The long road to RWD development and a bit of CS on the side.
At the moment, I feel I can say that I've tried a lot in the RC drift scene. At times you lose motivation and search for new directions. RWD has been one. Running on different surfaces is always fun too.
Has it come full circle? The plastic Drift package with a few mods proves the point that you can still have cheap fun. I remember my first RWD chassis was gyro less and was a good starting point. But it soon evolved in the search for THE setting. Trying all sorts of combos before embracing the electronic steering rack. aka Gyro.
I still have 2 Drift package chassis. There is simply soo much development in these things they can't be ignored in the drift scene.
The RWD Drift Master version of the drift package has been a benchmark for me. Capable but still not absolutely perfect. But it too has been a development chassis and still is.
I've been through about 10x 4wd chassis, from super high Counter Steer Ratios, Low counter Fast chassis, Slow Chassis, Flickable, Stable, whatever. Each has had it's own style while still evolving through the available parts catalog.
But what happens when the parts catalog doesn't have what you want.
You have to build. these days we have the means to do most things we want. 3d printers and 5-axis machine tools. but as hobbyists, we can rarely afford the cost of setup for small production. So I though a lot about what might be possible with evolution and not outright replacement. As I have a heavy investment in Yokomo machines, I couldn't really justify replacing them all.
So evolution is the key. Rear-drive Evolution Weight-shift.
I am so far very very pleased with result of the DRB-REW prototype. I had so much fun driving it, I forget that I'm supposed to be testing stuff.
Small companies, like Guild n One, TN Racing, Overdose, RC-926 and others inspire and all play their role in creating something special.
So while I am only making the chassis plates, every resulting chassis will be very bespoke as hobbyists like ourselves use their current pride and joy chassis and evolve it into something else.
While the original machine is hardly recognizable to a stranger, we still can take pride in opening that original box and knowing that we have evolved the chassis into something bespoke.
The builder of this black machine was the one who got me thinking more about chassis evolution. It was a MUST HAVE purchase that encapsulated so many of the ideas that I already wanted to evolve into my own DRBs.
To say I was inspired is an understatement. it totally changed the way I thought about tuning. So I've taken this concept and evolved again with many more modern influences while keeping true to Yokomo's image.
So the next time you see this black Ninja... it will have evolved again into my REW prototype config.
Is it still Yokomo? Well 30% maybe.
