- TeamC Racing TM2 - Stall4king - Broxtowe - 2013.02.03 -

Just a bit of a report back on how we got on at Broxtowe yesterday and what changes to the car we made throughout the day.

Broxtowe is my home track so i was really looking forward to giving the car a good test, and when i opened my eyes in the morning to see that it wasnt raining i was even more excited! Although no rain had fallen the track was, as is nearly always the case early on, pretty damp. I must point out though that even in the wet that Broxtowe is a grippy track, but, in my opinion, is very sensative to changes in temperature....and with yesterday being cold, shivering to the bone cold (but not frozen), it meant that coupled with a damp track, grip levels were very low. Thankfully, by the end of practice, or certainly by the end of the first round, the track was mainly dry....happy days for TM2 drivers! I wouldnt say the track was high grip but it certainly wasnt low grip....lets say moderate!

Below is my starting set-up for practice....

Front

37.5 Associated oil
Losi black springs
Kit pistons....but two of the holes drilled out to 1.4mm, (im still not sure if 1.4 is too big)
Middle hole on tower
Outer on wishbone
Longest possible camber link (no shims under ballstud)
25 degree castor blocks
Ballistic buggy green tyres

Rear

20 associated oil
Core RC soft springs....these fit really nice on the TM2 shocks!
Kit pistons
Middle hole on tower
*Drilled inner hole on wishbone*
Shortest possible camber link
2 degrees anti-squat
2 degrees camber
*Simon moss stylee slotted top deck*
Ballistic buggy greens

Throughout practice the only thing we changed was the rear shock oil as i felt it was way too soft and that it was taking too much weight off the front so i upped it to 25 weight associated oil.

After the first round i felt that although the car was performing well the ballistic buggy front tyres were not giving the feel to the car that i wanted, they would grip initially and then wander...leaving you waiting in the middle of the corner until the car came back to you...hope that makes as much sense on here as it does in my head! We decided to give staggered ribs a go, and due to the cold conditions we opted for the super soft silver compound which i have seen work well on other drivers cars here in the past.

This just planted the car and it made it so much easier to hold a line, fast or slow. I could just chuck it into corners and it would stick and take off again and with the track drying out it was even better with the gear diff (with 1000 oil in)...thinking about it, it may have been even better with 2000 weight in as on the exit of some corners it felt like the car just wanted to carry on rotating....though that would be being very picky!

The only other thing we changed throughout the day was the anti-squat. It was difficult to get any power down on the exit of some corners and reverting back to 0 degrees pretty much cured this. The only areas on the track i thought this wasnt beneficial was on the long-ish sweeping corner leading onto the straight as with more anti-squat on i could drive it in one long fluid arch, but with 0 degrees i felt that i was on and off power a lot to keep the front end steering on the racing line.

Overall it was a brilliant outing for the car, and an even better result. I cant wait for the sunshine to return because some good results are going to be had! I guess thats kind of a long winded post to explain only two or three changes we made to the car but i just wanted to share how and why we got to where we did