RCFIA is awesome

A very well done web site for the RCFIA F1 series in Northern California.... I love the interviews and news bits! http://www.rcfia.com/

F104V2 carpet setups

I have a couple carpet setups here for the V2... These are sort of preliminary. I'm still trying to work everything out, but check it out. I think the second one is a little easier to drive. Carpet setup #1

Carpet setup #2....note dope 1/2 fronts, full rear...

A quick post on ackerman for carpet on the F104V2

I was having a bit of a problem with my V2 car. Despite trying to tune around it, the car seemed to push on corner entry, but was a little loose on mid corner to corner exit, and you really had to watch how you got on the throttle. The car was not bad, just not to my exact liking. Despite fiddling around with a few different things, it didn't get a whole lot better. Finally, I decided to change the ball stud position on the steering knuckle, which is usually a pretty big change. The standard setup has the ball stud in the middle hole on the aluminum knuckle (I did get this, even though I wasn't sure if it was necessary) . I went to the most rearward hole on the knuckle, which adds a good amount of angle to the steering rods. So what this did was to make the car turn in much more positively, but also calmed it down on exit and mid corner. This was very good on the tight parts of the track. It also made it easy to drive hard off the corner, and into the sweeper. Before I had the feeling the car was going to do something weird going into the sweeper, especially if i fed it too much wheel. If I hit the line right, it went in good, but if I didn't it pushed off a little toward the wall. It was hard to know how much to turn the wheel . Anyway, now it took more throw to turn the wheels as much, but it felt like I had more "resolution" in the steering. The car could be turned into the sweeper and it held the line-I also felt I could make mid corner adjustments without upsetting the car. So for carpet, I would recommend the rear hole. For asphalt, the middle hole might be more feasible, since you don't want the car to be as reactive turning in. That being said, as I write this, I am thinking back to running the car at Leisure Hours for the first time, and it did a lot of the things I did not like above. What might work would be the middle hole, but repositioning the servo to add some angle into the steering rods- Sort of a half measure. Obviously, the number one thing will be what you like. I think a lot of this will depend on the feel the driver prefers.