Buddyboys Oval track, South New Berlin, NY

Driver: Matt Peterson

Opening day for the summer  oval season at Buddyboys. The clouds threatened early on, but it wound up being a nice day. The track is a banked clay oval. This was my first time on this oval, so the experience was sure to be an interesting one. To quote the great Doc Hudson “This ain’t asphalt, son. This here’s dirt” . It was going to take some getting used to having recently finished the indoor carpet season.

Being the first week of the season, no one was sure who was going to show, and which classes would have enough cars to run. We wound up running 9 classes.
Stock mini late model
Open mini EDM
Kids Class (stock stadium trucks)
2 wheel drive short course
4 wheel drive short course
1/10 Slider
1/10 Late model
Nitro EDM
Hyper Sprints

My first class was stock mini late model. I ran a Losi 1/18 mini late model chassis with a Mcallister racing Vintage sedan body.  I had the stock tires all the way around. Off the line I had no traction at all. It took a very smooth throttle to even get moving. Once moving, it became evident I need some suspension tuning in this car. It kept bottoming out on the littlest dips and bumps in the track. Every disruption to the chassis resulted in a spin out, followed by a ginger trigger finger to get it going again. I came in 6th overall in the Main.

My second class was the 1/10 slider. The rules call for a 1/10 Slider with stock electronics, or 17.5 brushless. I’m running the Novak Havoc 2S spec brushless system, with a 17.5 brushless motor. Stock tires all the way around. For the carpet, I had shock limiters in to lower the center of gravity. Before the next oval race, I will need to remove those limiters. The car bottoms out consistently in turns 1 and 3, where a slight dip developed as the day progressed. I was comfortable with the gearing, running a 27 pinion and 81 spur. It seemed to have a good balance of top speed and off the line power. With the limited rear traction, I think the gearing also assisted in applying less power to the wheels at initial launch.  The trick with this class was to get a good head of steam going, taking 2 or 3 laps to get to full speed. Then, avoid the wrecks, and don’t make any sudden course corrections. Any sudden movement resulted in a spin out. In the Main, I was going pretty good. Even held the lead for a lap or two. But the track was getting slippery, and the tread in the tires was completely packed with clay. I lost control a few times in the rougher sections of the track, allowing a couple of cars by me. I wound up third in the Main.

I didn’t actually plan on running three classes. I was going to stick to two, and use my spare time to help my kids get their cars ready for their heats. I also wanted to practice some on the off road track. But, there were a few guys running their 4wd short course trucks, and I took the opportunity for a little extra time driving the Losi. Any track time, even though its only left turns, will make me a better driver. In the first heat, my transponder wasn’t counting. I had it velcroed to the center diff housing, and the overhead sensor bar wasn’t picking it up. I pulled over and moved the transponder to the hood. Then a few minutes later my battery died. I had run too many practice laps before the race started. For the Main, I was TQ. I started off slow, gaining speed as I completed my first lap. I found today that the AKA Enduros are perfect for this surface. I had plenty of traction, while still allowing me to slide the truck around the corners while applying dubious amounts of throttle. I can’t drive this truck without smiling, it is way too much fun. The tires kept digging all day, never showing signs of letting up. The weight of this truck became very evident to my competitors, as on a few occasions they bumped me. Instead of me spinning out as is normally the case when someone hits you, they seemed to bounce off of the Losi SCTE. I won the Main, and second place was 7 laps behind. I’ll be curious to see the lap times when the results are published. I may have had the fastest lap in the SCTE out of ANY class. That truck is very fast, and seems to be setup well for the oval in that it absorbs the abnormalities on the track.

My boys ran their Evader and Electrix in the kids class. They did ok, considering it was their first time on a clay oval. The pin tires on the Electrix worked very well on this track. The Evader tires did ok too, but the Evader suffered a day ending failure with the spur. That was after having replaced the rear A Arm only 30 minutes before the first heat.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9AvkcEMsm5U[/youtube]

Buddyboys Oval track:  South New Berlin, NY

Driver: Jim Decker

It was the summer season opener for Buddy Boys clay oval. My first time ever on their high banked red clay oval.

I was looking forward to seeing how my Losi 1/10 Slider and my “new” converted 2WD Slash-Late model worked on the oval. My brother Dick and nephew Kris were in town for the weekend from PA, and being fellow RC enthusiasts, they attended the season opener with me. We were planning on running the 1/10 Losi Slider, 1/10 Late model and possibly the Losi 1/18 Late model-open class. After some practice time we decided our mini’s sat way to low to get around the track without being donut-queens. I had asked George (owner of Buddy Boys) if they would consider letting those of us w/ our 2WD & 4WD SCT trucks to run since we seemed to have enough trucks ready to run for the day. He agreed which was awesome.

Class#1-1/10 Losi Slider. We 3 (the Decker Racing bunch) ran 1/10 Losi Slider, 1/10 Late model, 2WD SCT and 4WD SCT. As Matt mentioned in his race report, it took some getting used to compared to running the carpet oval all winter. I quickly discovered my box stock Losi Slider was completely out to lunch in the carpet set up and will require some tuning to be competitive next time out. My nephew ended up running my car in the Heat and the Main due to his car had some transmission issues. I think he was last but at least he finished the race! My brother took home the win w/ his Novak 17.5 powered Monster Energy Slider.

Class#2-1/8 Late Model. A few weeks ago, we had decided to convert 3 of our 2WD stock Traxxas Slash trucks into late models for the clay oval. We arrived with 3 race ready cars to run in stock form (Titan 12t motor, XL5 ESC) running NiMH batteries. We had lowered the trucks by installing large limiters in the stock Traxxas shocks. They do sit pretty low but unfortunately, too low for the track conditions, we were plowing the clay in the corners. After liberal amounts of trimming w/ our Dubro body scissors and some shock pre-load tuning we were able to race without digging in on the corners. To be honest, this was an experiment and in the end we had a lot of fun. Another Buddy Boys regular, Big Jim Laubmier had a converted Slash/late model as well. The 4 of us had a great time. Somehow, I ended up taking the win in the A Main. I am currently setting up my AE SC10 for late model running as well, except this car will have Novak 13.5 brushless power. More on that in a couple of weeks.

Class#3- My nephew Kris and I ran our 2WD SCT trucks. I ran my box stock Kyosho Ultima SC w/ Proline Caliber tires in both heats and the Main. They hooked up awesome on the clay. I had practiced w/ the stock KO tires, and although they were awesome on the carpet, not so much on the clay. The tread got clogged up quickly making the truck seem like it was riding on ice. Kris ran one of my all Stock AE SC10 w/ Reedy 17t brushed motor/ESC and Proline Switch tires. That truck ran well and was smooth but had some glitching issues w/ the Bluebird high torque steering servo in Heats 1 and 2. I managed to grab a win in both heats w/ my KO Ultima. I tried adding a glitch buster but it continued to flake out after a couple minutes of run time. Kris ran the Main with one of my Slash 2WD (all stock) w/ Proline Caliber tires on all 4 corners. The truck handled well and was hooked pretty good on the clay. Not sure where he ended up but I grabbed the Main win with my Ultima. My truck looked like it was riding on rails. I think the Ultima worked very well since it has a low COG + it is very light. I had upgraded the Ready-Set shocks w/ Kyosho Velvet shocks w/ 3mm shafts during the winter carpet racing season. They make the truck handle so smooth, it makes me look better than I really am.

Class#4- Last but certainly not least we 3 ran the 4WD SCT class. What a complete and total BLAST that was. I ran my Team Durango DESC410R for the 1st time ever. I recently completed the kit build from scratch (watch for my Durango build report-coming soon!) so it was my “test” run. I opted for a Novak 4.5 550 brushless motor mated to a Novak Pro ESC. I also added the 14mm tuning rotor to give the truck more torque and cooler run temperatures. I ran a 14t pinion for the day. I do think I was under geared a little since the truck had a lot of rear wheel spin (tail-happy). Motor temp at end of Heat 1 was a blistering 92 degrees. I was running the TD wheels w/ Proline Calibers-green dot soft compound on all 4 corners. I experienced some ESC glitching issues since I had the wrong wiring harness between the Novak Pro ESC and my Spektrum SR3100 receiver. It was jabonied up a bit so I could race the truck until my new Novak harness arrived. My truck would shut on and off occasionally but overall, when it was working, holy crap did that thing boogie. I have never run anything like this before. It had gobs of power and handled quite well w/ the Durango big-bore shocks. I think I managed a 2nd and 3rd in the heats and dead last in the Main due to the truck shut off completely twice. Even with the ESC issues, I had an absolute blast racing with Matt and his Losi TEN-SCTE, my brother w/ his Jammin SCRT10, my nephew w/ his NEXX 10SC and George running my Slash 4X4. I think we put on a pretty good show for all that were watching. As Matt also mentioned in his race report, the 4WD  trucks layed down some pretty fast laps. I can’t wait to see the racing results. I have a LOT of tuning to do before next week’s season opener on the all new SCT track but for it’s virgin run I was very happy w/ the Durango’s power and handling on the clay oval.

CRC Raceway: Rome, NY
Driver: Kevin Crandall

Where to start? Today was a LONG day. I left my house @ 7:45 am and returned shortly after 8:00 pm. The reason we (rode up with the Canalside Racing crew) left so early is because they were running the remainder of the race that was cut short due to rain a few weeks ago. We started that around 11am (doors opened at 9), and wrapped it up around 1:30pm before starting that actual race scheduled for today.

I guess I should start this off by stating that my truck was somewhat crippled from the start because of our last Bash Session. Towards the end of it, my left rear wheel loosened and started to round off the hex. I cranked it back down and it held fine the rest of the night. (This was Friday night I am referring to).

We got to the track, I start to unpack my stuff… uh oh.. my battery strap was missing! I knew exactly where it was too.. in the back of my Xterra from Friday night. Since I rode with Team Canalside with their trailer in tow I didn’t have my Xterra or anything left behind in it. #Fail.

So Lewis Brown offered me some assistance on the battery strap front. The way the foam spacers are in the SC10 4×4, it holds the battery pretty tight as is.. I also swung the strap lock over the battery (it only covered a fraction of an inch of the pack, not much of a hold down..). So on top of those things, Lewis gave me some electrical putty, usually used to balance buggy wheels. I shimmed a bit between the battery and the belt cover. It might look pretty ghetto, but it actually worked. I took the truck out for several minutes in practice and took a few tumbles and big jumps.. battery did not budge.

So with the battery strap figured out, it was time to wait for the mains to start. I rechecked all my wheel nuts and tightened them down as best I could.

During the Makeup Main (all we had left to run in my class), I started out well.. Truck felt good, track was awesome. We ran a 10 minute main. With a couple minutes to go I felt something wasn’t right. The left rear had loosened yet again and was spinning around without grabbing the wheel. I managed to hobble through the rest of the race at a slow pace. When I pulled it apart to take a look, both the wheel and the hex were a complete circle. No hex left.

A fellow racer suggested gluing the hex to the wheel (what do I have to loose at this point). So I broke out my Proline Thin CA glue and went to work.. I think I used a little too much because it wasn’t drying very fast. They ended up calling the first set of heats sooner than I expected and we were the first class to run. This put me in a scramble to get the truck back together.. the glue gave as I was putting the wheel on. It broke but you could see the glue was still a little tacky. I put it on anyways and cranked down on the wheelnut as hard as I could. It sort of worked. I managed to finish the race, hobbling along the last lap or so like I did in the Main.

I took the wheel off again, and sure enough.. it didnt hold.. so i cleaned it up and glued it again with much less glue this time. I also decided it was time to try a new wheel nut. I went inside and they sold me a standard, unflanged nut. I believe it was all they had so I ran with it.. By the time the 2nd heat rolled around the glue had dried and the wheel looked like it might actually hold this time. I tightened on the new nut and off I went. I ended up making it 1 lap before the nut actually ripped through the wheel and ended my day. Didn’t start the 2nd Main of the day.

Granted, I wouldn’t have had this many issues if the shop had the parts I needed in stock.. but with the Associated still new, and half it’s parts still on backorder from the manufacturer you can’t really fault the shop. The only part I saw they had was the belt. I was going to try some Proline Protrac wheels, as well as some different hexes. The wheels they had in stock, but the only hexes they had were for the Losi XXX-SCT and the inner diameter of the axle looked too small so this is why I ended up attempting to glue. Same goes for the battery strap, had it been a couple bucks and in stock I would have just bought one, but that ended up being the least of my problems today.