HIgh traction, high grip carpet setup

jonholloway wrote: Hi all, Need some help, i need a high grip, high traction set up for carpet racing. Just been at the Rug Racers championship and couldn't get the car to work at all, none of the schumi drivers could get it consistent or stable. So just wondering if anyone had any ideas, tried most of the standard set ups. The only thing that seems to make is ok, was long arms all round... Any help would be fantastic! Thanks Jon

Thanks Ash,

Your car looked good actually, mine was awful, but learning all the time. Is excellent at Maritime, so will keep trying!

Jon

The car is quite flexy, anybody think that running a stiffer top deck and rear make a difference?

J

That's usually what happens to Good Tarmac Cars :( like yokomo BD&mi4...

Cutting Edge: when putting the layshaft back in did you
move the motor mount as far across towards the electrics as
it would go to put the layshaft in?
It shouldnt bind if you do that.

Looking for some help to cure grip roll for my Mi4. I ran my car at the weekend using Chris G's carpet setup running Sorex 28's.

The only change I made was to add a 1mm spacer at the rear to add more inborad toe in, add a 1mm spacer under the front c/f link plate.

The car felt fantastic during practice and initial qualifying however as the grip came up I was suffering heavily from grip roll meaning I was having to take it far too easy into the corners hence reducing my lap times. By the end of the day I had laid the top shock positions all the way down front and rear and changed to blue front and white rear to calm the car down.

So although I had cured my grip roll the car did not feel as agile through the corners which slowed me down throught the tighter sections.

What I am looking for is suggestions as to what I can try next time, I have the Mi3 alloy mounts and was told to try using them up front with no spacers between them to raise the front roll centre.

Other than that I have just purchased some of the new LRP CPX tyres, shorter wishbones and extra flex hubs to try out at the next round.

Hi thanks for your reply, I did not glue the front sidewalls purely because I am not so keen on making a mess with the superglue as I usually do. Was running 25% rebound all the way round.

In general I think the car ran better using the stiffer springs which made the handling more agile, perhaps I should have just laid down the shocks in the first place and it would have been better rather than going for much softer springs. But from what I have read laying the shocks all the way down is not always fastest.

This is racing in 13.5 brushless and maintaing a high corner speed seemed critical to a good lap time.

Ok thanks will try that too.

Running med flex standard wishbones just now although have just ordered the short version to try. I understand these work by allowing the chassis to rotate into the corner but the car does not rotate as much, am I right??

At the recent EC warmup I was also fighting grip roll, as were many others... the control tire was Xenon 28 with quite low insert (big air gap), the same will be run at the Euros in February. This causes the tire to move sideways a lot during cornering and in the chicanes, where you need to change direction, the car will first not want to change direction, as the tire will "slide" under the car, but then it will hook and you are on the roof before you can say "oOps".

Didn't have enough practice rounds to test everything I wanted, as the grip only came up by the end of round 4 practice or so, and you have to consider me as a mediocre driver at best, but here's some things that IMO are worth a shot:
- no tire warmers
- CA the outside edges of the front tires (I'm using CS Sidewall Glue)
- only apply traction compound to inside half of front tire and only for 5-10 minutes before the start. Rears you can sauce fully and 20-30 min before the run.
- widen the car. I ended up using short CF front arms with 2.5mm spacers, long rear CF arms with 1mm spacers.
- heavy oil & springs. I started ith 60 oil all around and red front/green rear springs, but went to 70 front oil later and it was a bit easier to drive.
- stiff transmission links (3.4 or 4.4mm)
- don't clip the corner dots (easier said than done, the best I could manage in the qualifiers was one roll... and this roll cost me a C-main place).
- lower the center of gravity as much as you can - lightweight body, all the weights down low on the chassis etc.

What I didn't try, but probably will at our next races (we have similar grip roll issues at our track):
- stiffer top deck (although for example Marc Rheinard was cutting the topdeck on his Tamiya to allow for more chassis flex and more forgiving car, so this might have the side effect of making the car too "sharp")
- stiff c-hubs (was running the med flex ones)
- higher roll centre, at least in the front (only had the stock plastic suspension mounts with me)


Edited by olev