Phil Sleigh

UK grass track

So, yesterday I gave my a Carisma 2WD hybrid its first run outdoor, on a traditional UK grass track.

The track was most definitely NOT suited to a shaft drive hybrid, as it was extremely low grip (greasy wet grass). With a shaft hybrid it generated lots of torque steer, which made it quite hard to setup on this low grip track.

Nevertheless, I persevered with changing my setup throughout the and made great progress.

At the end of the day I qualified B10 (20th) from a full field of 110. Not bad for a first event, but I know there's more to come from the car on high grip tracks.

In the final I made more changes and improved again, which allowed me to drive through the field and finish B4 and ran some very good laptimes too.

For anyone wanting to try this type of hybrid, it's pretty simple to do, as the B5M front end bolts onto a modified chassis with 5 screws. Admittedly you do need to cut a chassis and a top deck, but that's all.

My finishing setup was

Front (AE Shocks)

35wt / 1.6 piston / AE Yellow spring

Middle on tower, outer on arm

Gullwing arms/tower

Longest camber link, 2mm under ballstud

25 deg bulkhead

2mm under ackerman bullstud

Rear (Carsima Shocks)

35wt / 5x1.4 piston / AE Grey spring

Inner on tower, inner on arm

No roll bar

4 deg anti squat

4 deg toe-in

Middle on hub / (No2) inner 2nd up on tower

Wheelbase - 6mm in front of arm - 0mm in front of hub

Misc

30g between LiPo and motor

Wheelbase - 278mm (note this is shortened by the 4 deg toe-in)

6.5T motor (83/23)

-25% throttle curve

No speedo timing turbo

Looking forward to the next meeting, which will be on astroturf and should be higher grip.

Source: Ph. Sleigh