The Latest Race Results

Last night, being Wednesday night, was RC race night!! I always have so much fun at RC race night. Even when the car breaks you have a good time.

The races are organized as follows. Three rounds are run, two qualifiers and one main. Your best time in either qualifier determines your starting position in the main. Different classes are run to separate drivers of different skill levels and cars of different capabilities. I race in Novice right now and soon I'll graduate to Stock Truck, then the next step is to Modified Truck, but I don't think I'll ever go that far because of the required substantial investment in the car. There are also the same classes for buggies and in the novice class the buggies and trucks race together. Racing Novice and Stock Truck is good because I can get away with the budget car set up and still be competitive.

Last night I tried something new. I changed my gearing from 3.52:1 to 4:1 and it turned out to work very well. It might still be a little low, though. Sometimes I'd hit the straight away, and when I applied the throttle I got after it a little too much resulting in some fishtailing.

I also had to deal with two breaks. Well, only one break and what I guess you would call a come-apart. Somehow I have this particular part on the car that a nylon locknut keeps coming apart. It's in the steering, so it can have bad consequences. Anyway, in the second round I was in a strong second and this part came apart. What rotten luck. When the results came out I was only 0.07 average mile per hour behind the leader. Dang.

The actual break happened in the Main. Of course. As if that wasn't bad enough it also happened when I was leading by about 1/4 lap. Double dang. It was a ball stud. I hit the wall, but I was surprised that it broke because I've hit the wall much harder without breaking anything. Unfortunately, when the stud broke, the threaded part stayed in the hole so I had to adjust my suspension to use different holes. If I break any more like this I will have to replace the rear shock tower. That's not a bid deal, though, at $5.

Next week will be a different race experience, though. I've decided to reorganize and consolidate my racing team. The RC18T is up for sale and those proceeds are going to pay for (drum roll, please) a BRUSHLESS SYSTEM for the XXX-T!! I really enjoy these races and they never race the small cars, so I decided to put all my effort into the big car. I've already bought it and almost installed it and I can't wait to run it. It's the Novak XBR system with a 13.5 turn motor. This is a budget motor that I can still race competitively in the stock class. It will handle a little differently from the brushed motor, so I'll have to take it easy until I get it dialed in. The step to brushless is a big one and this is long anticipated. The only reason it happened was Novak came out this this XBR sport system that is much less expensive than their GTB racing system, but still has the features I wanted. I can't wait to try it out!!