Stock & Super Stock Setup (PDF)

Stock Spec (PDF)

I recently attended the 2012 IIC race in Las Vegas from Oct 1 to Oct 6 at the Riviera Hotel, hosted by Scotty Ernst and his crew of helpers. I have had less than success at this event in previous years and have had a less than steller completion rate, finishing mains has not come easy for me at this race, but at least I wait till the end to have the big blow outs.

This year did not start out much better, with a less than cooperative UPS store that started me a day behind on a few of the parts I had hoped to test. Then I had a radio issue that I have never experienced before, as we never have this many users of DSM, that caused my problem. Thanks much to Charlie from NOVAK and Mario Ficco, that lent me the gear I needed to get going, although another lost day on the track just put me behind that little bit more.....scrap a couple more tests.

Once things got sorted out I was finally able to put down some laps, but felt that both setups that I showed up with on the cars where lacking something. Also the fear of the dreaded grip roll sat in the back of my mind, although this year the track had some weird traction going on that many struggled with, I think some of this was caused by the use of Jack 2 traction compound, supposedly this is different than the original Jack and has a higher amount of oil in it. For the heck of it I decided to throw some harder springs on the car just to see if the grip was really as bad as I thought it was going to be, that and felt the car felt almost lazy coming out of the corners, but because of the high speed of the track going crazy on links and rc would have been a worse choice over the springs.

Well, the springs more or less worked, got me on the track for a few more laps, again, mechanical issues reared its ugly head, this time taking out a spur gear.....I swear the tightened the motor. Once getting back to the pits and checking the motor, which was tight, I started to think the V1/V2 motor mount mod was the cause of the gear problem, or perhaps a missing screw, but everything checked out. So I have the car on the stand and cant figure out why I'm taking out the spur, give the car a little throttle and see that the idler shaft with the spur gear is moving excessively. So I pull the idler assembley out only to find that the motor side bearing is totally destroyed, this is a first for me ever. I go over to the hobby shop to find out that they have none of that size, thankfully Art Scrimo had one that he gratiously gave to me, otherwise it would be some fire drill wrenching between the two cars to be able to actually make runs.

I figured the way the week was going so far I had nothing to loose so my one car that I was running in 17.5/13.5 blinky, which was setup with the 2.5 chassis. would be the test unit, and changed the chassis over to the 2.25 and went for the stock 2.0 top deck, this seemed to get me back to where the car liked to be, and also got me back into the springs that I originally thought I would be running. From there the only changes I did with the car was to add .5mm anti dive to settle the car down a bit and raised the rear roll centers a bit and the car was very good. As I've said before, its never been the car thats prevented the good finishes, the dirver on the other hand, well, he needs work. In any case, I pretty much put my self out of any good finishing position but could only work on trying to get better lap times and some consistency as the start of the week I was all over the time chart and very rarely run on a track this size with this much traction. By the end of the week I felt that the time gap between what I ran and the others where about what I had expected, so overall I was very happy with the cars. It was nice to be the highest finishing Serpent at the race.........oh forgot to mention, I was the only Serpent at the race, lol.

I'd like to thank the following people for help and support for this race. First Paul Ciccarello and the Desoto guys for getting me my care package to the race, inspite of the UPS guys. Charlie from NOVAK for all the motor and speed control support, the new high rpm motors and high frequency speed controls are really a big improvement. Dustin Layne, my NOVAK team mate for being there to bounce off gearing and setup ideas. Chris Hansen for doing the final tuneup on the car and enlightening me on some radio things I had no idea about, (fyi, tried the speed/expo at home and it really works well). Revtech for the batteries and the pinions. Art for that elusive bearing. Mario Ficco for the receiver. Paul Lemiux, EA and Drew, always good to talk to you guys. Scotty Ernst, Boomer and crew,they always make me feel welcomed to the event. And of course all the others racers I only get to see occasionally, its a great group of guys that attend that race, which makes it fun, even when things go bad.