To diff? Or not to diff?

Soooo, you know that diff I was going to sort out during the week? Yeah, I didn't ever get around to it so ended up rebuilding it before racing at Morecambe tonight. Going completely against my philosophy that doing stuff trackside isn't much fun and is far too stressful. Anyway, it all got cleaned, re-greased and put back together; missing me the first qualifier... and even after all that it only felt marginally better. As I soon discovered, it was to return to its original nasty state pretty much immediately, so something in there has waved bye-bye. Guess I'll need to sort it out properly with some replacement parts during this week, anyone noticing a pattern forming here?

Anyway, as always I enjoyed the evening. There's something about Morecambe that means I always seem to enjoy it, must be the wonderful company... or maybe it's because the club is nice enough to take about 15 of us out to a Toby Carvery for a bank holiday social before racing! Good conversation and cheap (free?) tasty food? What more could a boy want?!

Andy's wet car with it's sealed GM speedo was suffering with overheating issues (as obviously it doesn't usually rain inside our hall) until the finals when he ran the wet box open and showed everyone why he's top dog at MMCC.

All in all a good night as per usual. I'm going to round this post to a close with a special dedication to a certain Miss Sophie Thresh who informed me tonight that not only does she want to feature in the blog, but she also took the liberty of telling me when and how she would be featured! The bloody cheek! So Sophie, this is just a 'friendly' reminder that if I want you on the blog, you'll be on the blog, but on my terms! J

Sophie broke her personal best for number of laps tonight, congratulations Sophie!

Ribble Reincarnated

Back, bigger and badder than ever... welcome to the new and improved Ribble Valley RC Car Club!

We are now situated in a warehouse space in Darwen and as you can see the track has grown a bit in size...

... it now includes an off-road buggy section; the buggy club is running on the same nights as everything else at the mo...

... and more than ample pit space for everyone.

Even race control has made the trip!

I enjoyed the new facilities, a few slight bumps, but no worse than a good outdoor track and certainly better than the jumps which had started to appear along the straight at the old track. I think I would have enjoyed it a little better if my diff had been behaving itself. Seems my issues from Cotswolds were not entirely to blame on tires or the temperatures... my diff simply isn't "diff-ing" properly!

I should really have rebuilt it there and then, but I was in a "I really cannot be bothered" mood so I just kept running it and kept on complaining. So, I'd like to take this opportunity to apologise to those around me for my constant whinging last Friday. I'll sort it out during the week. I'm now going to sum up by blaming a poor performance on the diff and accept none of the liability, pretty sure I finished up 3 out of 3 touring cars, but who's complaining... ;-)

I'll finish up this post with some fun pictures of Andy's car in various scale settings, carefully constructed for the RC truck club which shares our new venue with us. With a bit of photoshop work I'm sure Andy could be right there filling up his car himself...

Monday nights at Morecambe

Last night was spent in the comfortable confines of a hall in Morecambe, Lanacshire. Another chilled out club evening was taking place, shorts optional in this weather...

I liked the layout last night quite a lot, and seemed to get on pretty well with it. The car remained the same as it has for the Mendip National and the Cotswolds BTCC haha! That's the Tamiya magic folks, the same setup works most everywhere!

Andy practices his smile for his role in the summer blockbuster:

"Ginger people, we eat your children"

Adzy hard at work creating... or destroying... we never could tell...

There was close racing all night between everyone in the top qualifying heat/A final, as always mistakes are simply not an option. One moment stuck on a corner lost you at least half a lap last night. I qualified third in the A final and finished there, despite several exchanges between myself and Mark Carter for second place. It was great fun racing with Mark though, super close clean racing; I really enjoyed the final.

Next race meeting will probably be Ribble this Friday who have found a new venue already, and then possibly the Halifax club meeting over the bank holiday weekend. Keep checking for all the latest commentary and pictures.

Cotswolds BTCC

This past weekend myself, Mr Whittam and Mr Murray trekked down south to the beautiful Cotswolds for a weekend of national warm-up. We went for open practice/testing on the Saturday and then took part in the BTCC round on the Sunday. The weather was gorgeous, if a little toasty, all weekend so that made racing outside all the better!

The Cotswolds track when we arrived on Saturday

As all three of us travelled down in my car, we were a little tight on room so our dear racing companion Mr Bosomworth offered us space under his gazebo for the weekend. He arrived a hour or so after us though, so we were super-efficient; pitting and burning simultaneously for the first hour of Saturday...

Until our saviour arrived, cheeky grin available separately...

Nice and tidy (and shaded too!) pit space

Practice on Saturday went ok, I went round well the first time I went out as it was still slightly cooler. But as ambient and track temps came up I struggled with the back end of the car breaking loose and wanting to overtake the front end. I continued hustling the car round best I could simply reminding myself of the track layout and lines the rest of Saturday though.

He wants to be here, honest!

Stef came over at the end of Saturday with the broken circuit board out of his SpeedPassion speedo. He had had a rather impressive crash into marshal point 5 after launching it skyward coming down the hill. The result meant that the soft solder (from the racing stresses) inside the speedo had allowed some of the components to shift across; showing what a huge transfer of force travels through the car under crash conditions! Scary! These photos also end the HobbyWing vs. SpeedPassion debate once and for all... note the HobbyWing part number on the circuit board...

Part number visible top-left, and some tiny caps all shook up on the bottom edge

Rather important looking big-black component has shifted across completely, one of the legs isn't even soldered to the board anymore!

I thought maybe a not-perfect diff was to blame for my troubles in practice, so first thing Sunday morning I rebuilt it. The car seemed much better as a result for round one of qualifying and I put in a clean run with a time far better than I had managed all day Saturday.

Unlike the national the other weekend, everyone was on old tires for the BTCC meeting, many simply running the cars as they had picked them off the track at Mendip. Also, there's very little between new and old boots at Cotswolds. The club were clever and made a heavy investment in high quality asphalt when they constructed the track, so tyres tend to come off looking better than they went on! I'm pretty sure their club members must still all be running the first set of tyres they ever bought!

My fast first run was the best I managed for the rest of qualifying though. We thought the first run could potentially be the quickest as once again the track and ambient temps came up to haunt us, although apparently it was just me who had this issue as looking over the results seems everyone else continued improving throughout the rest of the day! Nevertheless, tyre squeal and warm electronics were the order of the day it seemed. My loose rear end came back to haunt me after round one too, and it stayed with me for the rest of the weekend.

Andy tries some intense cooling solutions

I qualified 6th in the C final and finished 5th overall after the two rounds of finals. Not a bad result and one I would be happy with if it repeated itself at the national in a couple of weeks time. The weekend was great fun though and I came away with a decent tan as a bonus!

I'll play you out with some random shots of racing on the track...

Mendip National

It's been a long time coming I know, but here it is, my report on the Mendip National. I've been busy working on my dissertation and enjoying the nice weather up until now, but I've finally managed to sit down and write it. I hope it was worth the wait...

The weekend started well, Buzz had kindly marked out a spot for our gazebo on the Friday night meaning we had a good spot saved for us when we rolled in about 7:10am. The smart ones amongst you will now be thinking, "hmmm, what time did they leave Lancashire to get there that early?!" Well, I woke up at 2:30am and after picking Mark up we left Lancaster on the M6 at about 3:50am. So an early start to say the least... think Friday nights in hotels might be on the to do list for next year...

Buzz made his grand entrance shortly after us just before 8am. During the parking manouvre he narrowly missed running over Adzy's car (still in hauler box and bag) - mere millimetres it escaped by. Buzz jumps out the car, looks at the situation and says "huh, wondered why the parking sensors were going crazy..." Ha! What an animal!

We then all busied ourselves with getting set up and ready for first practice. The weather at this point was looking to be very nice indeed, we were just hoping it would last the day and maybe the weekend.

We opted for pitting on the field in our gazebo, but the covered bits by race control/the rostrum were equally packed. It was a very busy national, busiest I've been to certainly.

My new bodyshell just hanging about until it was placed gently on the car and the track next time. Notice the new Team Sorex stickers we're required to run this season. I really liked them, others were less convinced.

Practice and heats got underway without any hitches. I was on a reasonable pace in the practices, as everyone was running on old tires. But my decision to try and do the National on the cheap and run old tires for the whole weekend didn't work out for me. You're just too far off the pace. I ended up buying and putting a new set of tires in time for the last qualifier on the Saturday, and was immediately back were I should have been qualifying wise. Unfortunately the two poor runs I had beforehand I never really recovered from, but more on that later.

The weather stayed nice for us throughout Saturday and a good day was had by all I would say. Despite some hiccups along the way I think everyone enjoyed it. Here's some pictures from the top qualifying heat to round off Saturday's report.

Sunday greeted us with inclement weather pretty much immediately. Promptly soaking Mark's chair after he left it out from under the shelter of the gazebo.

It also forced us to put some more sides up around the gazebo creating this fantastic little group shelter between our three gazebos (mine, buzz and some of the guys from Ardent)

When the rain started I was actually out on the track with my dry car, as it was a light misting at that point I continued running. But it looked pretty cool on my bodyshell after I brought it off. Artistic imagery quota filled? Check.

Sunday's qualifiers went ok, I got one more good run in and then decided to give the old tires one more try, resulting in another slower run. Meaning I think I finished up with a 22, 25 and 40 being my best 3 runs out of the 5... not really the consistency I was hoping to start the season with. This put me third in the E final, not ideal but could have been much worse.

Let's round up the Sunday commentary with some pictures of the top modified heats lining up on the grid and going round.

This slideshow has almost 80 pictures in it and was a continuous shot option on my camera. It basically shows the entire A final mod field going round the infamous Mendip sweeper. I can't make it flick through any quicker, so be patient. It's interesting to see all the slight variations in lines round that tricky corner.

Funnily enough I ended up finishing where I qualified - a common occurrence for me recently. Although, given Steve Lissamore was on pole and won the final overall (usually he would be going quick enough to make A finals - so I guess he had a 'not great' weekend too) I didn't mind too much finishing behind him. Not the best result, actually one of my worst in a while, but I enjoyed the meeting a lot. It was good fun to be outside again, despite the bad weather on one of the days. Guess I'll just have to drop this round and do much better in all the rounds still to go. I think I can manage that!