Learning about the Mi5evo

After a fun night of racing at Bayside, it’s time for a little update on progress with the new Schumacher Mi5evo.

First, let me send you over to Ed Clark’s blog, where he continues to document the development of his Mi5evo. Go here.

Below are a few thoughts after our first few weeks with the car.  Overwhelmingly it’s been positive, but there are always things to learn and the Mi5evo is a totally different car (in terms of setup) than the Mi5 itself.  Here’s what we’re thinking so far.

It Steers!

The dominant characteristic of the Mi5 s immense traction, and the challenge at times is to free it up for corner speed and rotation. The Mi5evo does all that naturally.  It’s a completely different setup window for the car – where we’re now looking to maximise all that inherent steering and mid-corner speed. It’s nice to have a different experience!

One of the consequences of all that steering seems to be that the car is a little happier with about 0.5 degree more rear toe than we got used to with the Mi5.  That means the Mod guys are often running 3.0 degrees of toe (compared to the normal 2.5 in the Mi5) and some of the 13.5 guys prefer 2.5 over the 2.0 degrees we were used to in the Mi5.

One small change we tested on a couple of cars tonight was to add a 0.5mm shim on the rear axle hex (effectively widening the car’s track width by a total of 1mm. It had the desired effect, settling the car on corner entry.

Dial in the flex

In its standard form, the evo still has a tonne of chassis flex (though perhaps not quite as much as the original Mi5). What’s new is all the options to stiffen the chassis as traction increases.  The first stage is to add the optional front chassis stiffener (a connector between the top-deck ‘rails’.

From there the next option is the suspension strap set. This connects suspension arm mounts across the car. There are three straps available (front strap for the front suspension, and both front and rear straps for the rear suspension).

Then there are two optional top deck rails – at 2.5 and 3.0mm thickness – and again further stiffening the car to help manage things when traction continues to rise.

Finally, there’s an alloy chassis for truly high grip conditions.

So what are we using? Ed has been trialling almost the whole variety of option parts and using a mix on both regular Brisbane EP tracks (in Open TC).

In 13.5, I’ve been running the standard chassis, deck and no suspension straps (yet). I’ve been happy with the additional front chassis stiffener at Logan, and prefer the car without at Bayside (i.e. a totally standard chassis).  This matches up pretty well with how the Mi5 played out – at least for now.

Diffs

With the Mi5 we often bounced between 2000cst and 3000cst fluids. The evo seems to be more in the 1000cst to 2000cst range.  Personally I’m preferring 2000cst, but others within the crew have been running 1k with success.

Up front we continue to prefer the standard spool at Logan (a higher speed track with faster corners) and the diff at Bayside (lots of hairpins and quite bumpy as well).  I did stick with the spool at Bayside tonight, and was happy with the car, but it’s not quite as strong as with a diff up front. Next time I run there I’ll have the diff back on board.

Bodyshell

I ran the Protoform LTC-R almost exclusively when running the Mi5, craving the extra steering. With the Mi5evo it’s not quite so clear cut and for some the Protoform Speed 6 and it’s more smooth and stable character will be the choice. All that additional sharpness the LTC-R offers just isn’t needed with the evo.  At least, that’s the way it seems to us so far.

Setups

As I said, Ed Clark is posting great info including setup sheets over at his blog. Likewise factory pilot Martin Hofer has some excellent information and setups on a recent post at his website.


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