Club level competitiveness

[RogueIV]

Not on par for modern performance. Mid motors dominate on carpet tracks, but a well set up rear motor buggy in 17.5 will be about a second or two off a mid motor car, so no slouch either.

Would that be due to just the CG being moved forward and more weight over the front wheels? I only ask this because in the real racing world rear edge Porsches have done extremely well over the years, comparatively speaking. So it’s hard for me to understand why rear motor layouts aren’t as fast.

My son raced a rc10 dirt oval conversion against modern dirt oval cars. he finished 4th or 5th each week out of a field of 30+. He could never pull off a win though. A huge issue was weight. The old rc10 was just much too heavy to launch out of the turn onto the strait like the lighter modern cars.

I would agree the rc10 would be much more competitive on a oldschool track that is rough, blown out, loose dusty style track. On my track we run mostly rear motor cars and the rc10 does fine. Mid motor cars on the other hand always seem to be trying to find rear traction.

Lighter modern cars? Almost all of my vintage fleet is lighter than modern cars. Especially when rules state you have to be at minimum 1474g. Modern lipos are way lighter than 6cell nicd packs of old especially if you go shorty low profile.

Most of the issue is polar movement. if you have weight further out to each end of the buggy say weights on the nose to get the CG more center. the more the car will resist rotation and also resist stopping that rotation. Think back to the lesson of sitting on a spinny chair and holding your arms out and folding them in. The center of gravity may be able to be the same but the weight's location from that center still has an effect

[1911Colt]

Most of the issue is polar movement. if you have weight further out to each end of the buggy say weights on the nose to get the CG more center. the more the car will resist rotation and also resist stopping that rotation. Think back to the lesson of sitting on a spinny chair and holding your arms out and folding them in. The center of gravity may be able to be the same but the weight's location from that center still has an effect

This same concept applies to jumping, and jumps seem to be the primary design feature for modern tracks. You can see the fast guys adjusting the attitude of their car in flight to position it for a perfect landing. I doubt that a vintage buggy with a nose weight would be so easily adjusted in air.

[Charlie don't surf]

Most of the issue is polar movement. if you have weight further out to each end of the buggy say weights on the nose to get the CG more center. the more the car will resist rotation and also resist stopping that rotation. Think back to the lesson of sitting on a spinny chair and holding your arms out and folding them in. The center of gravity may be able to be the same but the weight's location from that center still has an effect

This same concept applies to jumping, and jumps seem to be the primary design feature for modern tracks. You can see the fast guys adjusting the attitude of their car in flight to position it for a perfect landing. I doubt that a vintage buggy with a nose weight would be so easily adjusted in air.

I can tell you with 100% certainty that my sons B6.4D can be thrown all around in the air with just the front wheels- even our T2 with a modern body and heavy ST tires won't move half as much as that buggy in the air. It will move, but at like half speed compared to the other. The rear motor vintage stuff just can't get in nearly as hard into the corners, and comes off way softer regardless of weight on the nose. The driving style is very different between the two IMO. Still impressive though how close you can get and where the older stuff has some advantages (like short run doubles)

[RogueIV]

Most of the issue is polar movement. if you have weight further out to each end of the buggy say weights on the nose to get the CG more center. the more the car will resist rotation and also resist stopping that rotation. Think back to the lesson of sitting on a spinny chair and holding your arms out and folding them in. The center of gravity may be able to be the same but the weight's location from that center still has an effect

This same concept applies to jumping, and jumps seem to be the primary design feature for modern tracks. You can see the fast guys adjusting the attitude of their car in flight to position it for a perfect landing. I doubt that a vintage buggy with a nose weight would be so easily adjusted in air.

I can tell you with 100% certainty that my sons B6.4D can be thrown all around in the air with just the front wheels- even our T2 with a modern body and heavy ST tires won't move half as much as that buggy in the air. It will move, but at like half speed compared to the other. The rear motor vintage stuff just can't get in nearly as hard into the corners, and comes off way softer regardless of weight on the nose. The driving style is very different between the two IMO. Still impressive though how close you can get and where the older stuff has some advantages (like short run doubles)

Exactly, the modern stuff is just more responsive to inputs, but a really talented driver and work around all of that.

My B6.4 is a great car, and it's built like a tank. The amount of abuse these things take is crazy. When driving the old stuff and the B6.4 back to back I have to use way more brake on the rear motor buggies to get them to turn in and setting up jumps can be a little be harder to deal with, especially if you need to get the nose down fast where as the B6.4 you can basically fly it like a plane.

Modern stuff also has the advantage of way more tuning options out of the box and usually way easier to do on race day. For example the pill system for adjusting the rear toe, anti squat, and roll center all in really small increments, compared to the older stuff that have a very small selection of settings and other things that simply weren't a normal option back then like diff height. The amount of tuning options on new cars that don't require fabbing up your own stuff is insane now (and really easy to get wrong!) But one thing is to be said about the RC10, it's a Swiss army knife. It can do just about anything but won't be as good as a dedicated tool for the job. It sure is fun though!