My Kyosho Debut

[rich_cree]

Hi Guys

So I ran for Kyosho at the Petit RC race this weekend just gone and I thought I'd share my experiences with you. I hadn't run either of my cars before the meeting, which can be confirmed by anyone who saw me frantically trying to finish building them in time for practice each morning!

2wd: RB5 SP - I ran my car pretty close to stock but using one of tebo's set ups, with slightly firmer springs. I also added 40g of lead to the top of the servo, plus 20g under the ackermann link. From the off it had a good balance and jumped well with no major handling quirks to worry about. I had a bit of an issue with the back end squatting to the side when accelerating out of the slow carpeted corners but moving the shocks to the outside on the rear tower sorted that out.

I was lucky to make the A final after a spin in the crucial 4th round of qualifying after trying to catch too much of the downslope on the tabletop, with times so tight that dropped me several places and I missed BQ by just 0.14sec! Sorry Matt B!

The first two legs of the final went really well and I ran my fastest time of the day in Rd 1 to finish second to Joern. I got 4th in leg 2, but had a poor leg 3 which put me 4th overall tied on points with Shin who beat me on countback for the last podium spot. I think my tactical decision to use one set of tyres all day to help on the slippy sections backfired when the spikes finally rubbed off in leg 3.

In hindsight my car was a bit lazy in the hard turn in sections and in the switchbacks. If I was to try again I 'd soften the shocks up a lot to try a generate a bit more cornerspeed. I only needed a tenth or so to be right up at the sharp end so it's a promising start!

4wd: ZX5 FS - Again running the car close to stock I struggled initially with a technical problem. I'd not built the front driveshaft/slipper assembly correctly meaning the shaft was popping out intermitantly, making the car 2wd, not good, but totally to be expected if you don't practise! A quick rebuild to include the correct spacer and all was well. Practise and Rd1 were lost to this problem. Rd 2,3 and 4 were all good, with lots of speed in Rd3 in particular. I was tweaking the camber links and shock positions all day long to try and generate the corner speed I needed but not quite getting there. The big breakthrough came when I softened the car up going from 3-b pistons to 3-a all round. The car really came alive then.

The finals didn't go perfectly to plan, leg 1 was strong with a 4th but the next 2 legs were spoilt by an error early on which I couldn't recover from.



All in all a really promising start for the cars and with a bit more setup time to come, it's all looking peachy!

Rich C