First up, the FK05...
Before Christmas I took a good look at Paul Lemiux's interesting setup from Cleveland and analyzed the differences between his setup and Mike D & Peter's. What stuck out the most was the use of the 2mm chassis instead of the usual 3mm.
At first glance, I thought well maybe it was all that was available on such short notice. But after thinking long and hard, I believe I found the reason why he made this move. Almost the entire cars center of gravity would be lowered by 1mm.
Not to mention, that there is a 40g difference in weight between the two, which would allow him to place the additional weight needed to pass tech wherever it was needed to balance the car out.
Needless to say, I had just received my latest batch of FK05 parts, including a 2mm chassis, and I just had to try it.
In the name of low CG and weight reduction, I also ditched my motor fan & mount and relocated my PT from the top of the servo to inside the pre-cut bumper. The results were crazy
On the 17th of December, with the 3mm chassis, I had pulled out a half a lap lead on everyone in the pro stock main, before a corner worker placed a crashed car right in front of me at the apex.
I ended up 2nd, but I recorded a fast lap of 10.009 which was pretty close to the record of 10.007. At the time, a few guys had run some unofficial 9.9s but not in an official race.
When I tested the car on the 20th, after switching chassis's, I used my #3 motor and #3 battery pack in order to get a close comparison of lap times. After figuring out the gearing and knocking off the rust during the first two packs, I was able to record a 9.75 on the third lap of the third pack, several 9.9's on laps 14 & 16 and 10.1's & 10.2's well after the 5 minute mark. Needless to say, the 2mm chassis knocked off .3s/lap average from my times in the race the previous Saturday which were equal to everyone else's best. And the kicker is that I was not pushing the car and driving as tight as possible to the corners either. Since we had the weekend off, I was unable to run the car in an actual race. However, the next Tuesday (27th) in testing I ran another six packs with it and came away **unofficially** with a fast lap of 9.44, a 9.9 on lap 26 and just barely missed a 31 lap run (never been done before and the current record was 30@5:06) with a best time of 30@5:03.
I used the slightly heavier, but stiffer, adjustable top deck with all 3 braces and 4 posts. I hand tested the flex after switching to the 2mm chassis, and the entire structure is more than rigid enough. However, Paul used the standard wide top deck.
Now for the T2...
I first opened the kit after coming home from church on the 28th of December (thanks Mario & RC America
) and finding a FedEx package on the stairs for little 'ol me. Of course I flew upstairs to the bat cave and ripped it open with controlled fury (didn't even take off my tie). But after looking into all the parts bags and drooling a little I regained control, changed clothes and prepared my workshop for some major building.
Build Day (night) 1:
I decided to spend only a few hours that night to carefully prepare the CF chassis, front top deck and shock towers. First up was filing the slots for the battery packs. This took all of 15 to 20 minutes after I realized that all of my top four packs were bent and subsequently flattened them back out again. Then I lightly sanded off the sharp outer edges of the chassis, front top deck and shock towers. The same treatment was applied to the battery tape slots, the spur gear slot and the bottom sharp edges of the cell slots. Finally I applied the CA to all of the sanded edges and the coned screw holes (using a Q-tip for all of the slots and the screw holes).
Build Day 2:
After arriving at work somewhat early, I talked my boss into letting me take some vacation time for half the day on Thursday and all day Friday.
As we had a New Year's Eve race scheduled, I had to make sure I could get at least a few hours of practice in before the store closed on Friday night. I was more fortunate in the build process than most of the team drivers, in that I had a copy of the new T2 manual and Hudy Setup Book to work from. Following the manual was easy and although I really took my time, the build process seemed to go by quickly. Before I knew it the clock reported the time as 12 hours later with dawn about to break in a few hours. Yet I was excited and not at all sleepy. I simply had to put the car through my full alignment process before going to sleep. My goal was to shoot for a setup as close to the FK05 as possible. Following the Hudy Setup Book, I took a guess at the correct shim sizes to increase the track width and implement 2d of front in-board toe-out and 1d of rear in-board toe-in. The toe came out correct, but during the alignment process, I realized that my front track width was 4mm too narrow and the rear also came up a little skinny by 2mm. But oh well, I didn't feel like changing the suspension holder shims and kept things the same.
Here is a list of notes for setup items that I had to work out some things in order to closely match them to the FK05 setup:
* Caster - The team kit only came with 4.0 degrees caster c-hubs (used 6d c-hubs in the FK05), so I decided to increase the overall caster to 5.5 degrees through implementing 1.5 degree's of front pro-dive (kick-up)
* Lower arms - I was able to implement the 1.5d of front pro-dive and rear anti-squat through using the +.75 holders on the forward pin positions and the -.75 holders on the rearward pin positions on both the front and rear arms.
* Upper camber links - I used the inner mount points on the rear hubs and the low outer positions on the front & rear Quick Roll Center mounts in order to implement the shortest links possible for maximum camber gain and quicker suspension reaction. I used the low outer positions for the inside links and shims underneath the outside links to add about 2 degrees of angle front & rear for even more camber gain.
* Springs - Although I had a second pair of light red springs for the rear, I did not have another pair of purple springs for the front of the T2. And since I had decided to run the FK05 (which had my only purple pair mounted) in the 19t class that weekend, I mounted light purple springs up front on the T2 instead.
* Shock angles - It made more sense to me to use the lower inner mount positions with the wider foam rims. In reality, this proved to be the best in order to keep those pesky ball ends from getting eaten by the rims. With the front shocks using the outermost upper slots on the shock towers, the front shocks were now standing slightly more vertical than those on the FK05. I thought this was a good thing, seeing as I had slightly softer front springs and an extra .75 degrees of front pro-dive than what was on the FK05. With the fronts mounted, I had to figure out the difference in angles of the front and rear shocks on the FK05 and then choose the correct position on the T2 for the rear upper shock mounts to match the angle difference. It really wasn't that hard though.
* Ackerman - I moved the servo saver forward and used the rearward mount points on the steering blocks in order to produce minimum ackerman effect.
* Multi-Flex settings - Too easy. All top deck and chassis mount screws and the aluminum brace were used for the stiffest setting.
* Track Width and in-board toe. Now the tricky part was trying to match the front & rear track widths (190mm), the wheelbase (252mm) and the front & rear in-board toe (+2d & -1d respectively) from the FK05. I had to take a guess at how to use the shims for the suspension holders and the rear arm pins. This first time I opted to leave a 1mm shim on the forward side of the rear arms for the wheelbase. For the front track width and in-board toe-out I could only use a 3mm shim on the forward holder and a 1.5mm shim on the rearward holder, due to the length of the forward holder mounting screws not allowing for more than 3mm shims (unless I wanted them to strip out the bulkheads in a hard crash
). After putting the car, with tires mounted, on the setup board I found this resulted in a front track width of 185mm and 1.5d of in-board toe-out. For the rear track width and in-board toe-in I used a 2mm shim on the forward holder and a 3mm shim on the rearward holder. This resulted in a rear track width of 188mm and 1d of in-board rear toe-in. Of course I corrected the front toe-out to +0.5d using the steering rods and the overall rear toe-in equaled 2.0d. The wheelbase ended up being 254mm, due to the sweeping inward geometry of both the front and rear arms.
Note: The Jaco 2 stage foams fit a little too snug on the steering blocks and I had to lightly skim off the inside edge of the rims. I came up with a fix for this that is noted below.
Race #1 (12/31/05) - post initial build:
I posted the track results previously in the . However, I'd add that I only had time to run about four packs with it on the Friday before the New Years Eve race. During this time, the only changes I felt necessary were to stand the rear shocks up one notch and open one more hole in the rear shock pistons.
Mid week adjustments:
During the middle of last week, I fought the urge to keep the car the same and eventually altered the suspension holder & rear arm pin shims to almost an exact match of the FK05 setup. At one of our LHS's I was able to find some longer M3 button head steel screws for the suspension holders that would accommodate more shims. While there, I also acquired some .5mm fiber shims that fit in between the outer steering block bearings and the holding pin. These allowed me to space the hex nuts for the front wheels out .5mm from the bearing, without added slop or friction. FYI, anything more than .5mm will not fit behind the holding pin without causing it to bind the bearings. In order to increase the front track width and in-board toe-out I switched to a 4mm shim on the forward holder and a 2mm shim on the rearward holder. After putting the car on the setup board the results were a front track width of 188mm and 2d of in-board toe-out. To increase the rear track width and keep the in-board toe-in the same I switched to a 3mm shim on the forward holder and a 4mm shim on the rearward holder. This resulted in a rear track width of 190mm and 1d of in-board rear toe-in. Last, I moved the remaining 1mm shim from the forward side of the rear arms to the rearward side in order to shorten the wheelbase even more. The front toe-out was corrected to +0.5d using the steering rods and the overall rear toe-in stayed the same at 2.0d. The wheelbase was now shortened to 253mm. With the only differences now being -2mm on the front track width and +1mm for the wheelbase, I was satisfied. I then got rid of the excess wiring and re-balanced the chassis left to right and front to rear (lightly dremelled two holes on each side of the underbelly after carefully measuring the midpoint from the new front and rear axle points). Last, I decided to retire the FK05 and move the purple springs to the front of the T2. My hope is that all of these changes will allow the car to run consistently in both stock and 19t, without any setup modifications, as the FK05's setup did. At the time of writing this essay,
I haven't been able to test the car with a 19t motor yet. But I plan on testing this by the end of the week.
Race #2 (01/07/06):
In the previous week’s race, although the speed was evident, most of the top pro stock drivers were running 19t. So I knew I had my work cut out for me with all of them returning to run stock in the continuation of our local point’s series. Before the first qualifier, I decided to re-check the alignment and to my surprise, the camber was off by +.5d on both fronts and -.5d on the left rear. After re-adjusting the alignment I ran the first two qualifiers with mixed results. The car was still fast, but not as easy to drive as the previous week. At first I chalked it up to the track width and wheelbase changes, but a quick check on the setup board proved that to be untrue. Apparently the camber was now off by -.5d on both fronts and +.5d on the left rear. I couldn't figure out how the previous readings were incorrect, but this made sense as the steering was a little inconsistent in transitions and the rear seemed to step out slightly if I wasn't smooth entering into tight right handers. I adjusted them back to setup specs and the results were great. The car was a dream to drive again and I was able to match my fastest lap from the previous week and set a TQ time only 3 seconds off my unofficial fastest run previously with the 2mm chassis FK05. After starting from pole and going wide into the first turn, in order to avoid being punted, I was able to successfully escape the wreck that everyone knew was going to happen. The local favorite to win was also able to avoid the mess and move up a few spots from his qualifying position and into second. I was able to pull out around a two to three second lead from him and had found a decent rhythm. Then it almost fell apart.
A few cars had wrecked and as they were trying to recover, I was also trying to come around them wide. Didn't happen.
But that's racing.
I lost just enough time for the second place driver to pass and pull out a small lead which I couldn't recover from as we both tried to slice through lapped traffic. I thought it was better to preserve second than push and lose it all. However, I couldn't help but feel that the car was somewhat slower though and certainly off the qualifying pace. A quick check on the dyno later that night indeed showed that my decision before the main, to increase the spring tension on the motor, was not a good one.
Lesson learned again...unless your slow, leave it alone before the main!
The T2 setup, in jpeg format, can be found on