Today, we are going to talk about having fun with 1:28 cars when a track is just too far away. Last October I made a video of how my RC cars performed on hardwood floor. Even the RWD cars did better than I'd thought. Now let's put more thoughts in tuning an MR-03 for this hardwood surface using ideas understood from tuning for RCP.
This is my MR-03EVO. It's a good Mini-Z car but not a track monster. I've since adjusted it to run well at home. The #1 most important parameter is the tire choice. Even a thoroughly cleaned hardwood floor is slippery compared to RCP. I've found that 14mm PN super soft radial tires work well here. Rear traction is good enough. For the front, these 11mm PN medium slick tires retain traction even picking up a little bit of dust. The key is that this combination of tires hits the right balance so the car doesn't have over or under steer tendency.
I've just vacuumed the floor to give it the best condition. This MR-03EVO with this combo of PN tires is unbelievably planted. Normally, steering starts to fade after 15 seconds of collecting fine dust, but not so here. Steering is precise. Not as much as on RCP, but I can brake into a turn and power out of one. Because MR-03 runs on AAA batteries, it's heavier than something like a GL chassis. The aluminum pod adds more mass too. More weight increases the much needed traction here.
To maximize traction from the 11mm front tires, front camber was changed to 0 deg. Front springs are medium, and t-plate is medium hard. I removed the MM2 top shock to fit the Senna body. Unlike RCP, there's never going to be enough grip on wood to cause traction rolls. It's okay to load up on tire traction. Also, because there's no soft foam for tires to dig into, 0 camber angle makes the most sense. I've kept this MR-03EVO in its narrow front track width configuration. It's easy to run 11mm wide front tires! By the way, this car would likely not perform well on RCP. My guess is it would oversteer too much, and traction roll. What's good for this surface is not going to be good on a regular track.
Okay, let's compare with other RWD chassis that has not been optimized for this apartment. This is a brushed RTR MR-03 with a RM motor pod running at a 90mm wheelbase. It's not an entirely fair comparison because of its shorter wheelbase, but this car runs quite well on RCP. Tires-wise, it's running the most standard Kyosho setup: 30 deg low profile slick front, and 20 deg radial rear. No extra wide tires here. This MR-03 is definitely controllable. After 15 seconds of dust collecting though, it's started to understeer significantly. Its cornering speed is much slower than the earlier MR-03EVO seen here. It's very pushy. So even though this car drives quite nicely on RCP, it lacks traction at home, especially on the front tires. But the Porsche body looks amazing!
We can also compare with this GL Racing GLR. It's built to run on RCP tracks. The rear tires are Marka V1RR05 11mm radial. They are fantastic on RCP but do not work on wood at all as you will see. It's quite interesting to me because these Marka tires are grippier than Kyosho 20 deg on a track, but they perform worse here. In other words, how well a tire hook up to a surface doesn't always translate to other surfaces.
(Hi Loki!)
This GLR spins out quite readily here because the rear end isn't getting sufficient traction versus the front tires. Even with the brass chassis, it's still lighter than the EVO. There's no way to power this car out of a corner the same way I could do with the MR-03EVO with fat tires.
So the GLR on the right will always have an advantage over the MR-03EVO on a track, but when I'm messing around at home, this EVO gets the job done better. I'm glad that it's possible to run RWD well at home. Use 11mm medium front, 14mm super soft rear.
This is Sammy and thanks for watching!
PN KS 11mm Medium Low Profile Slick: www.kenonhobby.com/PN-Racing-...
PN KS-M 14mm Super Soft Radial: www.kenonhobby.com/PN-Racing-...
Music: "Instructions for Living a Life", Savfk ( • Instructions for Livin... )