Saturday, December 10, 2011

FGX saga continues

What can i say? Me and my FGX are snake bit. Beefed up the front end, built a link set up too. Went back to the beefier meatier carbon fiber reinforced arms for the race today. Practice....good. I love this car I do. It makes me look like I can drive it really does. Planted in and out of corners, everything. Q1, tap inside wall, break king pin......on 2nd lap. EEEEEYYYAAARRRRGGGGHHH!. Here we go again. Drill out the whateveryou call its in the arms (I'm sleepy)and steering block to 1/8" and put in CRC 1/12 scale kingpins (thanks Robert!). More practice. Good stuff. Tad slow, so I added 2 teeth to pinion and went for some more practice. Still good. Took away the toe out, good. Even better. Nice, can put the car anywhere I want on the track. Racer Robert takes it for some laps. He likes. Get ready for a Q2 beat down!!...... Well folks, I can say I made it more than 2 laps, but I tapped the inside board going in to a turn at an awkward angle. Wasn't hard, just awkward. Right front grabbed and twisted. Pulled it off track, saw body was off centered and hung up. Adjusted body, wiggled the steering and good to go. Back on track, front end is hopping, and I'm veering to the right a lot. Adjust trim. But something is amiss at this Circle K. Pulled off track again and back to the pits. Cant see anything. OK maybe this missing spacer on the left front is causing it. Then I see it. Upper deck snapped behind camber plate. Aye carrumba. Looks like I picked the wrong week to stop sniffing glue. Duct Tape ain't fixing this one. Back to the Mclaren. Old faithful. Even has the 21.5 and GTB in it again. Practice. Mclaren is so nice. Playing around with Joey and Zach's F1's on the track, loving life, F1 God, all that rich creamy goodness of RCdom. And it happens again. Lost a bit of steering, not alot, just a push. The Mclaren can take hits that the FGX cant fathom. The Kimbrough servo saver I had just bought, could not. Broke that sucker like..... well like a stock FGX front arm. Heavy sigh, dramatic pause. Servo saver out of FGX into Mclaren its go time. Right? Please? Just once? Well Q3 was good, we had one marshal, that pissed me and Alex off a bit, he was having an issue and needed one. Didn't have one in that zip code. So I started thinking about "what if I need a marshal?". Bothered me a bit, because I need them from time to time. Heard a noise, innocent noise, maybe it was Alex hitting a board, I don't know. What I do know is that I looked away from my car at a time when I really didn't need to. Wham. Straight into the wall. No awkward angle this time. 90*, full speed, plastic meet wood. All it really did was turn my switch off. And, as luck would have it, 3 feet from our one dedicated marshal. Sweet, power on, back on track, funny noise. Motor had moved, sudden stops do that I'm told. I'm done. 16 heats today, lots of toys for the Tots at Children's Hospital. And that is a really really good thing. But its getting late, I've got to work early in the morning, and I know when I'm beat. No need for a main for me. Wish I could have stayed, but it was going to be another 2 hour wait til my race was up again, and I didn't have it in me. Had some rat killing to do at the house. Rats are dead, I'm beat. Night night.

Roberts new paint.