New Gold Tub Owner Setting Up For Oval Racing.

[everything_rc]

Can anyone offer basic suggestions for the set-up of a RC10 Gold Tub, with Stealth Tranny, 27 Turn Motor and 6 cell pack on a small clay oval track. With old school Coupe body.

What I'm planning.

Placing cells on left side of tub. (what balance is ideal left/right and front/back)
Custom Works Foam tires gray front, silver rear
Associated Dual Sport shocks (new hole on tower).
Will spring the front right tire stiffer than others

I have 20 deg. and 30 deg. front block carrier. Which to use???

Thanks for any help you can offer I'm new to this chassis and dirt oval racing.

[Eau Rouge]

If I may offer my suggestions for just starting out at a new track with a new car...

• • Don't use offset weight at all on a car with no wings or downforce... and even then, you probably don't need it. Line everything up on the centerline of the car and make it as balanced as possible. Left side biased cars can be difficult to drive, countersteer and maneuver in traffic.

• • Don't use different compound or material tires on the front & rear. Pick a compound that everyone at the track runs and use it on both. Pinks are a good starting place for both F/R, and silvers are good, too, but potentially too soft in certain situations. There are foam, foam rubber and exotic foam compounds, and it's best to not mix the types right off the bat. I think grey and silvers would be mixing.

• • Personally, I don't like a lot of caster in oval cars. If given the choice between 20° and 30° blocks, I'd take the 20s, but I'm partial to 0° - 15° of caster. A rear-motor car will push a LOT anyway on a clay track, so you are going to need the car to TURN, and it will need minimal caster to do that.

• • Spring all 4 corners identical to start out with. Generally a good place to start is 25wt oil, #2 pistons and a relatively soft spring on all 4. Many guys are using the Custom Works 8 lb "outlaw" spring, but a 12 lb Associated TC blue will work just fine to start. I prefer the super soft buggy springs, myself, and use the blue buggy fronts on many of my cars. Stiffening the RF spring will only make the car push more. Not what you need to begin with. Start with all 4 shocks even and level, with only enough pre-load to set your ride height (slightly nose down).

• • Keep the car SOFT and you will be a lot happier without any downforce to aid the traction.

• • Cut 4 radial grooves in the front foams, and 4 radials in the rear, with 1/4" cross-cuts. There are threads on DirtOval.com and even a really good article in a few issues old RCX magazine, written by our very own Erich Reichert.

• • Mount the body as low as possible with no fenders. A good trick we used to use was to cut out the front, side and rear windows and fill the interior cabin with a flat sheet of lexan or cardboard to give some aero "assist".

That should get you started. Later on we'll discuss flipping that stealth around to mount it mid-motor, and some finer shock and suspension tuning.

Oh yeah, and post photos of the car when you get it built!

[scr8p]

if you haven't converted the rear axles to 3/16", your not going to be able to mount custom works rims on the back.

[everything_rc]

Thanks for the tips, I will go ahead as you suggested and will post pictures when the car is complete!!!

Thanks Again!!!!

[bgruen]

If I may offer my suggestions for just starting out at a new track with a new car...

• • Don't use offset weight at all on a car with no wings or downforce... and even then, you probably don't need it. Line everything up on the centerline of the car and make it as balanced as possible. Left side biased cars can be difficult to drive, countersteer and maneuver in traffic.

I disagree with the above statement. A good starting point for oval is:

Mount a battery cup such that the battery goes on a diagonal from the rear bulkhead to the inside edge of the tub. Tape the ESC to the chassis near the outside back corner of the battery to pin it into the bulkhead. Run 40wt oil and #1 pistons all around, gold springs on the outside and silvers on the inside. Bones just above level in the rear as it will squat while running, front ride height is a major tuning variable, low to oversteer high to understeer.

When this is done place the car on a flat surface, grab the chassis and torque it to the outside to your best estimation of how much chassis roll you think you'll get. Set all of your wheels to be flat on the track during this 'fake chassis roll' (again, best estimation). Let the car settle back to normal and take a look at where your wheels end up. Now, look at your upper control rod mounting points and see if you can determin better mounting points that will get the tires to be closer to flat while not in the 'fake chassis roll'. Until you can picture this in your mind it's a lot of trial and error.

On clay most people want the car to be pretty neutral, but a touch of oversteer will make you faster. What you don't want is nervous, and getting the tires flat prevents a nervous ride. The way to really know is tire wear, all four tires should wear evenly. A white paint marker is a really good tool to determine this.

Best of luck to you. Oval racing at reasonable speeds is some of the most fun you will have racing an RC car.

Bob

[Eau Rouge]

Bob, consider that this racer is new to oval racing and new to an RC10 chassis, and new to setup and handling on a clay track with foam tires. An unbalanced car is the absolute WORST thing for a new driver (especially one built with 20 year old parts). Period. It is NOT the best starting point for anyone at a new track, let alone someone with no chassis setup experience or driving experience. Bad advice, IMO.

For someone who has been racing dirt oval for 25 years, maybe the experience of arriving at a new track and judging weight placement and shocks and springs is a reasonable place to begin, just by looking at the track, but certainly NOT for a beginner or someone brand new to oval racing.

And, in MANY gold tub chassis coupe, jalopy and bomber classes around the country, they don't even allow offset batteries anyway, for this very reason. The object of this class is not to develop an oval-specific race car, but a place for beginners and experienced racers to be able to enjoy simple cars with no aero aids, no oval chassis and no fancy tricks, and learn and enjoy racing at reduced speeds.


Oval racing is difficult enough without crazy setups with 4 different settings on each corner of the car and funky weight displacement. For a beginner (and many experienced racers), a balanced car will be FAR easier to drive and grasp than one with heavily offset battery weight.



FWIW.



d

[bgruen]

I disagree. A car set up as I suggested will be much more controllable on an oval track. And I don't think anything I suggested was overly complicated or radical in nature. What I outlined moves the center of mass of the battery to the inside by about 1 inch, this is no where near as radical as a purpose built graphite plate that can move the cm of the battery over 2 inches. A car like that is very unforgiving with throttle mistakes, the setup I outlined is not.

I used this method when I was 15 years old and it's the same basic technique that I use today. There is not a lot of experiance with gold tub oval today, and what I proposed will not only give him a good starting point but the technique required to start actually tuning it.

Sending him out with a centerline balanced car and the suggestion of making small changes will cause undue frustration. I would save him from that frustration in favor of a setup that is actually proven to work well (to me at least).

Bob

[Eau Rouge]

To each his own. I've been racing these silly things for 25 years, and never once was a balanced car a frustrating proposition, especially in the hands of a beginner racer. It's certainly a better place to start to eventually move towards something more LTO oriented. At least that way he'll know what each change is doing to the handling of the car.

He can begin where he wants. Eventually, he'll find a setup that works for him.

[mrlexan]

To each his own is right, but Doug does know his stuff when it comes to oval racing (I say that acknowledging I don't know much about your experience Bob).

[templeofspeed]

Time for a DO smackdown! Doug and Bob each build a car their way and then send them to everything_rc to try.

[Eau Rouge]

Hehehe, I don't doubt that Bob's way will work, but for a beginner racing oval for the first time on foams/clay, LTO weight bias and different springs on each corner is a bad place to START. Neutral will be better in the hands of a novice, every time, and changes to the car setup will be from a BASELINE, instead of some unusual left to right to corner-balanced setup.

[templeofspeed]

Someone once said "the reason they give you options other than the factory setting is so you can get dialed out in a hurry."