Top Rebel 12

T.O.P. Racing’s new venture into the pan car market starts with the Rebel 12, which is a link car in common with the current lipo friendly cars, but it has some innnovative features that set it apart from the other offerings on the market.

Along with the features which are now common on cars in this class, such as adjustable front caster, toe, camber, battery placement and shock mounting position, the Rebel has the following:

 
- Open motor pod designed specifically for brushless motors. 

The motor is mounted by the use of screws attaching to the bottom mounting holes of the motor.  There is no top ‘brace’ on the motor pod, so this lowers the CG of the car. Modern brushless motors use the same pattern of mounting screws, so most, if not all should fit.

- Axle tube to ensure aligned pod bearings. 

This goes together with the rear ride height clamps on each side and the axle through the centre of it to allow the whole rear axle to be removed from the car simply by removing 4 screws. 

- Aluminium Eccentric Arm Spacers for easily adjustable front width

By adjusting which side these are offset to, you can change the track width of the front end of the car easily.

(note: this is for illustration only, when assembled, the inserts go the other way up to lock the front arms down)

 
- Finger Adjustable Tweak Screws

Allows for quick and easy setting of side spring tension

 
- Pivot-ball and link rear suspension that allows for independent adjustments of front to back and side to side movement.

The centre pivot tension can be adjusted through the use of a special screw that fits into the top of the pivot housing to control how much movement there is in the pivot.

 

Available soon through RC Racing UK, the sister distribution company to Much More UK.  The car can be seen trackside at the 12th Scale nationals in the meantime, Chris O’Donoghue has one pre-production car, and Adam Howe has another one.  If you see either of them, feel free to pop over and take a look at the car.

Having driven the car at the last national it performed well in the Modified class, ending the day in 16th place overall.

"We are pleased to bring to you the first official confirmation of the production of the ALL NEW Schumacher Cougar SV, Competition 2WD Off Roader. You’ve heard the rumours……seen the chat………and scoured the internet, but now it’s finally here.



Schumacher have brought you a tradition of Performance technology, with a pedigree second to none, the Cougar SV is no exception! Engineered by some of the most respected design guru’s in the R/C industry, the Cougar SV retains the same Schumacher ethos, yet uses a fresh approach to modern technology.
More info to follow soon....."

New Buggy from Schumacher !

Carpet Wars 7 Round 1

We went to Carpet Wars this weekend for the first round of the winter championship for 2009.  Back indoors, back on carpet… back to 12th scale :)

I ran the car in practise on Saturday and found a good setup and tyre combination to run with which made the car very consistent and very easy to drive.

I’m running a single cell lipo in the 12th now instead of 4-cell packs of nimh batteries, so I was very interested to see how far off the pace of some of the really quick guys I was going to be.

I found out in round 1 where I was 2 laps down (which is about right for me), but more importantly, I was simply charging it up between races and going out again.  That’s the biggest change other than a softer centre spring as there’s at least 100g difference between running the car on cells vs running it on lipo.

This means that the car is quicker to accelerate, quicker to handle, but as you’ve not got the voltage anymore (4.2 vs 6 fully charged) there’s a compromise there as the Lipo cars are slower.

I qualified 5th on the grid for the A final and had a good run in the final until the penultimate lap where I made a HUGE mistake and got in the leaders way as he was lapping me.  This cost him the win as the 2nd place runner was able to make his way through and take the win.  I was running 3rd at the time as a couple of the other quicker guys had dropped out with problems during the run.

BRCA TC National Round 4 – Snetterton

At this round of the national, there's a live feed available to watch on the net.

http://www.bbkRCLive.com

Tristan is currently 41st after three very consistent runs
20: 303
20: 304
20: 304

and I'm 26th after 3 consistent runs as well
22:313
21:301
21:301

I was hoping to be able to provide a bit more info during the day, but the 3 mobile dongle wasn’t happy with reception, so I couldn’t get going with it.  I’ll try again tomorrow.

BRCA Young Guns 2009 – Eastbourne

 

Last weekend was the 2009 BRCA Junior National championship held at the Eastbourne club

The weekend was fabulous, with us older racers being there in a support class to help out our junior members.

I managed to set a new Pb for my time around the track, but at the end of the day when packing up, I pulled a muscle in my back picking up the generator and have been off work all week :(

I’m hoping it’s better soon (it’s better than it was on monday) as there’s a pretty busy racing schedule coming up.

STCC Round 6 – Snetterton

Last weekend was the 6th (round out of 8) for the STCC series and the track was Snetterton, where we’ll be in a couple of weeks for round 4 of the nationals.

I decided that I’d spend 1/2 of saturday setting the car up on national tyres and the other half for stcc tyres, giving me (hopefully) a head start for the meeting in a couple of weeks time.  This seemed to work well and I was happy with the way the car handled on the track from the 2nd run after making a slight change to the shock angle on the rear of the car.

There was a big bunch of Sidcup racers there this weekend:

Myself
Charlie
Steve (making his racing return)
Chris H, who is now known as “Mr Chips”
Marlon
Jordan
Tristan (accompanied by his girlfriend Michelle)
Alex (accompanied by his girlfriend Natalie)
Phil

After everyone had finished practising, we walked over to a nearby restaurant for a well deserved bite to eat and some drinks. This turned out to be a great laugh, both at ourselves and the prices of the food.  Chris H only eats Chips though, I still can’t get over that !!!

Sunday morning came and we got set up for the meeting only to find that Maaarrrrllloooonnnn was in the top heat along with myself and Chris H.  He wasn’t happy but he did really well during his runs !

I couldn’t seem to get the car hooked up in the same way as I had done on the Saturday, but neither could anyone else from our little travelling race team.  Alex and myself qualified within 4/10ths of a second of each other to be 1st and 2nd on the grid for the B final, a race that was to become one of the talking points of the weekend !

The first final came and after a few silly mistakes by me, I ended up third, with Alex in 2nd.

The second final was where it was at though, Alex leading me away from the chasing pack until about 4 laps to go when he clipped a kerb and “roofed it” (a technical term)  This meant that I got the lead with a few laps left, but Alex was having none of it !  He came right back at me and we went into the last lap no more than a few centimetres apart !  On the very same corner where Alex had let me through, I crashed in the same exact way to let him back into the lead !!!

I ended up 2nd with Alex winning that leg of the final.

I was determined to take the win in the 3rd final for a split on the results, but this was not to be.  I overdrove the car and ended up spinning out (coming 7th in that leg) with Alex taking another win for the overall win.

3rd overall for me.  The worst result on paper, but one of the best (if not THE best) races I’ve ever had.  It’s that sort of stuff that makes us spend all this time toiling over the cars, practising and racing as much as we do.  The close race with a good mate, nothing beats it !

There’s now only two points between myself and Alex (taking dropped rounds into consideration) with two rounds left, so it’s right down to the wire !