Wednesday, July 30, 2008

Cyclone S Tips: Drive to Win!

"To finish first, first you must finish."

This saying is one all to commonly used. And with good reason.

If you can drive reasonably well, and you keep clean lines and don't crash, there is no reason why you can't win. As long as you are of competitive speed and are able to drive reasonably well, you should be able to WIN!

No matter how good the top guys are, they always will occasionally slip up and will crash or have a breakage, and if you are there to seize this opportunity it will give you a chance to win. It takes me back to one race that I ran in. I had made some silly mistakes, slipping from 1st to 3rd, and there was only 30 seconds to go. Fortunately for me, the guy that was in 2nd was not so far away from me and I managed to get past, and remember, this is spec racing, at the time it was with TT01's in the NZ Tamiya TT01 class. The guy in 1st was half the track away from me. But then his transmitter batteries went flat. And because he uses Ni-Cad rechargeable batteries, he had no prior warning before the race. And because of his mistake, I was able to catch him in the middle of the straight and get round to lap counting to finish first.

Also, in Stock, once you get the car handling right, Leave It! and if you are going to change the setup, make sure that you've recorded what the setup was previously.

When driving, also try to keep as much speed on in the corners as possible in Stock.

Sunday, July 20, 2008

Cyclone S Tips: Motor Cooler.

This is my home built motor cooler.


Motor Cooler
Motor Cooler
Motor Cooler

Cyclone S Tips: Toe In. How it affects your stock car.

The Cyclone S comes stock standard with 3.0 degrees toe in on the rear and 0 degrees on the front. Whilst this is good for Pro-Stock or Mod, it slows you down to much in the corners in Stock. What you want, is the minimum toe in through out the car. This will give you maximum steering and allow you to get round the corners quicker and without losing to much speed. If you have toe in on the rear or front of the chassis it will slow you down! This is useful in Pro-Stock and Mod because it means that you have to slow down less for the corners and therefore lose less speed on the other side of the of the corners. Currently my car is running with 0 degrees on the rear and 3 degrees on the front.

Friday, July 4, 2008

NZRCA Remits. How they have affected us.

The A.G.M of the New Zealand Radio Controlled Car Association, or the NZRCA has just passed. I am pleased to say that the rules for pro stock, and stock have stayed exactly the same, with the exception of there being open batteries up to 4600mah cells with a nominal voltage of 1.2v being allowed in Pro Stock.

This means that when you are buying new cells you can buy cells for pro stock which would have been illegal before the A.G.M. But if you are buying new cells for Stock, you are still limited to 1500mah maximum capacity.

Unfortunately the remit concerning 5000mah maximum cells did not get through and means that we will be stuck with lower capacity cells for another year.