I raced at Sidcup tonight for the first time after stripping down the BMI and rebuilding it from the ground up.
Changes to the car:
Electronics moved
Wires re-routed
New Associated lower front arms
Suspension shimmed up
Servo moved further back
Front brace installed
I ran the car in practice just to make sure it was tracking straight and turning left/right, nothing more than that.
During qualifying I found that the car had a little too much steering so I tried dialling it out by turning down the dual rate on my transmitter. I also added some exp to steering in order to calm it down a bit. Both of these helped, but not by enough...
After the 2nd qualifying heat I was 3 or 4 laps off the pace and was running out of ideas...
I decided I'd try a shock spring change, so popped the shock off the car to change the spring over. It was at this point I found that the shock shaft newly installed before the last meeting, was bent AGAIN. This is the second one I've done personally, and Terry has also done a couple of them as well. As a result of bending shock pistons, I had ordered a Hot Bodies Cyclone 12 Shock as a replacement.
The original plan was to try it out at the next carpet wars meeting, but I installed it on the car quickly. Nothing special done to it, just built it up using the oil it came with in the packet.
I had moved the batteries slightly forward to help calm the car down for this round as well.
Result: 4 extra laps (33) and TQ for the evening !
For the final, I moved the batteries back again as I had a bit more confidence in the car after seeing it perform in qualifying.
I went on to win the Final on 34 laps after this, but the way the car handled was the best thing, it's given me the confidence back that I had been lacking with the car over the past few weeks.
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