- Tamiya TRF416 - Ed Clark - IoWRCCC - 02.03.2008 -

 

Well, had a good day today. Was only running the car in 10.5/LiPo (Carbon 36's for thoose interested),

Started off with what I finished with last night (see setup1 below), and was good. Not the fastest, but easy to drive. Suffering again from a slight lack of mid corner steering, and yet on some corners the rear was breaking free too quickly... Still put in a good time to take an early TQ.

Next run I dropped the rear oil down too 500, and that was better, with the rear of the car more settled. For the last run, I went even further down to 450 oil in the rear shocks, and dialed in more drag brake on the speedo, worked very well. I guess that part of the car being unsettled was me trying too take too much speed into the turns, simply as I'm still not used to having to use brakes more often. Also moved the front shocks back into hole two on the arm, and that seemed to give a little more front end into the corner.
Suprisingly, I didn't improve my times over my first round, but I think that was mostly to using shagged VTec27's for rounds 2 & 3, instead of the 30's I used in round one. Went back to the 30's for the finals, and the times improved

For the finals, I thought sod it, I'll try the arm sweep, so bolted C/B onto the front of the car. To compensate a little for the reduced track width, used 1.5mm worth of shims on the front. So much better, finally had some mid corner steering, and I gained 3/10ths of a second on my best lap. Still binding a little bit on entry, so for the last final I raised the rear roll centre a smidge by going to 2.5mm under the outer rear link (had been running 2mm). Car was improved again, and from having been doing 10.1s laps I put in 6 sub10's and won the final by over a lap.

So, seems the trick is too get some front arm sweep on the go with a spool. I'm going to leave the car as is for next weekend (apart from raising roll centres up high as per my last stock setup.) And I'm also going to try the D/C combo as soon as the parts arrive, and reduce the axle shims.

Overall a good day... and the car is just getting better all the time.

#1 is the starting setup, #2 is the final setup, changes highlighted in red

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