Foell.org

To pre-empt any bashing that would take place during the first track session, I removed most of the scale details:

• Windshield wipers
• Antennae
• Side-view mirrors

I left the scoop on since it’s low-profile, and also the wing since it might actually help on jumps.

Despite these efforts to keep the body in usable condition, I found out very quickly that the shell itself is not very durable.

First Laps

It did well on its first time out:

The S1 compound tires gripped nicely. I didn’t even add traction compound. My gut tells me that if there was a big SC Rally scene, the more commonplace stock Traxxas rally tires would also do just fine with some traction additive.

Traction Roll & Wing Durability

Once the tires warmed up they had enough grip to (inevitably) traction roll the vehicle. The general shape of hatchback rally car bodies is good because odds are the car will land back on its wheels. On my first roll-over where I landed upside down, I got hit by another Slash and the wing exploded.

Thankfully it was my nephew who crunched it, so I can’t really harbor any remorse.

Body Durability

Also, at one point I grazed the outside of the back straight and it almost completely tore off the front fender.

Needless to say the Basher/BSR 1/8 Rally Body is not up to the task of a full season of door-to-door racing. If I go all-in on this rig, I will instead get a thick (1.5 or 2mm) Deltaplastik lexan body.

Otherwise everything else performed nicely. Besides losing the wing and the fender, there was only a small nick along the body’s front edge, so the bumper did its job well. The tires gripped well. It drove and jumped predictably. It was great seeing a full-bodied rally car out on the track – mixing it up with other buggies and trucks like it was the Baja 1000.

More Power?

I got to trade transmitters with a fellow rally driver who had a 4WD Traxxas Rally. It had a brushless system on 3S power with insane speed. It was actually too fast for most of the course, but it made one jump very easy. It made me wish my brushed rally car had just a little more power to make the first jump in the turf series right in front of the drivers stand.

The brushless rally car could jump right onto the 2nd platform, making this obstacle more smooth and fun. But I wanted to stay true to the low-cost vision of a Spec Slash based rally car. One jump didn’t detract from the smile I had on the other 99% of the track.

The post SC Rally Testing appeared first on Meatball Racing.

It was basically a 1/10th scale touring car with longer shocks and more suspension droop for a higher ride height. It also had a raised bumper for clearing bumps. Team Associated followed suit by offering a conversion kit to make a TC3 Rally. For the next 20 years various manufacturers have taken a stab at the rally game, some lasting longer than others.

RC Rallying Styles

RC Rallying overseas is done on scale courses where the driver follows the vehicle through the course which can be incredibly complex and/or long. It is very similar to RC rock crawling but at a much faster pace.

The SoCal RC Rally Runners stateside do a similar time-trial like setup, but on a smaller course where there’s (ironically?) less running. Lots of scale details have been added including bridges and small jumps.

But I’m OK with giving up a little bit of the scale detail. Why not run them at one of the many off-road tracks our country has to offer? We’re here to jump right? Sure the jumps will be comparatively HUGE, but if the cars can handle it, why not?

Also, as much I love WRC and the time-trial game, nothing beats racing RC cars door-to-door with your friends. I’m thinking something like what Ultra4RC racing is to crawlers… traditional main racing, just with rally cars. By racing at traditional off-road tracks, we’re going to need to go big with these cars.

Short Course Rally

Traxxas has been selling the venerable Slash for over 10 years now without many changes. What that means is there are a bunch of 2wd Slashes out there that are sitting on shelves, collecting dust. SC (Short Course) Rally would be a new lease on life.

Sure Traxxas already makes an out-of-the-box rally car based on the Slash 4×4 – but I want the sheer numbers of the 2wd Slashes out there to be able to participate as well. So keep driving your Traxxas Rally if you’ve got one, and if you’ve got a 2wd Slash or other short course truck collecting dust, consider this easy conversion. To keep costs controlled, I put together an example 2wd spec class list:

Spec SC Rally2

Truck

• Stock 2wd Slash (brushed motor, high center of gravity chassis)

Body

• Any fully-fendered car body (no truck/buggy bodies) – most 1/8 scale will fit. Here are some examples:
  • HobbyKing BSR Racing 1/8 Rally Pre-Painted Body
  • Deltaplastik
  • Parma
  • Traxxas 7411(X) 7412(X) 7416
  • Pro-Line/Protoform PRFX
  • Team Associated 7180 7181 7182
  • Baja Bug (Pro-Line) and BAJR (J-Concepts) fans – these are not full fendered. You should instead look at the Deltaplastik New and Classic Beetles.
• Pro-Line extended body mounts

Foam Bumper

• RPM wide Rustler bumper + Traxxas Rally Bumper Foam OR
• Integy Foam Bumper (for bodies with a longer front overhang)

Wheels & Tires

• RPM offset-compensating front A-arms – these could be considered optional, they just add +3mm of offset to the front so the wheel offset matches the body & rear tires.
• Traxxas 7471 Rally Tires (widely available, pre-mounted as 7473) – the reviews on loamy dirt were only fair but it would probably do well with traction compound like Spec Slash tires do
• Traxxas 7471R S1 Compound Rally Tires (less common, but better grip)

SC Rally4 & Beyond

If main style off-road rally racing catches on, there would obviously need to be a class for 4WD rally cars too. I imagine the class rules for this would accommodate all of the short-course based rally cars from various manufacturers. Some simple dimensions might be:

• Wheelbase 300-335mm
• Width 260-300mm
• 2S Battery
• Possibly a spec brushless motor? Maybe 4WD is destined to be a modified class.
• Some minimum weight standard

The real equalizer should be tires. Settling on pre-mounts such as the Traxxas 7471 or 7471R would be a good place to start. It would avoid racers messing around with the tire foams and wheels, trying to find an advantage. Other racing classes such as USGT and Vintage Trans-Am have seen great popularity by having spec tires and simple rules which encouraging close racing.

Testing

Rather than just dream about all of this, I put together a test SC Rally2 platform to see how it would perform. Tune in to the next article to see the results.

The post SC Rally Proof-of-Concept appeared first on Meatball Racing.

This February has been the snowiest on record, so we have plenty of material to work with.

February 2019 is now the snowiest February on record for the Twin Cities, and there is still 8 days to go! In the second picture, some of our meteorologists posed for a picture during the storm this morning as the record was being broken. #snow #minnesota #mnwx pic.twitter.com/cXtwSXiq9z

— NWS Twin Cities (@NWSTwinCities) February 20, 2019

I had a track layout in mind… a simple figure-8 with a jump at the crossover point. The jumps are the two that came with a Ten Eighty 1080 Flybox Ramp combo. I just put them side-by-side before it snowed. You could also dig out a space for jumps and cover them in snow, or simply build a snow jump. I can’t speak highly enough of these 1080 jumps – especially if you can find them used through craigslist or a garage sale. They’ve provided hours of jumping fun.

To help design the track, I marked off some critical points with plant potters or buckets to give me a reference even with 30+ inches of snow. Then I went and shoveled out the lanes, putting most of the snow on the outside of the lane.

The lanes aren’t the standard 8-10 feet you’d see at a sanctioned RC race – they average about 6 feet instead.

I originally shoveled several “hard edges” – walls of snow that met the driving lane at a 90 degree angle.

While this seemed like a good idea during design, testing revealed that your RC was likely to get stuck hitting the wall. It required more driver skill than me or my kids would tolerate while our fingers were freezing, so I instead made all of the track edges ramps.

I took a page out of the mountain biker book and used a set of snowshoes to tamp down the fluffy snow into a hardpack – doing a “snowshoe stomp.” This helps especially on the deep-snow sections that will get a lot of traffic – like the jump and the ramped edges that are on off-camber sections.

To make sure it was usable, I brought out a 2wd Monster Snow Slash to test. I purposely started with the battery at a storage charge (50%) to make sure the track was usable at slightly slower speeds. I’d turn some laps, make some mental notes, make some changes, then repeat.

The ramped edges gives the track a fun luge-like feeling. You can ride the edge to help turn and maintain speed.

To the right is a patio made of pavers. I shoveled all the snow off, so it just has the layer of ice that came before the snow. It makes for an interesting slippery surface, sort of like the tiled corner that was part of the 2014 IFMAR worlds track at Naxos:

The patio section and the jump were smooth enough for my daughter to drive her LaTrax Prerunner on, so she joined me for a race. She would just do the jump and take a hard right going back to the patio because it is the smoothest section of the course – best suited for her Prerunner.

A few days after that run we got eight more inches of snow. I took the opportunity to really ramp up the edges of the track

Now it’s like a winter version of the track at Radiator Springs.

Maybe I should add a balanced rock, or art deco wing made of snow to the middle for authenticity

Have you built a backyard track or have any interesting ideas you’d like to see? Drop a comment below and share.

The post Off-Road RC Snow Track appeared first on Meatball Racing.

The idea came while researching tire and wheel sizes for the Prerunner. I wanted to find out if my daughter could drive her truck at Dollar Hobbyz Raceway on a practice day. To keep their carpet nice they have a strict “no knobby tire” rule. So I looked for some touring car tires that are approximately the same size as the stock Prerunner tires.

Turns out the LaTrax tires are exactly the same size as normal 1/10th scale touring car wheels and tires. Then it came to me… if touring car wheels & tires fit, so will drift tires – which means Kitchen Drift can become a reality. So I picked up a set of Integy drift wheels/tires for $20 at my local hobby shop and mounted them up.

It looks a little like an SUV rollin’ on dubs.

On half speed, it drifts well on the kitchen linoleum. With the tires providing very little grip, bumps into the fridge and oven aren’t going to do any damage to the car or the appliances

I haven’t tried full speed yet because it gets a good enough slide for this small space. Full speed would be great if you have a large room, like a concrete basement floor.

Start working on those drifting skills, maybe you could be the star driver in a Super Bowl commercial

The post LaTrax Prerunner Drift appeared first on Meatball Racing.

Parts:

• RPM Rustler Wide Front Bumper 81162
• Traxxas Rally Foam 7436
• M4 Tapered Head Screw Insert (3D printed)
• (2) 4x14mm Button Head Screws
• (2) 4x35mm Tapered Head Screws
• (2) 4mm Fender Washers
• (2) 4mm Lock Nuts

Tools:

• 4mm drill bit

Pre-built Solution

Before I built a bumper, I had originally looked at this out-of-the-box foam bumper from Integy:

However it extends 92mm (more than 3 1/2 inches) beyond the front of the gray chassis tub. This might be fine for a long-nose speed run body, but not for a short-overhang rally body.

Custom Solution

Making my own bumper out of the RPM Rustler bumper wound up being cheaper and it also fit better because I could customize the dimensions.

Installation of the RPM bumper itself is simple – just install it upside down.  Because the RPM bumper is made to use the stock counter-sunk screws, I designed and 3D printed some M4 tapered head screw inserts. Installing them should take some of the strain off of the bumper when you tighten it down.

All of the hardware I used I got at the hardware store. I’ve found Ace and my local Do-It-Best has a better metric selection than the big-box home improvement stores.

Use 4x14mm button head screws (something slightly longer than stock) that will sit flat on the bumper plastic. Because the Slash has 4 bumper screws and the Rustler has 2, you have a couple of mounting options, depending on how far forward you want the bumper to extend.

There are two indentations on the RPM Rustler bumper that make for perfect counter-sunk M4 screw holes. Just drill them out with a 4mm drill bit. Metric drill bits seem to be easier to find at US hardware stores these days. If you can’t find one, a 5/32″ will probably work.

Put your body on and test fit how much overhang you want your bumper foam to have. You can mark the foam with a paint pen through the bumper holes. I wanted mine flush up against the chassis.

With the foam holes marked, drill them out. I simply did mine while holding the foam in place against the chassis and bumper.

Fasten it all up by putting two 4x35mm tapered head screws through the bottom.

Add washers and 4mm nylock nuts on top.

Now I’m ready to rally!

More information on this complete rally build is coming up. Are you doing something similar? If you’re interested in a set of those M4 counter-sunk screw inserts and don’t have access to a 3D printer, comment below and I can print and send you a pair.

The post Slash 2wd Rally / On-Road Bumper appeared first on Meatball Racing.