1/12th National Preparations Part 1

So last night I began work on my Eclipse 1/12th car for this weekends national.  I thought I would share some of the things I do to prepare.  I didn't spend so long, or any new parts for the whole rebuild, except for new front bearings, and a new spur gear.

A tidy work space makes working so much easier, not that i'm the best at keeping on top of it, but when its like this, motivation to work comes so much easier.

First things first, I needed to swap the motors and spur gears over from modified 6.5T spec at the euros, to stock motor for Saturdays 13.5T national.

Using a feeler gauge set to 0.20mm sets the float in the rear axle when fitting the diff, equally and quickly each time.

By the way, with the fantom V2E and V3R motors that I use, 1mm of motor spacers move the motor to the left slightly, giving the pod a perfect balance.

I rarely do any rebuilds on my motors, so instead before putting in, I would just brush it clean externally and oil both bearings this time.

For the differentials, I will cover a rebuild in future, but spur gear wise, I/m using 88 teeth gears for 6.5t modified and 76 teeth gears for 13.5t stock.  I do like to have 2 diffs prepared for the weekend when we swap class from day to day.  This makes things less of a rush.

I would then clean all the damper tubes and refill with fresh oil.  I tend to do this a minimum of once per race day. Cotton buds are great for this job.

I'm starting this weekend with 15K in the side dampers and 30K in the centre damper.

I like to fit the side dampers this way, so they can be quickly rebuilt in the car, like this.

I simply cleaned the front end of the car, and re-applied oil for damping.  I will cover setting this and droop when I do a post about setting up the car soon.

Finally, I would check the tweak of the car, and set up the camber, toe and steering travel using these Arrowmax gauges. (AM171043)  I will cover how I do this in a future post.

Tomorrow I will true tyres, giving maximum track time to work on the car, and help others.  I will also check my body shells are okay and the correct height and fitment.

I hope this gives some useful tips that can help.  I'll do a part 2 shortly.