Racing and Breaking

I ended up talking to one of my old friends today at Trackside Hobbies. My good friend Rich Holland (aka Richard Petty) came by to race toy cars today. He told me that when he isn't racing toy cars, he's racing drag bikes at speeds around 160mph. Sure that is something I would like to do. NOT !!

This is my first day back at Trackside since the All star race. My main goal was to see if I can get the car working well without changing much on the car.

That didn't work out to well now that I think about it. But I didn't make any center of gravity changes to the car since I've been on the track. I wanted to see If I can set up the car using camber changes and shock positioning.

The following is a list of changes for this race

1) Gearing change to 3.8 from a 4.0 to get faster in the straight.
2) Changed camber to favor steering.
Camber setup
1.5 front
1 Rear (car slides out more)
3) Re-build Shocks (using Tamiya shock pump)

4)Changed shock positions
Second most inner in the rear
Second most inner in the front

A little note on the Tamiya Shock air pump. I picked this item up while at the race at Harbor Hobbies. The idea of this device is to help me get all the air bubbles out of the shock before I re-assemble it so that the shocks are more consistent and need rebuilding less. I must say, after a test run with this new pump, I was very happy with the results. The shocks were more even and it didn't take me that long to reassemble.

In the end I finished in the B main. I was able to get 24 laps in 5 minutes 11 seconds in qualifying. That is a very good qualifying time. Its not the best time however, and I think that I got some years of practicing to do to be able to reach 26 laps in 5 minutes. That is 2 laps faster that I am.

My main wasn't as good as I hoped. I ended up breaking in the first lap. I lost a screw someplace on the track. My entire steering assembly was out of wack because of it.

I was able to limp the car to the finish line. This wasn't the race I was hoping for. But its always, " all in good fun " at Trackside.