Niagara Indoor RC

Yesterday. for the first time, I went to to the Niagara RC indoor onroad club. It is a track that is set up every Sunday in a community centre in St.Catherines Ontario.

I ran in the Rubber Touring Car class with my Sprint 2. I was running an non-boosted 13.5, while I think most of the other guys were running boosted 17.5. While the 13.5 was fast, the boosted 17.5 were quite a bit faster. That being said, I've come to the conclusion that the 13.5 was way too fast for my little Sprint 2. (at least on the indoor ozite surface) I think there's too much flex in my chassis to try running to run that fast on an indoor surface. If I continue running at the Niagara track, I'll probably convert the Sprint over to a VTA car. A 21.5 motor seems to agree with the Sprint a bit more.
I only recorded one video... TC Rubber A main.
Enjoy.



[/Tim Sanderson]

Turku - A3-Finals - Winter Jumps 2010-2011 #4

This is one of the craziest tracks I've seen! Is it just me, or do the lanes look a little tight?
Again, this one's from Finland, and I've only embedded the final leg of the 2WD & 4WD A mains. If you want to see the rest of them, go to air2kfinland's youtube page.

2WD A3 Final


4WD A3 Final


[/Tim Sanderson]

PetitRC 2011 Finals

Here are some videos posted by o0ple , from the PetitRC 2011 Finals on the other side of the world. Unfortunately, the resolution is pretty crap, but the racing is good. I've only posted the last leg of each of the A-mains, so if you want to see all three of each main, go to o0ple's youtube page.

2WD A-main (final)


4WD A-main (final)


[/Tim Sanderson]

Motor City Raceway club race jan 22 2011

Yesterday was the 3rd installment/2nd club race at Motor City Raceway in Oshawa. Some changes were made to the track, like adding white pvc pipe for most of the track barriers. This system worked quite well, and the white is a great contrast to the dark carpet. I found I was able to cut very close to the inside corner when entering the sweeper, much faster due to the increased visibility of the corner. It also makes setting up the track much faster.
This one went much smoother than the first one, with no computer problems at all. I saw a lot of faces I haven't seen since either when FastCats closed, or during the Summer Depot series, like Super Pit co-founder Bill Jones, the Khan's, Stefan Kolody and the Kelsey's . Some of the on road guys came out too, like Chris Butao and fellow Team Five % member Joe Bielski.

I managed to qualify for the a-main, but just barely. I squeaked in last on the a-main grid. Like usual, my best qualifier by far was my 2nd one. (I forgot to take a picture of the results for that qualifier, but i feel like I should let it be known thatI actually beat Bill Jones for the first time ever !) I'm not even sure where I placed in the main, but it probably wasn't too far off from my qualifying position. Still, I'm always happy to make the show!

I recorded both the a and b mains for 2WD, but again, my camera crashed during the 4WD a-main. I think it's time to by a new camera. My Kodak Zi6 doesn't seem to be working too well these days. I researched the problem online, and it sounds like the crashing is a problem costs as much as a new camera to fix. Aside from that, I can't seem to get a sharp picture on it any more. The vids I've taken at MCR seem to be out of focus most of the time, and there is no way to manually focus or adjust the camera.

2WD b-main


2WD a-main (thanks to Joe for recording this as I raced)

I also recorded one of my qualifiers with my key chain camera. This time I tried mounting it on the nose, between the front shock tower.

It makes for a pretty cool perspective, almost like playing a video game. Unfortunately a little bit of fuzz got on the lens, so it's not as clear as it could of have been. The lens is only a millimeter or two across,so it doesn't take much to block the view.

[/Tim Sanderson]

BoLink Eliminator 12 differential

A guy named jadepastore on rc10talk requested some pics of the differential from an old BoLink Invader 12. I just happen to have the one I raced back in the day sitting at home, so I took it apart and took a few pics. I couldn't take the axel out because I don't have any imperial hex drivers. (Imperial sucks) However, think I took enough of it apart to see all the bits used to assemble the diff.

If anybody has a detailed picture of the rear shocks, and how they attach from the chassis to the pod, I'd appreciate seeing it. That's all mine is missing.

[/Tim Sanderson]

Schumacher Slice n' Dice

The Ultima is almost ready to go for tomorrow's club race at Oshawa's Motor City Raceway.

The only thing I need is to get a hold of some front & rear 2wd tires. I might be able to squeeze on more round out of my current rear tires, but all the front tires I have are far too worn to use again. Unfortunately, I'm not sure if I'll be able to get a hold of any more Schumacher tires before tomorrow so i may have to make due with what I have around the shop. I tried my hand at cutting down a set of set of old Schumacher rear mini pins, to fit a set of 2WD wheels. I figured I'd try removing 4 rows of pins from the centre of the tires, then glue them back together. With the help of my Dad and the band saw in his workshop, they actually turned out not too bad. I left the tires mounted on a set of wheels, with the inserts still inside. The finest blade on my dad's band saw was still quite a bit more course than was ideal for cutting something like his, so the rims/inserts made it a little easier to cut. The idea wasn't to cut all the way through the tire and wheel, but rather only cut the tire by slowly rotating the wheel once the blade cut the tire. This is what I wound up with:

And this was the piece I removed:

I mounted them onto a pair of 2WD front wheels, and used a bit of hot glue on the inside of the wheels to balance the tires. I didn't do the best job of gluing them back together, so tonight I might use some acetone to take them apart, and try gluing them again. I'd rather not have that much glue on the outside of the tires.

The second pic above shows a rear tire on the left, and the cut down tires on the right. Whether or not I can get my hands on some new front tires for this weekend, I'll give these a try.

[/Tim Sanderson]

Kyosho Trashing the Skatepark

This is pretty cool. I saw this video this morning:

The author (luiscardoso9) says this video was made as a thank-you to Kyosho for the Ultima SC he won in a video contest. You can see his winning video here.
[/Tim Sanderson]

Winter Jumps 2010-2011 # 3 - Oulu

Here are some videos from the 2WD triple A-mains at Winter Jumps 2010-2011 # 3 - Oulu. I think this series is located somewhere in Finland. This is a helluva nice track. Check out the size of the jump in front of the drivers stand!







[/Tim Sanderson]

Motor City Raceway race/news

There's less than one week until Oshawa's Motor City Raceway's 2nd club race. This is the message posted on MCR's forum:

Next Race Sat. Jan. 22nd:
Looking forward to seeing everyone again. Our software delay issues have been resolved, so we will be starting ON TIME and have everyone home in time for dinner.
Please register a few days ahead of time so we are able to get all the names in the system which helps make the day go smoother:
http://events.rcsignup.com/events/di...nt.cfm?ID=1762

I think I will only be running my RB5 in the Open 2WD for this one. It's all ready to go. I rebuilt the shocks, cleaned off all the carpet fuzz, and rewired the entire car. It's looking great! I'll post some pics of it soon.
______________________________________________________________________

Also announced, was the news that MCR plans on running offroad & onroad simultaneously in the near future! That's right, two tracks in on location. Other than FastCats, I'm not sure if any other track in the GTA (maybe even Ontario) has had both formats simultaneously in one location before. Here was the announcement posted on MCR's forum:

ANNOUNCEMENT....
Starting in the very near future, Motor City Raceway will be hosting on-road racing in addition to our off-road program. That's right - TWO tracks in one convenient location. More details to follow however, get your on-road cars dusted off and ready for some ozite-racing action at Motor City Raceway.
See you all at the races.

Apparently, the offroad track will remain the same size, (100'x40') and in the same gym as it's been in the past. The onroad track will be in the smaller gym, but still a great size at 80'x40'. The first few race days, onroad will just be run as open practice, until they can gauge the interest in the onroad crowd. Personally, I'm looking forward to running my Sprint2, hopefully there will be either a 17.5 or a 21.5 rubber TC class.

New site design

I've been testing out some new site designs over the past few days, and I think this is the one I have settled on for the time being. Also, I've added a couple of new rc news sites to the links section: rcspecial.com & rcinsider.com have both embedded a couple of my videos, so be sure to check out those sites. :)

Motor City Raceway - Jan 8 2011

It was another great day at Motor City Raceway! Here are a few videos from Saturday's first official club race. I managed to get the 2WD and Short Course A mains, but unfortunately my camera messed up during the 4WD A-main.




I attached my keychain camera to the top of Tony Ayala's car for the 1/8 scale a-main:
The sound is pretty messed up for the first few seconds, but gets better.

[/Tim Sanderson]

Slash Carpet Bomber

A few days ago, I decided that seeing as I don't plan on running my ZX5 in Motor City Raceway's first official club race this weekend, (which I'm super looking forward to, btw!) I need something to run as my 2nd class.I decided I'd get my Traxxas Slash cleaned up, and ready for some rug runnin'.

Ordinarily, my Slash would only be run indoors, or a carpet track, but I took it out to a nearby outdoor track a few times in the summer. The dirt was still caked on it from sometime in July or August.

Other than cleaning it, I didn't make any changes to truck. It still has my FastCats carpet offroad setup on it. It's pretty basic,really. I put buggy shocks on all four corners to lower it stance by at least a few cm. When I set it up last year, I put on whatever shocks I had laying around... a set of Academy on the rear, and a set of Losi on the front. Heavy shock oil, (I think 45 or 50 wt.) and some stiff springs, makes it corner like a dream. Topped off with an LRP 8.5 and an LRP esc, it should have more than enough getupengo.

Once again saving the day, Joe Bielski will be bringing a set of brand new of stock Slash tires for me replace my very worn rubber with at Motor City. Seeing as there is no traction compound allowed in the gymnasium the track is set up in, the extra grip the new rubber will get me should help.

I was going to take it out for a test run tonight, but was worried it may be too wet. Maybe I'll try again tomorrow after work.