These little things can be awesome
Oct 10th, 2006
 

The scale looks and the simplicity of the cars make them wonderful to race and to "tune".
An incredible amount of hop ups has emerged for these cars. As usual, some of them are just for looks and may in fact deteriorate the performance of the car.
Some of them can allow substantial gains, such as rims and foam tires

I got them almost one year ago, the F1 for my son and the Touring for me because I like the realism of the cars.

Then I tried to run them and they were impossible to drive. The NSX was like a mad chicken doing spins left and right. And to the shelf they went.

Then recently I saw a few of them running and at least one of them was a decent car. By decent I mean that it could track straight (LOL).

The F1 draw my attention first because it is much more stable and can attain decent speeds under control. So, some tinkering started around the rear suspension first, then the tires and last but not the least, the motor.

On the first race I finished 3rd with the same number of laps as the 2nd, but then the ball started rolling and I got a pretty fast F1. Read below what the changes were and how the thing performs now.

With the NSX I decided to run in stock class and on the first outing the thing was so bad that I decided to take matters in my own hands and do what I know - Tuning all the way. The thing had to be perfect.

Searching the Internet for info was the first step. How do other guys tune their cars, what tricks they use, what works and what doesn't etc etc.
The second phase was the hop ups. Which ones to have, do they add performance, or on the contrary do they turn the car into a useless handling brick.

My decision was to go with only 3 hop ups - H bars from Kyosho (graphite), front hubs with -1º camber and BB diff from Kyosho.

The cool factor came with the incredibly beautiful wheels that you see on the pictures that are made by Z-Speed in Germany and sold through Mini Z Shop.

Tuning

There are several rules that one should apply in order to maintain mental sanity with these cars:

1. Put the ball bearing kit

2. Don't go too far (like turning the car into a display of useless aluminum)
   As an example I'll tell you about the "supposed" heat dissipation clamp for the motor... If you need to put the plastic spacer to hold the motor, the only thing in contact with the metal case is a piece of plastic. Kind of defeats the principle, doesn't it?

3. Don't expect too much

4. Don't spend too much

5. Don't drive like if you have winter gloves on ;)

The McLaren F1

Stage 1

I intended to run the stock motor on this beauty, but after seeing the guys go by me with the XSpeed, I thought that enough was enough and an Xspeed was a absolute necessity.

But in spite of being a much stronger motor than the stock one, compared with the beasts I 'm used to race, this thingy is just a pale shadow of what a motor can do. No ball bearings, incredible hard brushes, and somewhat poor construction make it a poor motor for such a car.

First of all, I lubed the bushings and applied some Tribotech to the comm, and I could hear the motor (connected to my Cobra Varidrive) at 4V go up in rpm in a very distinct way. Not much more one can do with it, besides running in the brushes (which I did) and lube the motor.

After that the car was accelerating much faster. So much faster that I needed to go up in pinion (to a 7T or 8T). I decided to go with 8T and now the car was really going much faster. Rubber 30 tires in the back and the original in the front and I could lap really well, in spite of a sluggish steering.

Next, the geometry. The car has toe out and 0º camber in the front, and in the rear there's not much you can do...

After ripping off the left front axle from the hub a couple of times (the plastic cracked) I decided to replace the plastic hubs with the ones made by Cyclone in aluminum and with -1º camber. The car felt much better but the toe out was causing the car to wander around instead of going straight like an arrow.

Cyclone also makes a steering bar with 1º toe in in aluminum, so there it went. Wow! the thing tracks like an arrow now, and just the clicking noise of metal against metal disturbs me a little.
Beware of the hubs. They have a lot of slop that you can cure inserting a strip of paper (1 mm wide) along the axle of the hub. The slop goes away.

The car turns like on rails and the steering is the best thing after sliced bread. Honestly.

These changes, coupled with a set of rear foam tires from GPM made this car an absolute beast on the track. Glued to the ground and with an amount of speed capable of turning some faces into masks of pain . But.... I was beaten...

Stage 2

Tires are OK, handling is OK, motor can use a little more fiddling. Browsing the WEB revealed the other must have if you don't run stock. A motor case with Ball bearings (yippee!!!).

I got one of those, and surprise surprise, the shaft wouldn't fit inside the bearings (damn). Dremel,  polishing compound and a lot of patience solved the issue. I took away just enough from the shaft to be able to insert the armature in the can with the original Xspeed magnets.

Then a set of BEAUTIFUL Z-Speed wheels with foams and I went to the track.
I was not surprised with the speed until I realized that those batteries had 15 minutes of run time on them. A set of freshly charged batteries showed me what happened with the change. The car is STUPIDLY FAST!!! It accelerates so fast with a 8T pinion that even with foams you have to take care. The thing is the DEVIL on wheels.

Let's wait for the next race, but I never saw a Mini Z go that fast. And not only me. Two guys staring at the car were frozen when I showed what the car could do in top speed and handling - A beauty...

The Mini Z Racer

Stage 1

The car is totally inadequate for racing in stock form. But I'm not talking about loading the car with hop ups to turn it into one decent racing machine. A few little tricks will turn it into a decent performer. Let's go...

First of all I noticed a lot of body roll on the car with the original H bar in plastic. Not only because the plastic is too soft, but because the car is too high. The car rear chatters like a crazy horse.

I got a set of graphite H bars from Kyosho and started to test. I found out that the softest was giving me better results But the car still jumped on the curves. Sometimes, one of those little jumps resulted in loss of grip and a spin.

The "travel" was too much and I decided to lower the chassis. How did you make that, you may ask...
Ok, get the original H bar, cut one of the sides with the holes and put it in between the motor pod and you new H bar. Like that you put the rear 1 mm and something lower. But then the front points upwards... hum
Insert some shims below the front hubs to make the chassis level or slightly inclined to the front.

Wow, much better. The rear is planted and the tendency to spin is almost gone. But now the front chatters in the curves. What I call micro jumps.

The springs in the front are now a little more compressed and they became harder, so the solution is to change to a softer spring pair. The reds came to the rescue. Perfect!!!

However I still had some loss of front grip when pushing in the middle of the curve. The -1º camber hubs cured it completely and the car is glued.

Then tires testing came.... I decided to "make" my own foam tires. I went for a set of old 1/10 200 tires (42 shore) and cut a few strips from the wheels and I glued them to the normal Mini Z wheels. Then a few touches on my tire lathe and they looked very good.

But it was not only good looks. You'll see what I mean

The motor could not profit from BB like I did with the Xspeed (because it's stock and I can't even open it), so I had to stick with the lubrication and running it in for a few minutes at 4V with a few drops of Tribotech (through those little holes in the motor can).

I've heard the most AMAZING things on how to tune your stock motor. The best of them all is to connect it to a 12V power source!!! Needless to say that you'll fry your motor right away, and the comm will be so badly burned that it's impossible to have a decent motor after that.

Running the motor immersed in water or beer (yep) may help in running in the bushings and the brushes. However, I think that beer is intended for enhancing you bladder behavior and I wont try that.

I decided to put a 8T pinion on the stock, because in spite of loosing acceleration, I can now drive in a range of RPM where I don't need to go from the bottom of the power band to max RPM. The car is glued to the ground, remember? So I never take the finger from the throttle and the car makes amazingly fast laps.

These modifications were so effective that I won the first race with the same number of laps of the first modified car !!!!. It was just amazing. I never grip rolled, I never lost control of the beast  and I just kept doing laps after laps until the final result. The guy behind me lost 3 laps in the meantime.
Of course everybody now thinks I cheat with the motors, but that comes with the territory

Stage 2

The immediate result of these experimental foam tires was the need to find a cool set of wheels for the NSX. I GOT THEM, again from Z-Speed with foam tires already installed and I have to say that the car is now the best stock I've ever seen.

So much that the mod guys can't really keep up with me. They all say it's this and that, but when the body comes off and they see no shocks and no gimmicks then the motor is the culprit.

It's not only that (in fact the motor is very good) but is mainly a thing that they overlook completely - SOFT DRIVING.

No one wins a race with a bad car, but no one wins a race with a perfect car and bad hands.

Invest on perfecting your driving skills because it pays off more than any hop up you can get.

The next stage is a home made light kit  that is always on in the front, but only lights the rear when you decelerate to 0. Kind of like applying brakes (that these Racers don't have). Stay tuned because that's what I'll do very very soon and I'll put here the way to do it.

Stage 3

The light kit is done. The rear lights switch on every time the throttle comes to neutral. Like if you applied brakes. Another pair of rear leds will be added that will be always on like on a real car.

It was very simple to do, but installing 5mm leds in the front was a nightmare. I had to cut the light wells with a Dremel in order to install them in a way that they don't interfere with the wheels.

The rear has 3mm red leds and everything is connected to the power wires that come from the battery. One on the black and the other on the wire coming out of the switch.

A plug /in fact a pair of male /female plugs from a Futaba set are used to connect the system (installed on the body) to the chassis.

This way I can run it without the lights whenever I want.

Another body just arrived from HK. The new NSX 2002. It's beautiful but it has some differences when compared to the Castrol version.

This body sits lower on the chassis in the rear and in the front. The front adapter is different too and it's designed so that the chassis is more "inside" of the body. I like it a lot, especially with the Z-Speed wheels.

Almost to nice to race with it. I'm preparing to get the new Corvette, Supra and Skyline, not because I want to race them but because I like the scale looks of these bodies. I love 1/43 scale and this is sort of a substitute but with remote control.

In a word - Lovely!!

Specs