Gentlemen,
I have run my new ‘012 in competition twice now, once on my home track and once on a “foreign” track. It is a wonderful car; easy to drive and steady as a rock – certainly the best XRAY I have had and I have not yet really started to try tuning it from kit setup. Every time I have raced at this “foreign” track with a new XRAY I have always struggled to find a good setup (very different track to my home one) but the ‘012 with some shock oil changes went like a dream.
BUT
It is nightmare in the pits! Please redesign the top deck so that you can fit new pinions from the top without having to remove the top deck – jeez I had to do that about 6 times at the foreign track, where I was trying out a new to me motor and needing to find the right FDR . That’s 6 * 2 * 10 screwings!
Two of those were because I tried to change to a pinion with one more tooth only to find that I could not move the motor back to accommodate it because although the motor mounts allowed it, the rearward movement of the motor is baulked by the top deck.
I might accept that if the deck were a third party one but not with one straight out of the XRAY box.
Twice I tried to fit the pinion using the driver hole underneath but both times the pinion came off during the race and I will just never trust that method again.
I am sorry but compared to my previous XRAYs the top deck design in terms of maintenance is terrible – I will settle for a car which is 0.1 sec a lap slower for a return to normal XRAY top decks!
Also it would be good if you could find some way of designing back in the quick Ackermann adjustment of previous cars. When racing in regional or Nationals on “foreign” tracks I have often used Ackermann as an adjustment to get the car sweet but with the current design which looks like you have to dismantle the front of the car and add/subtract shims, it just looks like a time consuming pain that is not worth going through for one meeting on a “foreign track”. The previous design was SO easy.
Like the car though