Street Touring Car Class

[HPI Paul]

Following recent discussions about the Street Touring Car Class, thought it might be an idea to develop the discussion on the forum.....

Scott - please can you make this a sticky.

[HPI Paul]

Initial thoughts for the objective of this class is having a reduced speed/ less expensive touring car class. General discussion to date has been on the following five areas:

1. Chassis: As a start, I suggest any TC chassis is fine but 'in the spririt' of the class, people should refrain from spending loads a money, i.e. it should be 'budget' touring car, the likes of the schumacher Mi1 or one of the better RTR cars or simply an older chassis bought second hand, the likes of what most people tend to run anyway.

2. Bodyshell: a bit of a subjective rule, but it needs to look like a real car, not an aerodynamic blob as Maz puts it.

3. Tyres: a defined control tyre; schumacher carpet dragons have been a popular proposal to date. Basically, it doesn't need to be the best performing tyre, just needs to be durable, give a balanced handling and overall, a level playing feel. Note that reduced speeds should reduce tyre wear

4. Motor and ESC: control motor and possibly control ESC as well. Brushed or brushless?? Following Maz' suggestions, if we go brushed, a HPI Saturn (either 27T or 20T depending on what speed we are looking for) would be suitable and appriate at £10 a pop. Brushless could be a stated ESC (proper stock, i.e. not even capable of turbo/ boost) and motor, for example the bullitstorm 17.5 combo, available from hong kong on ebay for about £40 and with a pit card for about £50. I have one of these and will aim to be a long next friday for people to try it out and see what you think. Also, pretty much all brushless ESC's come with a low voltage cut off, which most brushed esc's do not.

5. Batteries: Nimh's or Lipo's?? limitation on capacity?? Nimh's are harder to come by, Lipo's have to surely be the way forward and very affordable now. Perhaps a limit on the capacity, say 5000mah and maybe a limit on the C rating??? - I think a limit on the C rating is more important than the capacity.

What are you thoughts?

Paul

[bedsrcmcc]

Paul

Andy Bracey ran his car in 'Street' format last night with a standard tin can motor and to be honest I was surprised at just how 'driveable' it was. I had a go with the car with carpet dragons on and it was not painfully slow, the grip was poor but then that's the point of the class to some extent to keep the speeds slow.

I think we should try one of those HPI brushed motors as well Paul. My gut feeling it that brushless will simply be to fast. If there is not a large gap between the street cars and the normal Touring Cars we run then why have the street class?

With the limited grip that the carpet dragons give a driver, we should steer clear of brushless.

I appreciate that Maz had a go a couple of months ago with some tests, but to be honest (no offence intended Maz), Maz is the wrong person to trial the street class as his driving skills are far too good. We need those who would probably be running a street car to race a few meetings and then we'll get a better idea of how they will perform.

I fully agree about LiPo as it's so much easier for a newby to the sport in terms of maintenance and charging, as as you say, LiPo prices have fallen dramatically now that everyone is using them. To give you an idea, the equivalent LiPo that I purchased 2 years ago for £100 can now be purchased for less than £50 these days, and if we run tin can motors you would not need a high spec LiPo, hence even cheaper than that

In terms of bodyshells, I'm happy to trawl the Internet and come up with a list of shells that can be used. I'm sure we can provide a list of more than 20+ shells to choose from.

[ek9russ]

My thoughts and ideas


1. Chassis:


I would agree any TC chassis, there is a few of us that already have them, I don’t think it has to be a cheap class in terms of chassis choice (that’s what the Mardaves are for) I stopped doing TC as they got too fast, and not being the best driver was normally in the class that was “out of control of their driving” and just got fed up of being driven into all the time.
I think people also appreciate the engineering behind the more race spec chassis.

Also have a higher weight limit on the car

Are we trying to do a reduced speed class, or reduced cost class? Or both?

2. Bodyshell:


I like the idea of none race car shells, (like no protoform and hotbodies shells) Maybe it should be something that isn’t on the BRCA list. Yes I’m sure someone will turn up with a HPI Saleen bodyshell that is streamed lined, but with the control on the motor, tyres and batteries I doubt it will make much if any difference.

For this class I think we should have a best chassis and best bodyshell prize on offer as well.


3. Tyres:


We should stick with a Schumacher supplied tyre, as they have been good enough to support us with prizes since we have started the club. So carpet dragons would be ideal.

Maybe they should be mounted on none dish wheels, just so it fits in with the none race bodyshell idea.


4. Motor and ESC:


Not really sure 17.5 will be much different from 13.5, Chris and Ian I believe used 17.5 and are normally up there with the rest of them if not faster, ok they did have the turbo function on! Again there is people who have stopped using their TC and still have the equipment, could these people still use their old ESC but unplug the sensor wire to stop them using the turbo function on them?
I would like to try 21.5 and see what that is like.

Schumacher do the Cirtix stock Brushless ESC for RRP £59.99 and the Speed Passion Ultra Sportsman 3.0 Brushless motors for RRP £34.99. Could make a good combo, and I’m sure someone could get the price down on something like this

Having a some sort of brushed motor equivalent would be good idea, if someone has a RTR or old chassis they can get it up to spec without spending too much money.


5. Batteries:


I think both, Nimh just because they come in most RTR kits, and also lipos because they are a lot less hassle and again most people have them. If we go down the route of limiting lipos it should be done on capacity and C rating, not price. If we limit price people will only get the high spec packs from Hong Kong. At least if it’s done on spec, it gives people the choice on what they spend.


I would suggest the following rules;

Any 1/10th chassis with any hop ups etc. With a minimum weight limit.
Any real life car shell (none BRCA/ None legal Racing shell)
Prize for Best Chassis and Best Bodyshell
Schumacher Carpet Dragons, mounted on none dished wheels
A Brushed Motor choice (TBA)
A Brushless Motor(TBA) with non turbo ESC, or sensor wire removed if Turbo function is available.
Nimh Batteries, and Lipo Battery. (with a limit on the capacity and C Rating)

[HPI Paul]

Don't be too quick to dismiss 17.5 brushless. You should not confuse it with turbo and boosted 17.5, yes they are all but as quick as 13.5 but without the voodoo magic, there is a much bigger difference. Chris Hampson was the pioneer of this at Bromham about 18 months ago when he was running 17.5 without boost and turbo and for me the speed was spot on and about what I think we are looking for with this class.

Paul

[bedsrcmcc]

I think we need to make sure the street class is much slower than the normal touring cars and with that in mind, having watched the Touring Cars as they currently are for the last couple of weeks, I believe that even these are far too fast for our track now.

The technology has moved on quite far in the past year or so and I think we might even want to consider banning turbo boost for the normal class and maybe evening restricting that to 17.5 to allow for a much closer and manageable level of racing for our track.

The more I think about it, the more I think we need to take a couple of steps back and look at Touring Cars as a whole...

Keith Gammons last night ripped the back end off his car! We are now seeing higher speeds and bigger damage to the Touring Cars. Therefore I feel that the speeds for the entry level class, be that F2 or Street or what ever we decide upon should be much slower than what we were first thinking about - hence my comment about Andy's TC running a tin can last night which I felt was close to the sweet spot in terms of the speeds I personally felt we were aiming for.

More food for thought...