Pinions And Spurs

So the effort continues to tame the Ta05 to be able to race competitively in the 17.5 class with experiended drivers and along side high end cars such as the xray, hot bodies etc. I have made several changes since I last wrote, but a summary of them are as follows

1. Changed speed control from LRP SXX TC to LRP SPX Competition (better programming for stock motors)
2. Changed to 64p gearing so it is possible to gear more accurately
3. Added 3Racing trun buckles throughout the car replaced the stock as they are hard to work with
4. Changed the suspension oil to 60 wt for front to add more steering, rear is still 45 and using TC5 blue 17lb springs all around
5. Gearing is currently at 64p 88 Spur and 47 Pinion with FDR at 4.2

The car has been running very well and it is truely a pleasure to run this plastic chassis, the additional hop-ups have definitly made improvements and I am only focusing on minimizing additions of hop-ups unless I really need them so not much visual changes.

I will be posting more details of setup and pictures soon so stay tuned, as last weekend the front differential arm broke due to added pressure of increase drag brake that I needed. I am currently looking into using a solid front axel instead of a differantial to increase lap times and overall performance for a medium to small size technical track.

Speed Passion 17.5 motor

Something to note about speed passion motors, they are outstanding quality and very high performance. However something to note is that they usually need to be geared very differenlty than other motors to take full advantage of them.

For example Novak 17.5 motor is recommended to be used with 3.5 FDR, speed passion is similar in the sense that the v2 motor like the novak does not have physical timing. So in order to get most of the speed passion motor, i will be testing it with higher FDR in the range of 4.6 -> 5.5 plus with increased timing on the LRP SPX profile 8 to gain maximum torque and top end speed.

More to come….

I am currently working on fine tuning the Tamiya TA05 chassis to prepare for racing in the 17.5 class at the www.rctrack.com The Track in Gaithersburg MD.

Currently the following are the specs for the car

1. LRP SXX TC Speed Control, Power Profile 8
2. Speed Passion 17.5 Brushless Motor
3. 48p 78/38 Spur and Pinion
4. Optional Tamiya drive belts
5. Integy drive shafts
6. HPI tires (Pro Compound)
7. Ferrari F430 Body
8. Spektrum RX/TX
9. Trakpower 4900 mah 25C lipo
10. TRF shocks and TC5 17lbs springs

The car so far handles really well on asphalt track in gaithursburg md, my fastest laptime on the track is 16.5 seconds. The average for most drivers seems to be around 17-20 seconds, I intend to further tune the car and post results if I am able to further reduce lap times

It has been a while since I have written but have been busy with work and other projects including setting up HD for video production and setting up and building the Tamiya F104 pro (stay tuned).

I have to say the HPI Sprint 2 RTR is an amazing RTR package, the car is well built and handles well on the track. For a RTR it is hard to find kits that are so competitively priced and can run as well as this chassis, I have really enjoyed doing the brushless conversion and testing the car.

The mamba max system was chosen and used the 5700kv motor for now, the only thing other than the brushless system I used is a Robinson Racing 48p 22t pinion, everything else is bone stock on the car and it runs very well.

I am using Trakpower 2s lipo so had to make some small modifications on the battery tray, such as adding double sided tape to the bottom of the tray without taking the other sticker off. This is to ensure that the thinnner lighter lipo battery stays on the battery tray along with using dremel on the top of the battery mount so I can pass the two positive and negative power cables through.

So finally got around to building my next rc car. This time around I was looking for a good RTR chassis that was 4wd and economically priced. The HPI Sprint 2 seems to have fit the bill for being under 200.00 for a complete RTR package. I did however replace the radio equipment and used my spektrum dx3r system, everything else is bone stock.

The car handles well with it’s stock x-pattern d compund tires, I would guestimate the top speed to be around  20-25mph with the 15t firebolt brushed motor. The steering seems a little loose and I would suspect that the chassis would probably not handle a faster motor than a 5700kv type without upgrading some key components.

I plan to do a video on performance of the stock setup followed by a brushless conversion and then another look at how the chassis handles more power.

Also note that since this is brushed, the power is not used efficiently so run-times are low.. around 5 minutes or so.

Took the Ta05 speed passion 2.5R combo for a run as well, nothing changed on the car setup except for rear wing addition and FPV video gear. The car ran very well, as expected the added weight of the FPV gear made the car a little unstable at high speeds nearing 50mph. 

I have radar tested this setup for 50mph in windy conditions along with rear wing, I would say it was pretty near that target given that it was not windy that day. 

The video is more fuzzy on this car, I beleive this is mainly due to the car being setup lighter than the TC5R and so on corners and little bumps the car shakes more and thus causes more video disturbance..

I will hopefully be working on some kind of universal chassis of some kind that can hold the FPV gear better and definitly upgrading to 5.8ghz system when I can.

So finally got around to test out the new motor/gear/25c lipo setup on the TC5r. It was an extremely hot day, average ambient temperature was about 90-96. The car performed well, but ended up blowing the left rear tire and crashing as a result

The Mamba Max 5700 combo 87/22 gearing with Trakpower 3s 4900 25c combo is very very good, I enjoyed running the car. However the FPV equipment it self is pretty heavy along with the 3s lipo made the car somewhat unstable at high speeds, I estimate the car was topping out at around 60mph I did not get a chance to use the radar gun to make sure but given the setup and my calculations it should be doing at least that much.

I intend to get an OSD setup soon and perhaps in time upgrade to a 5.8ghz video system so I get better reception, the whole project has been challening because there are a lot of moving parts. The video gear and the car the electrics all need to be setup well and mounted on the car so they dont make the vehicle unstable.

I think I’ll be doing this in phases, next one will definitly be the OSD so we can start seeing some data like motor temperature, RPM and of course GPS based speed.

Looking pretty sharp, I have been thinking about building a new car. I think a formula 1 type car would be ideal, would be curious how it will perform considering it should weigh slightly less than most touring car kits.

Here is the link to HPI Racing Europe http://www.hpieurope.com/kit-info.php?partNo=102870

I am sure it will take time for it to make it to the US, but it is planned to be release in a kit form.