Some weeks ago, I decided to prepare a rain car for the 2012 outdoor season.
Racing under rain is quite difficult due to the electronic risks caused by water. So, my criteria was the following ones:
-A low cost car, but with quality parts (plastics, transmission, bearings, differential).
-A totally sealed transmission.
-A easy to prepare chassis.
-A fully adjustable chassis, with turnbuckles, shocks angles, roll center etc.
So, the only one car that corresponds to all these criteria was the Rally Legend chassis. So I ordered the ARR version, which is a Lancia S4 body, with ARR chassis (no electronics), sold with some hop-up parts (top deck, gear differentials, reinforced transmission for high power brushless motors etc).
But I didn’t received the car yet… and on last friday, when I checked the meteo for the race week-end at Schaffhausen, where was held the second round of Swiss Championship, I decided to prepare a RTR car which is already available.
So, I simply retired the RTR electronic, battery and motor, to replace them by my own components and allowed motor for Swiss Championship.
I created some compartments on the chassis to separate the electronic items from the transmission, steering components and battery, and I go to Schaffhausen with a “almost” ready rain car (I had a body to paint, and some other preparation to finish). But the entire chassis and transmission remains the original ones of the RTR car, no change, no modification, no optional parts ! The only thing I changed are the shock springs; because I simply don’t know how are the original ones, so I decided to use springs I already knows. I also prepared an internal chassis cover in Lexan, initially made for the Associated TC3.
Saturday was a sunny day, so my “RTR rain Rally Legend” stay on my 1/1 car 😉 But as the meteo clearly indicated there is rain on sunday morning, I finished to prepare the car the saturday evening at the hotel.
On sunday, I wasn’t able to run the first round of qualifying, because the body wasn’t ready for the start… I didn’t paint the new one, and I decided to adapt a hold Mazda body.
When I saw the cars of the first qualification racing under rain, I had a lot of doubt: “is the Rally Legend able to compete them ?? It’s a RTR basis, and the cars actually on track are impressive !”
For the second qualification round, under rain, I decided to start… First corner was terrible, I had to stop to set the dual-rate on radio 😉 . So, I started slowly, and the car perfectly react to the conditions. After two laps, I got the first position, and continue to drive, faster and faster. At the end of the qualification run, I did the pole-position, and I also set the best lap under rain… with a fully “out of the box” RTR chassis, against high level competion cars !
For comparison, here are the best lap times under rain:
1. Lionel Troyon – Rally Legend RTR– 24’089
2. Cédric Brütsch – Sakura Zero – 24’747
3. Roland Kupper – Schumacher Mi4 – 25’575
4. Simon Alleman – Team Magic E4RS II – 25’984
5. Tom Eicher – Xray T3 – 25’986
6. Simone Leonardi – Awesomatix – 26’430
7. Michel Grosjean – TOP Photon – 26’708
8. Florian Oellig – Xray T3 – 33’424