XRAY - Model racing cars

I'm brand new to this scale, and actually know very little about RC except bashing my Traxxas Slash 1/10.

That said, my brother and I are interested in starting a 1/18 group in our area. To that end, we like the idea of creating a track and club that is similar to what Harnois Hobby has done.

http://harnoishobby.com/index.html

The idea is to make a track and rules that level the playing field and keep cars to a more "realistic" set up. Obviously, that's a subjective concept.

What do you guys recommend for getting started? I've heard the m18 RTR is pretty lame out-of-the-box. BUT is the m18 Pro worth it? In our case, we aren't looking for super speed, but rather control and realistic handling.

Following that then, is what major parts should we lean towards for motor and esc and batteries?

With small tracks you should stick to the 180 motor and 5 or 6 cell batterypack. The speed is high enough and because the equal power the fun and competition is high.

On this level the differences between the Pro and non-pro chassis is very small, for sure if you can use the wide choice of tires. In our club competition we do this for many years and it was always a close racing wheere even the fastest guys were running a non-pro chassis.

Going for the RTR is not my choice. The transmitter, ESC and batterypack will do the job but are not the best to find. Going for sepperate equipment will give you more choice and quality. A Hitec HS5084 servo has twice the speed as the stock servo which is very usefull on small tracks as it is also digital so you can use a transmitter with a faster response like a Futaba HRS, KO or Spektrum DX3R.

Will the new Pro wheel mounting system fit on the regular chassis?

Yes, you only do need the wheelshafts.

Here are some of my observations after many years of racing the M18 week after week on our very tight medium traction track at "realistic" speeds. I've also driven my setup on RCP (high traction) and it worked fine there also. Almost all the cars in our little racing league have the same set up.

Although it sucks to admit that "plastic" is better than fancy shmancy carbon fiber, after testing I could not deny that the composite (plastic) chassis makes the car have much smoother and more predictable behavior. So the standard is definitely fine, unless you just want the cool factor of the pro.

Do something with the spring/shock assemblies. Get the shorter springs with the preload spacers at the least. I also came up with a totally different spring system that gets all the friction out of the suspension and steering and makes the handling even smoother. This is briefly mentioned and shown on my website on this page: http://www.harnoishobby.com/cars.html.

Get the 6-degree caster front upper A-arms and the Adjustable turnbuckles. The standard has 4 degrees fixed rear toe-in and 12 degree caster, which definitely caused weird handling issues such as "wondering." But I have seen it work well out-of-the box on high traction surfaces.

And you'll almost surely want the servo saver. Read the xray product description to check, but I think this comes with the RTR but not the standard kit.

For slicker/smoother surfaces like basement/garage floor, kitchen floor, gymnasium, etc, the combination of hard front and soft rear foam tires really helps stabilize the car, and will last a long time too.

Even more great information.

Question for you Harnois. Oh, BTW (That's the only shorthand I know) I've had some email conversation with you. That and your web site are very well done with a lot of articulate explanation. Because of that, I've been looking to find a way to build a similar track and race system. Maybe this is an offline conversation? I'll leave that up to you.

Here's the question. What would a track like yours, or some of the others that you've helped to make roughly cost?

I'd also like to talk about how to financially support such a track. Maybe this is not the right place for that conversation? Let me know.

Our track:

That is an awesome track. How well do the cars handle driving over the bridge?

I assume that is (gray) carpet for the actual track?

Is it a permanent installation?

Roelof, that track is great, so long and so many esses. I've seen that around before. About how long does a good lap take around that track?

Rabbi, thanks for the comments about the website.
The track we made probably cost me maybe 2 or 3 hundred bucks. It took a lot of time to design and build, but hey that's what hobbies are for. It would be a very reasonable project, and still look great, without the hills and bridges, just painting the layout onto the floor.

As for financial support of the track... If you have genuinely interested participants, I don't think you'll have much issue getting people to donate a little money for each race day. The real challenge is finding and keeping people interested. For me, RC is no fun without people to race against. But there are so many different vehicles and so many opinions about how they should be raced, and the racing really isn't that fun with a bunch of mismatched vehicles.

I think to get it started you'll need one strong leader who is willing to really push for it and at least 4 or 5 people all willing to buy the same vehicle and race once a week, then build an impressive track to show you are serious and attract more drivers. You are in Denver right? So at least you have a big population in your area.

Harnois Race Park:

Yeah, great advice guys. If you haven't figured it out yet, I love to research and learn from others. One of my favorite quotes is "It's good to learn from experience. But it's even better to learn from other's experiences." That was Rick Warren, author of the Purpose Drive Life which is has now sold more copies than any other book in history except the Bible.

So, yeah I think...there's a potential in Denver for this scale racing. The local indoor track said they'd be glad to offer a 1/18 class as long as I had four guys. Good place to start, but it's a classic old carpet track with a 1/10 layout. As you know, there are a lot of empty warehouses and storefronts that would be perfect for this. That said, I'll likely try to make a connection with a local business or church to utilize their facilities in the beginning.

My hobby dream is to build a similar track to what you guys have done, and get kids and their dads and moms involved. That's a way off for now though. Funny I'm racing 1/18, but I don't think small do I?

Just purchased a used M18 off Ebay to get my feet wet. Sure appreciate the long distance advice and of course "experience".

Good racing my friends.

The fastest laptimes on our track were somewhere between 13 and 14 seconds

Last year results can be found here:
http://www.macdebaanbrekers.nl/hpi/stan ... tanden.htm

On the top you can find from all 4 the races the results of the heats and finals.