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  #48  
Old 16-03-2009
Big E Big E is offline
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Join Date: Oct 2006
Posts: 387
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Just to say a little about the weight of the car.

As Dan says, to us as in the team drivers, we have worked out for over her to get the car to feel nice, as in a good balance between steering and rear traction, you want about 65% rear weight, this is based on a dry track typical to us.

Now as Dan also says the overall weight is then down to individuals. I have the possiblity with the weights I have to run the 65% rear weight but be anywhere between just over 1600g and anything up to 1830g

I tend to run that weight split pretty much everywhere.

What lipo gives us with the 6 is the ability to move the weight, with nimh we could not shift the weight around at all (not without adding any extra which would have made them big time heavy) but with lipo we have that ability with the ballast weight. For example in the wet around Eden Park I shift the weight I have at the front to the rear of the car to stop the front hanging on to the turns so much... and it makes a massive difference.

What you have to remember was the 6 was designed with split cells, and you can't just take out 140g of weight from the front and expect it to still steer. For the cars with stick packs up the middle and the motor in the wrong place the change to lipo is a balanced one, the weight lose is pretty much over the whole of the car, ours is all off the front. Not that this is a bad thing as from what I have seen this gives us much more scope to tune the car purely with weight, for example if we were running lipo at last years euros I certainly would have shifted the weight back and made the front lighter and the car would have been better, not that it was that bad anyway.

With regards to warped's comment I can't remember when I last raced on a flat track with an off road car and unlike touring car where every last milli second of speed you can gain is worth it in off road we have so much power a bit more weight makes no real difference, other than a safer feeling car. Of course if you went mad it would be bad but don't think many will go over board with weight.

So after all that above basically if you want the car to feel like the car did last year, for those that ran them, then you want a 65% rear weight, how much overall is totally up to what the individual wants but we have a very good way of tunning the car with the weights if needed.

I'm off for a sleep now as at my age that took way too much thinking to type all that in

E
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