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Does anybody here own one of these cars? Has anybody driven one?
I just drove one of these cars last week at a race here and the car was very planted. The track was a fairly rough outdoor asphalt surface. My BRP did not work no matter what I did but the M18 tracked straight, did not hop and had great corner speed.
We run the Xray micros at our track every Wednesday and on Sundays. Our track is ozite carpet, and we run them with the TRC micro foams. I myself am running purple fronts and pink rears. In general, the M18's at our track with the foam tires suffer from too much bite (imagine that). So, what most of us are doing is gluing the outside edge of the tires and a very small band along the outer tread. After that, they are pretty well hooked up. We tried to run the cars with the kit tires, but there was too little grip and the cars were rallying around the corners (fun, but not fast). The HPI cars aren't even close, by the way. One guy is fast with his HPI, but it has the Ratzas chassis and 6-cells compared to our box stock chassis and 5-cells, and he is at least a lap off the pace. We do have a couple of guys with BRP cars, but they don't run them. I believe they would be close, because they seem to be pretty quick when they are playing around.
The XRay tends to wander on long straights, it seems to be because of the excessive rear toe-in but a fix is on the way with the new 2.5 degree toe links. Quite a few people are having problems with the tranny using foam tires on carpet and big block motors. The gear diff causes the car to do a rapid turn around if all the weight is transfered to the outside tire in a high speed tight turn. They need some stiffer springs for those of us who race on a smooth ozite track.
If a M18 on 5 cells is faster than an HPI based car on 6 cells the person runing the HPI doesnt know what they are doing.
I run my M18 in mod and my HPI/Penguin P3500LM in stock and consistantly get the fastest laptimes in the stock class.
On asphalt I would wager the M18 would definately be the better car but on a smooth carpet track they are quite comparable.
Last edited by patcollins; 03-09-2004 at 06:48 PM..
Your wandering may be due to your servo, servo horn or the increased toe in the rear.
I think that it is an issue with both the toe in the rear and the bumpsteer links. Try removing the links from underneath the wheel hub and diff case and place it on the upperside of the wheel hub and on the top of the rear diff case.
This will help alleviate that wandering issue and appears to decrease a bit of that toe.
Last edited by Intelligentsia; 03-09-2004 at 06:57 PM..
Interesting, by keeping up do you mean to have the same straight line speed the micro needs an extra cell to have the same straight line speed as the M18?
In the stock class I have been runing my Penguin with 6 cells against M18s with 6 cells and I am ever so slightly faster than them in terms of straight line speed and the car handles like a dream going exactly where I want it.
In mod I run the M18 with 5 cells and a speed 300 and only see the wandering when the track has a long straight. Im going to stick my Elite Mod in and see if I can equal the M18 lap times.
I was doing 8.3 second laps in mod and 8.7 second laps in stock FYI. I had the fastest laptimes in stock but not mod, the fastest guy in mod was doing just under 8's.
I think most of the difference lies in the fast that most serious racers view the M18 as more of a race vehicle and therefore better drivers are runing the M18 than the micro.
Last edited by patcollins; 03-09-2004 at 07:44 PM..
I have been planing on trying it this week. Where is Rilato? Do you all run micros throughout the year? I am going to be in Ocenside sometime this summer and might bring one of my micros to race. We only run them in the winter here.
So how does the M18 stack up against the BRP with the ball diff? I used to run 1/18 scale but no one around here runs them. The BRP blew away the HPI micros since I could actually turn without flipping and they couldn't. Seems the rear of the HPI micro is way too stiff.
