Fast Pace Racing

Welcome to the finest indoor RC racing shop in the Bay Area!  Our track is currently the largest at over 1000 sq. ft!  Aside from our vast selection of Mini-Z replacement and performance parts (PN, Atomic, Kyosho -- to name a few!), we also carry a wide variety of model paints, bodies, E-flite helis and parts, and we are also expanding are product selection weekly.  We will try our best to answer all your hobby questions and needs. We can even custom build your next project! Our customer service is unparalleled in our industry.  You will leave our shop knowing you were completely taken care of -- that's the FPR promise.  Swing by and race your Mini-Z, Xmod, Iwaver, and other on-road 1/24th- 1/28th scale R/C today!

Newbie Tips, Part 3

dee's picture
Posted Sun, 01/31/2010 - 3:58pm by dee

Its been a while, but here's part three of an on-going Newbie series, brought to you by Dirty Dee!

Like most, I've switched over to the MR03 from the venerable MR02 (only reason I did so was because my fets disintegrated!).  Everything was running very smoothly, until one day, I changed my tires, and noticed that my car was very twitchy and would lose traction through turns.  On top of all this, it would not hold a straight line, and would barrel roll into the sweeper from the straight even if I didn't jerk the wheel and hit the line perfectly.  There were a few things I considered (as well as spoken to many of our racers about). 

  1. Changed the body out
  2. An extra front suspension shim to slam the front, stiffer front springs to induce more push
  3. Rebound to the 'smoother' 3PK remote controller
  4. Changed the ICS settings for drag-brake back to MR02
At the end of the day, I was still traction rolling.  2 days after changing my tires, I noticed that they started to wear unevenly.  I focused on the rotation while on gas and I noticed that my car would 'hop' ever so slightly coming down full speed.  Me, being the noob that I am, figured it was due to uneven track conditions (and somehow I was the only one hitting the bumps!). 
 

Alas, my denial finally evaporated when I looked at my tire wear closely.  It was SO uneven it wasn't even funny.  So, the source of my 'hop' was just two slightly unbalanced tires.  So I swapped the tires (putting them on PERFECTLY with the help of the new PN Pro Tire Gluer) and voila, my traction roll, drag braking, hoping car was healed.  I was back to smooth sailing.  

Of course, you don't need the PN Pro Tire Gluer to put your tires on straight and even, just take care and spin them on its bearings to find out whether they spin true and adjust manually as necessary (it has worked for me before).  However, if you're the perfectionist (and I know many of you are!), check out our latest product:

 
This little ingenious contraption takes the sweat-inducing tire adjustments out of of the equation.  Trust me, try these once, and I guarentee it WILL put a smile on your face.  Check out how it works at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cXMaHJF1eLo

Balanced tires... who would have thought? 

-D