This past Monday, I took the plunge and ran my first full race with the re-bodied SC10 truck.

It was a real blast, but I have A LOT to learn about truck setup before I’m going to be competitive. The most challenging issue I’m facing right now, is the speed of the steering servo. It’s too fast! It makes the truck feel really loose. When hitting full throttle down the main straight, it’s very difficult to put in a little steering correction. Instead, I’m finding myself loosing control, needing to slow down, and often getting passed while trying to regain control of the truck.

The RC controller I have is made by Futaba. A well known, and respected name in Radio Control for decades. Checking through the manual, I was disheartened to find the radio I’m using does not have any ‘Expo’ (a configurable low-action or dead-zone) settings. It does, however have a Dual-Rate capability on the steering channel (#1), which might allow me to tone down the very fast steering servo. My concern, having not tested it, is that it might make the steering too slow, making the better servo a moot improvement. :/ Things you learn, right?

Even more daunting that the steering issue for me last Monday, was the fact that 45 minutes before the first heat race, I completely destroyed the stock rear differential I’d put after breaking the output shaft on the race differential that came with the truck. Ugh! With not much time, I had to rip apart the entire back end of the truck, remove the transmission, split it’s case and try to slam in a brand new Team Associated ball differential. With the cost of a rebuild kit of the stock costing $30, and a complete new competition ball differential being $40, the decisions was pretty easy. Go for the adjustable diff and learn to set IT up as well. Having been a racer for a long time (full-sized vehicles, that is), I’m well versed in the climbing of the learning curve. You just have to do it. Good racers have a lot of wheel time.

Upside for me, was that Brian (owner of BRCR) was kind enough to build the differential for me, while getting everything else ready for the race, so I could concentrate get the truck apart and back together in time for the race. Final 5 minute call to line up for the race came as I was putting in the last two screws. I selected one of my qualifier battery packs, ran from the pits down to the track and got in line, JUST in time for first heat.

I finished last, several laps down from the leaders, but it was great experience, a lot of fun, and I plan to race again this coming Monday, assume I’ve not broken the truck in the mean time. 🙂