I didn't really have a whole lot to do today, so I thought I'd replace my Sprint 2's front differential with a spool. A spool is basically a locked differential, no longer allowing the two wheels to rotate at different speeds. From what I understand, this helps the car power out of a corner with more speed, although you may lose a bit of your low-speed turning. I've used one in an Xray T2, as well as in the front wheel drive Tamiya M03. Both those cars seemed to benefit from using a spool. (at least for me, on the tracks I was running on)
This was probably the easiest tourer I've removed a diff from. Basically it was just a few screws to remove the bumper, a few more to remove the shock tower, and a few more to remove the front diff carrier thingy.
It went back together just as easily as it came apart. I want to try to squeeze one more run out of these tires, so I rotated them.
Today was another great day of racing at the FastCats Depot club races. Because it's the Labour Day long weekend, turnout wasn't too huge, but it was easily one of my favorite days of on road racing that I can remember. (most likely only because I did pretty well today :P) In the GT2 class I got 2nd place in the 1st and 3rd qualifiers, as well as in the A main, and got a 1st place in qualifier number 2. My fastest lap (I think) was a 13.2, and my average 20 laps in each race was only about 3 tenths of a second off of my fastest lap in each race. I was pretty happy with those results.
This was my 3rd time running my HPI Sprint 2 in the GT2 class, the first time since I switched over to my 21.5 brushless setup. If you've been to the any of the Depot races lately, you've probably heard me go on about how much I love this car! It's a very inexpensive car, (gear diffs, dog bones, tons of chassis flex etc) but it handles really great. I bought it off of Joe Bielski. I've made very few setup changes since I bought it. The body is still the one Joe painted.
Here are a couple of races from today:
GT1 (3rd qualifier)
GT2 (A-Main) (I'm the blue & white car, starting 2nd. On the stand, I'm the guy in the red sweatshirt)
Even though it's getting late in the season, we are still anticipating another couple of months of racing at the FastCats Depot track. Here are some videos from last Thursday's action:
