.. don’t expect me to spill the beans on the net, you’ll have to join me at the track to see what I’ve since done.
You never really know anything, unless you measure, at least, something. So, a while back I started to keep track of my lap times recorded during racing.
Now that my NOVICE R/C days are behind me, I thought I’d look back at how long I’ve been racing and how far I’ve come from that first round of racing on 27-December-2010.
My run in NOVICE consisted of 14 events, between 27-DEC-2010 and 21-FEB-2011. Roughly 2 months worth of racing every available event at BRCR (Bremerton R/C Raceway).
All of the racing represented here was done with the following setup, with the exception of 21-FEB (I’ll cover that next).
Truck:
Team Associated Factory Team SC10
ESC:
Novak GTB speed controller
Motor:
Novak 13.5T brushless*
Power:
Venom 3800mah/35C and Venom 5000mah/50C
Radio:
Futaba 2PL
* Ran single race with Novak 7.5T brushless
Now, here is a look at the data in graphs. Where the lines start to converge, those are the heats or races where I was most consistent. Looking over the 14 round history, my fastest times have not improved that much. However my consistency has, and that’s one of the more important factors in winning. Crashing is a REAL time killer. It can easily cost you 1/2 a lap, sometimes more.
Heat Races Novice Heat Races - Short Course SC10
It’s pretty clear in this graph, that although I had one of my best laps in my first race, my consistency was garbage. I was trying to go fast, really fast, and what I ended up doing was a lot of crashing, and a few decent laps.
Towards the end, in the last few nights running in Novice, you can see that my times have tightened up a lot, and my 5-lap average is starting to get pretty close to my all-time fastest laps. Not crashing, and running good consistent laps is crucial to being able to win races.
A-Main Finals Novice A-Main - Short Course SC10
Here it’s a little less obvious. In my 3rd round of racing, I put down my fastest times, and my averages were pretty good too, but I was not yet winning. It was just a fast race. Track conditions are also a factor, this is why it’s important to include the fast-5 and fast-10 averages, to give some context to that fast time. It looks like the track was just ‘fast’ that night.
It’s also important to point out that right about the middle of January the track underwent a massive chance for ETC round #4, head at my local track.
When I start the analysis of my ‘Stock Short Course’ racing times, all of those will be on the same track we are currently running.
