Lately I have been running races with various different setups, trying to learn more about the car, and find more speed. Some things have worked, others haven’t. Some things worked well at first, but then didn’t work in certain conditions. There have been races where qualifying has been good, and then the track changed enough for the main, where the main was horrible, and then there have been races where it never really worked out. This is why we are doing this work for you. Please read the information we provide, and follow it carefully. You really do not need to make huge changes to your cars if you are running our starting setups, regardless of your driving style, to make the car good. If your car isn’t handling well at all, check the basics, make sure there is not a problem with the build, or maintenance of your car. I cannot stress this enough. The stock setup is very good, an explanation of the setup and the changes we make in various conditions is explained in detail here.
Now I want to explain a few setup ideas that have been the most successful for us, and the aspects of the car’s handling that we are trying to improve on.
Improvements
The BLACK Edition has certain handling traits which make it easy to drive, but not as fast as possible, for a good driver. One such thing, is the way the rear end has really good traction, and the front end has a slight push to it. On loose tracks, if you go into a low speed corner, the rear end will stick, and the front end will push, so it’s easy to drive. But to get around a low speed tight corner, that’s not the fastest way to get around, you will have to muscle it around, throwing it into the corner and try and get it to slide around. That’s fast, but takes a lot of effort, so it would be better if the car just did that on it’s own.
- Toe in: With the latest developments of THECar, we began trying it out with less and less toe in. And surprisingly, it got a bit loose when reducing toe in, but then when reducing it even more, to just 1.5 degrees, or even less, it actually improved again. So we began running the least possible amount of toe in, which with stock parts on the BE is using the WE D-plate with the square inserts (JQB0308 and JQB0206) resulting in 1.5 degrees. This resulted in more rotation specially in those low speed corners, as well as more consistent rear traction, where there was more of a controlled slide, and not the sudden loss of rear traction which can sometimes occur.
- Front Shock Position: *Update We have had some success running the front shock in the outer hole on the arm. It makes the front end more responsive, making it possible to enter corners faster, and still be able to throw the car in the corner and have enough steering, and then in the corner the shock offers the front end more support, so the car doesn’t want to dive as much. There are two ways to do this. Using emulsion shocks, run the old rear shock shafts, JQB0058, as they are slightly longer. You can’t run these if you are using bladders though. If you are running bladders, you should use the HB Racing long shock end. As the HB shock shaft is 4mm, and ours is 3.5mm, it is good to glue the shock end on. You then have to use a different spring cup, Mugen is a good one because it is low, and you can still achieve a low enough ride height. The shock length you need to achieve is 106.5mm. We have been running 105.5mm recently.
- Bladders: Fastrace make a bladder that works in our shocks. FR6040 is the part number of the bladder, and if you want their caps also, the Kyosho ones work, FR6040KY. You can also run them in the JQ caps, as they are, or fill the pocket in the cap with for example silicone to make it flat. These bladders work slightly better on smooth tracks, specially low to medium traction ones. They seem to provide more support for the car, thus pushing the tyres down with more force on the ground. Corner speed and forward bite seem to improve ever so slightly. Both Max and I experienced an average laptime improvement of 0.2-0.3s on the Barco track in Italy after the Bitty contest. We were consistently able to post the same laps, so a small difference like that was evident. Where they haven’t been better for us, is on bumpy tracks, or very techical tracks, where you want an easy car to drive.
