Hatcam video of Spec R S1

This video was filmed from the drivers stand using a hatcam during our usual Thursday night club night at Stockport Model car Club. While watching this video back, I found that for part of the course I watch the car by eye movement and not by fully rotating my head, hence the bottom right hand corner of the track not being in the video !!  We have a small, tight technical track with a low grip carpet.

The car has a Speed Passion Reventon R speed controller, and a Speed Passion 17.5 turn motor.  The car has the aluminium steering rack and servo mount from Spec R, Xray Springs on Tamiya TRF shocks, and Tamiya ballcups. The tyres are well worn Schumacher Shimizu Wet tyres, and the body shell a Protoform 200mm Dodge Stratus 3.1 in my favourite pink and white "Marlboro" style livery.

This was an intermediate level heat, although there were a couple of slower cars in the heat, which makes fast laps quite difficult to achieve as on most laps there is a back marker to pass.

The car handling was excellent, although on the low grip carpet, and quite early in the evening before the grip had come up, I found rear end grip difficult early in the race.  This did improve as the heat and the evening progressed.  I'll post a set-up sheet soon.

Please feel free to post your comments below.

Accidents and replacements

I have replaced the kit front spool with a gear diff in both cars. My sons has already had its gears replaced by the carbon gears. Today, on a tight technical indoor track on carpet, with a straight that became a sweeper, I could see the front wheels and diff struggling to maintain a line around this part of the track. On inspecting the car back in the pits, I saw that the diff had gone, meaning that replacement gears were required. I have now installed carbon ones, part number SPR010-G2, and will closely watch their performance and how long they last.

Another part which has been replaced recently as a result of an accident is the front suspension mount.

A crash caused the end where the hingepin fits to chip, causing the front arm to come out of position. The part required replacing, but another alternative would be the aluminium parts from the R1 car, part number SPR-R1A115.

The toe inserts and other associated parts, along with similar upgrades for the rear suspension could make this upgrade an expensive one, although the suspension mounting would be more solid.

A couple of weeks ago, my son had a big crash and stripped the front pair of screws on his front bulkheads. I managed a temporary fix by inserting some slightly larger Kyosho tapping screws. It turned out to be indeed temporary as they have also since stripped. There will be a re-build with new S1 kit plastic bulkheads being fitted. A longer term solution could be the installation on part SPR-R1A106 which is the aluminium lower bulkhead from the R1 car.

This is a more solid option which would provide rigidity and also prevent a re-occurrence of this problem.

It has been well documented how cheap the car is in comparison to other models. We have raced our S1's for more than a year and apart from driveshafts breaking when running the front spool, there have been no breakages until recently. Whether it could be due to the plastic parts wearing through constant running, or the fragile nature of the plastic parts is open to debate. Replacing the plastic parts should put the car back on the track, or for the relatively small price of a new S1, a brand new car could be built for £50 / $80. Suitable R1 upgrades could replace the damaged parts, also relatively cheaply.

Thankyou for reading the blog, and I hope you found this useful.