MR03 New Front end... which one to buy?

Available in the market we have; Kyosho's SS long kingpin with flourine ball, Reflex Racing's long king pin with delrin ball and the new PN upper arm/delrin ball with PN long kingpin. No atomic parts being tested yet. Well, except for ATM springs which btw, I found very stiff. Unlike ATM's MR02 springs, which were much softer than PN's... Moving on. Both Kyosho and RR kit is very smooth that leads to same consistent time on the track. The spring choice for this would be MR03 PN green or PN red in regular height. On my car, I have been running RR kit with stock spring set-up (not springs on-top) and have been getting great results with it on the track. Almost always, .10 faster than any other car on the track but I want more! The car feels like it can do more but I don't know what it needs until...

FPR is closed on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. However, last week on Wednesday, we had an "underground" test n tune night at FPR. We do this once and a while when the boss, Peter is not too busy. To our surprise, Peter and Joey had reconfigured the track the night before to a very unique layout. A layout that I have not seen or even thought of doing. The straight-away was right infront of the driver stand! This was really new to most of us but not to our local fast 8th and 10th scale drivers as they've seen different varieties of configured layouts. For us mini-z'ers that only races on RCP, it is definitely something new.

On Friday, the race was announced to be a PN70 stock racing. This is to bring the battle closer. All night my car felt awesome with RR front end kit (no top springs) and my regular rear end setup. 1st Qual, the car was able to drop 9.86 while one of our expert driver was dropping 9.84 and the other doing 9.89. There were 3 of us working on 9.8's fast lap. I swear my car felt so good on that night that I swear to see 9.6's but I didn't. In the A-main, Jaime Manzanilla was able to drop the fastest lap time of the night with 9.76 and my 9.81 placed me on the 2nd fastest lap. After the race, I know my car can do more I just don't know what else I needed.

Saturday morning came and while I was waiting for the wife to get ready for lunch out. My head was going nuts on what I should do to the car. While eating lunch, all I can think about was my car setup.  I needed to have my front end absorb the bumps better, have the car to roll around the corner and better initial turn-in. After lunch, my wife dropped me off at the shop. Right when I got to the door, I was already told that the fastest lap now is 9.5x... As I was setting up my car and charger, Dee had told me that PN shipment came in that morning. So I asked him if they were able to receive the new PN front end that I patiently waited for  and yes, they have it in! I was very excited to try the new PN front end to see if I can shave my time closer to that 9.6 that I thought I was going to see on Friday. I installed the PN upper arm, PN red springs and zero front offset. This fixed what I was looking for and on my 3rd lap being on the track, the car was already dropping 9.6's and not for long, the car was able to drop the fastest lap on the track with 9.4x. I was very happy with the results and shared my new set up to everyone. Next thing I know, all 12x PN upper arm that were in stock was sold out in a couple of hours and majority of us that had converted to PN kit were able to shaved our times!

Today at work, I brought my car becuase I felt there was something that I needed to do to my car. Although the car was running good, I just know that it can be better. So, while I was working, I had my cars in my cube just to look at and see if maybe I'm missing something... While I was compressing the frontend with my finger, I noticed I still have to put a lot of pressure for the springs to compress and I was thinking, "does it really need to have this much pressure for the suspension to work? Don't they have a softer spring available in the market?". Keep in mind that PN red is the softest I've tried. ATM's softest is about as hard as PN's purple or green. It's pretty darn hard. I feel that the irregularities on RCP track is not being absorb properly with these springs. The front of the car is bouncing up and down (both wheel lifted like I had solid suspension) on every corner which makes the front of the car feels like its "pushing/understeer". This is on a super smooth front end!

While staring at the PN upper arm, I noticed that the upper delrin ball seemed taller than RR delrin ball. As I stared at it, I realized that I may be able to use a shim on top of the PN delrin ball, use PN MR02 springs without having any binding issue on the suspension. Right when I left work, I already had an idea on what I needed...

1. soft front suspension
2. smooth as possible
3. + caster

At the shop, I set my car up to PN kit with RR kingpin and spring on top conversion. Placed the car on the track and 2nd lap later, 9.5s already! All night the car was on fire with zero traction roll and I can come in and out of the corner as hard as I possibly can! My car was stuck at 9.4-9.5 with good set of borrowed batts and 9.6-9.7 with practice packs. With race packs, I was able to drop my times to 9.35 with PN70 turn motor!!! My speedy07 with the old setup was only able to do 9.2. This is without touching anything to the car but just moving the MR02 springs on top which made the suspension to work smoothly. The need for softer spring was achieved by using top spring conversion. My only other concern is that you'll want to use grease for the front up and down travel. You don't put the grease on the kingpin but rather, place it in the toe bar/knuckle pin. This will help slow down the movement on that front suspension. With the top spring conversion, It made the front suspension movement very smooth that the front wheels (not the entire frontend but just the wheels) are bouncing up and down kind of like watching a real car on the freeway with busted shock absorbers. 

If you have any questions, please PM me through mini-zracer under user id "Tjay". Most of you that already know me, email me.