After years of waiting, there is finally a permanent carpet track nearby.  OCRC took the plunge and has rented out another warehouse space right next to their current off-road facility, put a doorway through the wall, and now they have a carpet track put together that can be completely sealed off from the dirt and dust that the off-road track creates.

 I was there to be one of the first people on the track with my 416WC.  I used the Jilles Groskamp rubber tire setup for the '09 DHI Cup (available at thard.co.uk) and from the first run on the track, my 416 was dialed!

I ended up making 2 switches from the original setup sheet.  First, I chose to run the Jaco Green compound tires.  These are a fairly soft compound, and since the track was brand new and had no groove at all, they seemed like the right choice.  Another popular tire is the Jaco Blue, quite a bit harder and also the contact patch of the tire is about 2mm narrower than the Green's I received.  Once the traction comes up enough to cause traction rolling, I will switch over to the Blue compound.  The other change I made is drilling a 1mm vent hole in the plastic shock cap.  I drilled the hole as close to the center of the cap as I could, and angled it at 45 degrees so that on the inside of the cap it is right in the center.  On an asphalt car, rebound is normally a good thing, but on carpet, an over-aggressive car will just traction roll, and taking rebound out is a necessity.  Without the vent hole, the air stays trapped inside the cap when the shock compresses, and then pushes the bladder back out.  With the vent hole, you are now only relying on the shape of the bladder itself to expand back out, which in turn creates a lot less rebound.

 I'm heading to the track again today for another full day of testing.  There are a lot of bumpy areas on the track that were upsetting my BMI 1/12 car, so I have put an entirely new setup on it to try out today, mainly a higher ride height and more droop to absorb the bumps better.  Hopefully today goes as well as the last, I have a few more things I want to try out on the 416 to see if I can get it even better than it already is.

Randy Caster

Tamiya USA - Team Orion