- Serpent S411 2.0 - Ed Clark - SEQ Interclub - Meakin Park - 20-21.04.2013 -


PDF File


Bit of a mixed bag of a weekend. Had a local interclub event, with blinky 10.5 on saturday, and mod on sunday. Certainly learnt a lot more about the car (and also that I really need to stop being so thrifty with tyres!), and made good progress with settings.

Saturday was a nightmare, couldn't get the car anywhere close to the pace, and ended up taking huge swings trying to guess a setup... turns out the tyres I thought were ok, were obviously anything but (harsh lesson learned, really should know better by now!), and switching out to new boots really helped out. But even then, I was struggling with the car having too much mid-corner rear grip, making it really hard to hold the line into the turns. Tried a lot of things solve that including rear shock position, motor mount, diff oils, rear droop and so on. By the end of the day, I was getting a bit desperate, and ended going for broke and shoving a single piece rear suspension block on the car, as a Tamiya driving friend had done similar, and found a lot of steering.
I honestly wasn't expecting a big change, but this gave some really great results. Instantly gained a lot of steering, and now could actually drive the car on the throttle in the higher speed corners, without having to wait for the mid-corner wash out to finish. Instantly found a lot of lap time, and the whole balance of the car was better... and that was the end of saturday.

Sunday was mod, and I kept the same settings on the car. Car was straight away much more on the pace, now consistently getting 19s laps, where I had always struggled before. Interestingly, with the more powerful motor, actually felt like that the car was now squaring up too quickly out of the turn. Made a couple of tweaks to try and make it smoother, and going from 2k to 3k in the rear diff seemed to help the most. Lowering the rear shocks one hole was a bit of a step too far.. fast, but on edge to drive on a track that needs to flow. Maybe with more practise (or a thumb transplant ), I could hang on to it.. but overall, happy with the progress, and posted my fastest laps I've done at that track.

Actually race result was a bit of a wash out... got third in the first main, whilst the second had a transmitter issue meaning I was getting moving neutral (), and then stripped the gears in the diff in the third. Oh well... sometimes those days happen!

Ended up on the following setup, main changes were;
Droop - running a bigger split, by reducing front droop to 6 (from 5)
Diff - 3k instead of 2k
Rear shocks - Hole 3 instead of 2
Rear block to a one-piece
Shocks to 500wt oil, Ride Green Springs

Next time out I want to give the Ride blue's a try out again, and also give the option 1 (single screw) motor mount another go. Also need to test out top-decks again (braced v standard), as that kinda got lost in the mire of changes on saturday, and with the stripped rear diff, didn't get to test it out after racing on sunday. At least my list is a little smaller

Source: