After a decade I was able to once again attend the awesome Motorama 2024 event in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. This is a special event as it draws thousands of spectators to the multitude of events from Offroad RC to Dirt Oval RC as well as arena cross for dirt bikes and quads. There is also a Car show and battles bots, go karts and more all under one roof. As for the R/C portion it sold out the 300+ entries in mere minutes as the demand for participating is high. I ran my two Kyosho Electric vehicles the MP10e TKI2 buggy and the MP10Te Truggy.
Tire wise during practice I started with a set of SS Gridiron's but the track quickly started to get an ok line around it and I switched to some bar tires for the remainder of the event. I went with 1 set of SSLW Scirbbles in truggy which I ran in all 4 qualifiers and all 3 mains. And in buggy I went with the new AKA Lux tires in SSLW during the first 3 qualifiers and then switched to Soft for the final qualifier and the 3 A mains. So it was a nice weekend of needing very few tires thanks to the long wearing characteristics of these two patterns.
Once qualifying got underway I had good pace but in the early qualifiers was just making a couple too many mistakes. In truck I had chances for TQ runs but one mistake would knock me out of the chance. I would finish with two 2's and two 3's which would qualify me 3rd overall. For truggy the primary changes I did throughout the weekend was I kept going up in swaybars. I ended at the highest I've ever ran on the truggy and overall my truck felt excellent. I was very pleased with it's performance and happy that minimal changes needed to be done.
For buggy the Lux tires were super fast. I pretty consistently had the hot lap but in Q1 and Q2 I made too many mistakes mainly on landing the triple left to right where you had a small pocket to land in. It was a challenge but for Q3 and Q4 I found my line a bit better and even though I would make one 3 second mistake in both of those final qualifiers I still had the fastest pace and would TQ both the final rounds to take the overall TQ for the event in Expert Ebuggy! For ebuggy, my main changes were going incrementally higher in the diff oils and also up a touch in sway bars and going to a bit thicker feeling front shock piston/oil set-up starting in Q3 which all made my buggy easier to drive and I could drive it harder. My fastest section was the last corner before the front after the banked straight where I could almost hold it wide open and the car just handled it. Was so much fun!
Sunday brought triple 5 minute A-mains and they were all bunched together at the end of the event. So there wasn't really any time to make changes between mains so you really needed to be ready to rock out of the gate. A1 started with Truggy and it was a great race with Maifield, Heckert and I pulling a gap. We were all the same speed basically so it was just a matter of who stayed the cleanest. Each of them made a mistake and I was able to capitalize on both and pass each during their mistake and then hold on to take the win in A1. In Ebuggy my Soft Lux tires were on point and I just ran a clean race holding off Maifield keeping him a second or less behind the whole run and taking the victory!
A2 was next and in truggy unfortunately Spencer tagged the pipe about 3 laps in and I tagged him and got the worst of it falling to 5th. I worked back to 3rd but was too far back to battle the top 2 in this one. In ebuggy, it was a much messier race. I would make a mistake a few laps in and fell to 2nd. The next lap Maifield made a mistake and I got the lead back. I was a bit sloppy and tight as the mistakes got my nerves up a bit, but I was able to hold them off for the rest of the race and finish out clean to take the A2 victory and the overall win!
Etruggy A3 was up and I was hoping to battle it out more in this one. On lap 5 Heckert made a mistake after the triple and I got by into 2nd and set my sights on Maifield. I was hoping for a nice battle for the overall victory. But I got sloppy coming onto the front section and gave up the position back to Heckert in turn 1. Later on lap 6 though I got side by side with him over the front section and forced an error and he got sideways after and I monster trucked him and got back into 2nd. This gave Maifield a couple second cushion and I should have just drove conservative to secure a 2nd overall at this point. But I was pushing hard an on lap 7 flat slapped the step on step off in the center back and the truck got upset and suddenly I was having to battle with Setser. It got messy on the top right corner and into the bank and I got into the pipe and ended up giving up the positions and falling back to 3rd which is where I would finish and with the ROAR tiebreaker which I believe is combined laps and times of the two counting mains I lost the tiebreaker with a win and a 3rd to two seconds by Heckert so I would finish out in 3rd overall.
Finally we had A3 of ebuggy. Usually I wouldn't be allowed to run this main but I wanted to capture some footage of the race and I asked my competitors if they were ok with it and fortunately they said yes! So hopefully you enjoy the footage as I follow one of the world's best drivers around the track for a few laps! Anyways I was able to hold the lead for a lap and a half but I got sloppy on the right to left triple in the back and was out of line and not wanting to mess up anyones race I tucked back in behind Maifield. I followed him for a number of laps before crashing in the breaking bumps in turn 1 after the line falling back to 3rd and I followed Heckert for a few laps and could have come in 3rd but I didn't need the points and not wanting to mess up anyone else's points battles I pulled off in the last corner and let them finish out but thank you to those who allowed me to capture this footage and I hope you enjoy!
Set-up Notes:
Ebuggy: I have been playing with the weight balance a bit on Ebuggy. I have a guy who likes to test things trying things out and reporting to me and I have given it a try and seem to be liking it right now. Basically I have the left 6400 shorty battery fully back. But I have the right 6400 battery fully forward. Then I have one of those flat 25g shorty sized chassis weights that I have placed fully back under the right battery (but staggered towards the back whereas the battery I have staggered forward). Then I have two used brake disks (16g) on the side guard in the front right corner under the battery tray. And finally a 15g weight in the receiver box. This set-up with the Tekin 1900 motor makes the rear end identical weight right and left. The front right is still 20g lighter than front left but it's all much closer and what I am noticing is more consistency exiting corners both to the right and left.
Truggy Notes: The only thing I probably wish I did with truggy is I should have gone up a bit on diffs. 20-20-15 would have probably been a better set-up for this track.
