The Fall Series Begins

The Fall Series has started at 106 Race Park. Racing is now on Saturday’s, roughly 9am to 6pm. Signups run from 11am to around 12ish. Friday night racing was nice, but with Saturday’s I get a lot more practice and tune time in before the heats and mains. Saturday racing also goes with 3 heats instead of 2 heats like in the Friday Night races. It’s a quite a bit different being out there all day, but it’s nice. As a geek working from home, I rarely see the sun. Now I get out at least once a week to play around.

After some midweek upgrades, and part replacement, I was ready for the first of the series. Over the week I upgraded the E-Revo to a single servo steering setup using a JT Z9100T. I also made a cover plate for left over servo hole. While showing off my awesome balsa wood crafting skill, I found I had broken the lower suspension arm on the front right of the truck. I also found out I bent the turnbuckle as well. That was something one of the guys from 106 caught in a pic I posted. So Thursday I had to rush over to the store to get the parts I needed. This one came off pretty cheap, stock suspension arms are cheap. I bought turnbuckles, and realize later on that I had a pair left over from the rear end upgrade on the truck. I’m sure the extras will come in handle eventually, either for me or another driver.

I had a pretty good race day, with the new single servo steering setup, the truck is finally under control on the track. I also noticed now that I can control it, it wasn’t really going fast enough, so I changed the gearing before the 3rd heat. Its an easy switch to do, I went from the 22/62 I have been using to the previous 18/54 (stock for the brushless) gearing. Of course in my rush to do that, I made a mistake, no threadlock on the pinion’s set screw. This reared it’s ugly head in the second lap of the heat when the truck stopped moving. The pinion came loose, and ended up shredding half of the spur gear, now I understanding why they are plastic. Had the spur not been plastic, the truck might have kept running, but I can only imagine the damage in doing so. As is usually the case, someone at the track had a spare for me, thanks to Mike B. for that, and I got it fixed for the mains.

The only downside here was that I was in second in that heat, partially due to starting position, and partially because someone else flipped on the table top. I had a pretty good lead, and should have been able to keep it there or at least in the 3rd spot, with a nice qualifying lap for the main. Oh well, I’ll get it next week. I ended up starting in the 5th position on the grid for the main. There were 7 trucks, 5 electric monsters, and 2 nitros. I managed to move up at least one spot into the 4th position and hold that most for the race. A 4th place main is not too bad. If I had shaved just 1 and a half seconds off the total race time, I could have hit a 10 lap race. That would have been a new high for me. Just one less mistake is all I needed there. Right at the beginning there was a nice pile up on the table top, and I got spun around. That alone would have given me 3 or 4 seconds, maybe more.

So I finally got the truck setup to where I can control it. I made it around the track a lot of laps without being marshaled even once, that’s a new thing for me. That was also my goal for the day, just make it around 1 lap, without being marshaled. The first heat I got 2 laps in row before I made a mistake and got marshaled.

My lap times are also way down. Before I was running 40 – 50 seconds, sometimes higher. Now I am in the low 30s (saw a 33 second lap in the main), to the mid 40s. The winner of the main had a lot of 30s and some in the 28 second area, so I am not too far away. Overall, I think this series is it, I can get into the top three this time.

I put some pics of my truck up, thanks to Josh and Mike B. for driving it so I could finally get some pics.