Frank Root posted his TLR 22T 2.0 setup from the Stock Nationals that he won, and I’ve been testing out some changes to my truck. In particular, I’m digging the front green spring and 28mm F/R ride height.
I got rid of the brass rear pivot that has been a staple of the 22 series for so long, and with the lighter slipper I’m down to 913 grams (from 970 grams). I have a lightweight battery in the works and will mount a new body (current one has been bedliner’d), so should be able to get down to about 850 grams.
Even just dropping 55 grams has resulted in a truck that accelerates better, and jumps farther. I’m drinking the Kool-aid, and am loving the lighter car. The car is driving pretty well, but more changes are on the horizon.
I recently purchased some Garodisc slipper pads from RCshox as an upgrade for my TLR 22T 2.0. I’m generally unhappy with the performance of the stock slipper, so I decided to try these out.
Garodisc slipper pads are a direct replacement for the stock TLR pads. The stock TLR pads tend to glaze fairly quickly and require you to really crank down the slipper spring. Garodisc pads are made out of a composite fiberglass material called Garolite, and supposedly don’t glaze or really wear very much.
I tested it out for an afternoon and noticed that the pads engage more smoothly than the stock pads with less of an on/off feel. They are definitely less grabby and will smoothly apply the power which makes the car easier to drive. After several battery packs, I noticed no wear whatsoever, although there is a little bit of dust that will build up, so they are doing some wear. Since they are less grabby, I had to tighten down the slipper nut a little more than normal, but nothing that would cause worry.
Overall I’m pretty happy with the pads and have a set ordered for the Associated slipper, the TLR, and the Avid Triad. If you use a slipper on your car, these pads are highly recommended. About the only thing I can say bad about them is that they don’t supply quite as much friction as stock pads, but the smoothness in power delivery make them worth it.
I’ve been playing around with lightening up my slipper, both on the 22T 2.0 and B5M.
On the TLR, I had an old Avid Triad slipper lying around that I installed. It doesn’t fit quite right, you should use your old spring, nut, and spring adapter, but it dropped 5 grams off of the drivetrain which is huge! It also places the weight closer to the center of rotation. Much like an ice skater doing spins, the closer you bring the weight in to the center, the faster it spins. Moving the weight outside slows down the rotation.
The truck is faster, not tons, but I can definitely tell. I was able to drop another 0.3-0.4 seconds off my laptime with some additional tuning.
Stock slipper with garodisc pads:
Avid Triad slipper:
On the B5M, I jumped in with two feet and installed an Exotek slipper eliminator. I’m not sure on the weight savings yet, but I would guess somewhere around 8-10 grams. You can get rid of the spring and I went to an aluminum nut (instead of stock steel), so that should add up. The buggy spins up MUCH faster than before, I’d say acceleration increased something like 20%. It’s quite a change. You also get more precise throttle application with the eliminator. It makes it harder to drive, because it’s less forgiving, but if you have the skills it should help overall. Hopefully my spur and pinion gears don’t get chewed up too bad, otherwise there isn’t really a downside.
Friday, May 13, 2016
The Exotek is really just a nice piece of art and is amazing when you look at it up close.
Yesterday I spent some time on the track dialing in the 22T 2.0. The front foams aren’t quite broken in yet, so I swapped front and rears and loosened my diff a smidge and it helped mid-corner steering. That plus some new info regarding the track from watching some fast guys helped drop another second from my lap times. I still need to find another second somewhere to be competitive with the 13.5 truck guys, but I’m starting to get there.
I’ve also been playing with gearing and timing and find that with the short stack motors, you pretty much have to always run with a lot of timing and make sure you get into that upper RPM range. They produce so much power there (and only there), that timing-wise it doesn’t make sense to run anything lower. If your layout precludes you from running high RPMs, it’s probably better to run a torquier motor than try to run a short stack.
I’m at max timing on my Team Powers Actinium 13.5t and can probably add one more tooth to the pinion. My motor has been running in the low 105-115 degree range, so I definitely can gear up.
I’m going to mess with adding a little thicker shock fluid and probably try some higher spring rates. Truck is a little soft right now.
I had a chance to run the new Exotek chassis on my TLR 22T 2.0 for a few hours today. Got in 4 packs, and tried a few different things with it. Here are my first thoughts.
Weight
The Exotek chassis weighs a few grams more than the stock chassis, but is quite a bit more than the lightweight chassis. With lighter electronics, my car is actually 2 grams lighter than before and I made pretty much no setup changes to the car after swapping out the chassis. Oddly, the truck feels much heavier in my hands, even though it weighs about the same.
Weight distribution
The chassis makes the car feel very flat and low. The chassis itself is heavier than a stock chassis, but all of the weight is way down low and spread out. With a wider chassis to accommodate a transverse battery, the car feels a bit wider as well, which is a little hard to explain. A nice benefit of the chassis was that I was able to move my heavy ESC from above the battery in my old inline configuration onto the chassis in front of the battery. This gets the center of gravity even lower.
Jumping
The car also jumps much flatter, amazingly so, with less forward/aft pitch. I used to have a bit of a nose diving problem with an inline battery and the lightweight chassis, but this is pretty much cured.
Battery placement
With the transverse battery, you have about 15mm worth of fore/back battery placement and I tried the battery all the way front and all the way back. All the way back makes the car drive more like the inline option, and I ended up with that as my preference.
Forward battery placement places a lot of weight towards the middle of the car which helped in mid-high speed corners, but I had a harder time getting the car to rotate and it had very little fore/aft pitch on braking and acceleration. It felt a bit weird with a centralized mass bias in the middle of the car. On a more open track, this might work a bit better, but the local track is fairly tight with a lot of switchbacks, so I preferred the traditional battery back layout. I use about 10% drag brake, and with the rear battery it allowed me to plant the front end a little better on corner entry and move the rear around a bit.
It seems counter-intuitive that a rear battery would allow the car to rotate better and plant the front end, but it is basically allow more weight transfer under acceleration and braking. A forward battery keeps the chassis flatter with less weight transfer.
Stiffness
The chassis is very stiff and has little to no flex. I went from the lightweight chassis which had a fair amount of flex to the Exotek, and the Exotek seems to have no flex whatsoever. I don’t have an issue with grip, so the stiff chassis worked fine on a high grip surface.
Traction
Overall traction seems a little bit higher than before, and the car definitely does not roll as much as before. I may need to go up in springs or oil, there is still some minor tuning to be done.
Crashing
One interesting side effect of the low weight distribution is that the truck lands on its feet a lot more than before. Definitely an unexpected advantage to the chassis.
Bling factor
The black anodized and milled chassis with the carbon fiber bits make the car look very trick. Bling factor is super-high with this product!
Overall, I still need to play with the car some more and get a better feel for the truck. The general conclusion is the car drives lower and flatter than before, but at the expense of a bit of weight and cost.
I’ve been playing around with different chassis for my TLR 22T 2.0. The chassis that comes in the box is basically a solid piece of aluminum and weighs in at 133g.
A little known fact though, is that if you buy a replacement 22T 2.0 chassis, it’s actually a milled out lightweight piece, even though it has the same part number. Kind of a running change and a nice little bonus. It weighs in at 101g.
So for not a lot of money, you can get a pretty nice weight savings for those of you who race stock.
Wednesday, May 4, 2016
All wired up and ready to hit the track tomorrow. The new chassis is 28 grams heavier than my old lightweight one, but I also put in a new, lighter ESC, so the truck is overall 2 grams lighter than before.
A Hobbywing Xerun XR10 Justock ESC replaces my old Hobbywing V2.1 ESC.
It doesn’t look like TLR will be releasing 3.0 versions of their trucks anytime soon, so I decided to get a couple of goodies for my 22T 2.0 to update it a bit and breathe some new life into the truck.
First on the list is an Exotek chassis. I’ve had my eye on this product for a while and found a good deal on eBay, so decided to pull the trigger. The main benefit of the chassis is it allows for a transverse mounted battery. It’s a little heavier than the stock chassis, but the weight is down low and spread out. The carbon fiber and anodized aluminum is pretty trick looking.
Here’s a quick peek at the chassis on my scale (grams):
I have the chassis installed, just need to put in some electronics and I should have it running in a day or two. Look for a review soon.
