De-Anodising and polishing on the cheap.

Do you want bling? you must have patience. Here's a tutorial on how to de-anodise and polish.

In the top picture my diff was blue... So to match I must de-anodise and polish.

de-anodise is easy. Oven Cleaner is your friend

DO THIS OUTSIDE. FUMES ARE DANGEROUS>

Anodizing involves a dye that is etch bonded onto the alloy  , The chemicals help to disolve the dye. But they are aggressive so can also attack the metal.

run under water will remove most of the chemicals for status  check.

attempt 1... not quite there. so re-do the process.

work quickly and re-clean in layers. not quite.

eventually, you get a little oxidization. This is not desirable but with this cheapo method, somewhat unavoidable. 

So there you go... 5 minutes... More like ten minutes when doing it in layers.

So that's the end of step one. Remember to wash thouroghly and clean.

Part 2. Polishing.

Requires a dremel, buff pads and some polish. I use this Auto Glym one

Polishing... this is where an hour can disappear quickly.  The key is to use lot's of polish and let the polish work. The buffing pads are not for pushing hard against anything. they are just there to glide over the top and push the polish around. 

I'm starting out like this,

You can see how wet the serface is. If the metal piece is getting hot. you have. too much rpm, not enough polish or too much pressure. 

After a few applications, you get a shine coming through. I have not pressed hard at all. 

Spread it around and keep going 

The longer you work it, (WITH POLISH) you get better results. Never use the pads on the dry part, they will simply get hot and wear out.  

So i think thats a bit of an improvement. 

now how far do you go and does it really need to be perfect... The item on the right... it's not super clean near the centre. 

But the whole piece is covered by the bearing... do it if you want... But these two pieces took about 30-40 minutes. time to rebuild the diff.

Have "FUN" ? Hmmm

RE-Xtreme RC Drift Bible - Wheel Speed.

Wheel Speed. Is this what drift performance is all about? The grip threshold.


Real machines are getting more grip... Isn't drift about slide?

Is the above image RWD or Counter-steer? It doesn't really matter. the fact is, the car is doing what resembles RWD burnout and thats what we want isnt it? Well not really.

RE-Xtreme RC Drift Bible - Drift Lines

Let's look at the Good and Bad and why now in Formula D at least, the bad somehow has become acceptable.

Whether in-clip or out clip. This is the perfect position. 

the fronts of the cars and rears of the cars are in line as they travel around a corner. This is Line Emulation.

So whats wrong with this? Everyone does it in Formula D. Well these days there is soo much smoke, If you sit behind the following driver can't see.

Smoke is killing top level drifting. 2015 Texas and Irwindale is a good example. we saw so many cars trying to do it right, then get it so wrong when they can't see trapped in the smoke line.

In fact the winner was so far off line, but somehow it as accepted.

 So this is not emulating the line. the driver up front has tried super hard to get the rear of the car onto the wall. or out clip. The following car has an easy run and will NEVER crash on the out clip. This is why this position is bad. No matter what the front car does, the following car can't make a mistake.

It's kind of a rule that should "go for the door and no more". but as you can see here. You'd be right in the rear wheel smoke zone for an 800hp car.

So what do you do... in RC. there is no smoke. So please go for the door and no more.

Because in a train... look what happens when you dont.

Yellow car pulls up...

Following white car will find a big gap...

And now the yellow car is G.O.N.E gone. Totally out of position and will most likely be forced wide. and the white car is totally ready to slot into the right spot.

I don't know what the answer is in Real Drift. But I hate watching cars off line and winning competitions.

In RC. There is No Excuse. Get it right.

RE-Xtreme Drift Bible - Steering Ackerman

With rear drive becoming more popular, You 100% need to know about steering ackerman. So lets take a look at least at what it is and how you can understand it a little better.

With CS cars usually requiring the front wheels to slip a little, the lead wheel did a lot of work and the trailing wheel might be used "almost" as a brake of sorts. Helping to drag the inner line and cause the rear to be pushed outward.

As the RC hobby has evolved, with more angle and radical styles, we are actually moving away from this design to more parallel setups.   

Yokomo sell these knuckles to create MORE ackerman. Have you wondered why there were more than one hole on the knuckle?  Because it's the position of the steering link to the knuckle that controls adjustment of Ackerman angle.

The above refers to MORE Toe Out, but the Toe Setting only occurs during steering lock. And that's where toe and Ackerman must be used together. They are in linked in concept.

In it's simplest form, Ackerman is measured by drawing a line from the from the KINGPIN through the Steering KNUCKLE ball joint and then to the rear axle. Depending on knuckle design, a difference in toe naturally occurs through the range of movement. One wheel will typically get more angle.

Recently there are TRUE and near to TRUE ackerman designs that move back to PARALLEL wheel movement.

Modern Rear Wheel Drive designs are moving towards to this style because the Gyro can control the instability caused by such designs.

So, with the wheels pointing straight there is no difference in toe setting. Ackerman has no effect in a straight line.

So which do I chose.

So when you are DRIFTING, what angle do the front wheels need to be at?

As stated above, CS Car Tune was leading towards toe out on full lock for agility or Toe in for stability, but as rear wheel drive has a little help with steering (by means of a gyro), stability has automatically increased, so we can create a more agile machine and one that is somewhat faster is corner speed, by eliminating toe in or out for stability from front wheel slip / braking.

The increased angles also allowed in modern cars also mean that we can have built in agilty and control through more steering input. So in theory, we should be moving to a more Zero setting or one that results in a zero toe setting at full lock, shouldn't we?  

Now... Zero means that the car's wheels will be exactly parallel when drifting. This fine for those big entries.
But for tight corners. We all know that one wheel has to be on slightly different angle to turn. 

Look at the angle of the wheel on the inner line...

I'll just add more ackerman. in CS cars this can help to TURN the car by braking the inside while and kind of inducing a constant load that tries to spin the car. the inner wheel is braking the car slightly. With 4WD, power simply overcomes the loss in speed.

This is usually what happens when a CS chassis is first converted to rear wheel drive only without changing the steering.

In RWD, without any power to overcome the front wheel braking, the car will just spin.

Now this is a very tight corner but it illustrates the point of less ackerman.

Basically toe in during cornering. Depending on the Speed of the circuit a very slight amount of ackerman can increase corner speed.

But also know this. Transition speeds will also increase so prepare for that. As you speed up the front of your chassis ... what happens at the back is equally effected, so be prepared for that too.

Because with both the wheels pointing absolutely parallel, control is much harder like running on a knife edge.

 So in the last few years as the scene has progressed from C-Hub...

 through lower block...

 to Yokomo "Type C" style setups.

And now they give us a crazy amount of adjustment... Why?!?!??!?!?!?!

With these knuckles you can create TRUE, ZERO, MORE or LESS all in the one item.

Adjustable castor, camber, kpi, steering wiper vs steering rack , narrow scrub and wider track and more are changing the way that the Drift scene is heading.  In a way the real drift scene is getting closer.

So it's much more technical allowing for much more flexibility. But that for most means very very complicated.    

 So ... what do we recommend.

I don't dare broach that topic because it depends on the 999999 thousand variations out there.

For my own Rear Wheel Drive. I'm heading towards a near true but slightly less Ackerman setting.
But that requires a sizable investment in steering parts.

I hope everyone can understand at least what ackerman is in the drift world as opposed to the "race scene" where the car body is virtually in a straight line and opposite to this.

RE-Xtreme Drift Bible - Steering Scrub Radius

 
Let's have a look at the newer trends in upgrades... Why do we need narrow scrub radius steering knuckles?

Focus on the steering here... the rest of the chassis doesn't change. These items are for Full Counter 4WD Drift and/or RWD. The principle is the same.

Doesn't look to different to a stock SSG DRB actually, but what we are doing is aiming to reduce geometry changes and chassis movement through the steering range.

The old parts I'm replacing here are Overdose KPI knuckles. not a bad item, but the distance between the pivot points (ball end) and the shaft thread is about 16mm

Yokomo Option Knuckle 20mm lower & 20mm Upper

Overdose KPI 8 16mm lower, 19mm Upper


NEW Yokomo Narrow Scrub KPI 7degree 10mm Lower 14mm upper. (top picture)
NEW Yokomo Narrow Scrub KPI 0degree 10mm Lower 10mm upper.

Old style requires a pivot point closer to the chassis.
Note the lower arm extension.
Upper Pillow Ball is clearly visible.

For the same track width the Wheel offset is 5mm wider also.

So Pivot point to Axle is 19mm + offset 9mm. 


Note: These MST rims have been adjusted +9mm Offset with the rim face barely visible.
 

The narrow scrub items place the pivot point  further away from the chassis.
Note the larger lower extension arm.
Upper arm is covered by the wheel.

The CVD dogbone changes from 45.5 to 51mm

The wheel offset changes to 5mm and the face is easily visble.

Pivot point to Axle is 10mm + Offset 5 mm

Note: These MST rims have been adjusted +5mm Offset with the rim face clearly visible.

Compare the differences.

Top Chassis is Wide Scrub with the wheel illustrated by red lines on the bottom. 
Lower Chassis is narrow Scrub with the wheel illustrated by red lines above.

Narrow scrub has a reduced distance for and aft when the wheel turns. This is great for body clearance.
The Lift from castor also is reduced with this setting

And basically we gain more response with a faster action. The wheel doesn't move as far.

You can also see this in this picture.

So is it worth the extra money for a setup like this.

In RC, every mm is valuable. I have upgraded many parts on this DRB. When they all work together, the results are noticeable.

But having said that... I have 4 DRBs.
I still uses C-Hub with Overdose 8-8knucles on two and they perform very well.
Sure it may not be as sharp in response, but depending on the surface, sometimes twitchy and stable are contradictory for good performance.

Narrow Scrub radius may allow you to cut less from your wheel arches on the body and gain in style with aggressive castor and other settings. 

If you have already spent $2000 on your machine, why not another $100

For now the Yokomo DRB with Overdose and other tuned accessories is complete.