The Future is Here ;)

With the arrival of the MR-03, the development of this platform has rapidly changed the world of Mini-Z. These machines are now more precise, easier to drive, handle more power and are overall better cars.

The latest incarnation of my personal set-up led to the development of a lighter tri-shock suspension with proper suspension angles. The tri shock allows for easier tweak adjustments (so the car turns equally left to right) and provides better acceleration. Note that our tri-shock set-up uses ONLY the side shocks and a center shock. When using this suspension with disk dampers, the car becomes over dampened, and the advantages of having independent side to side and fore and aft suspension are eliminated.

Below we also have the adjustable upper arm mount. This is truly a revolution. It is designe to be used with any suspension type and/or upper arms, but it works best with our king pin set-up because we can incorporate proper caster angles. 0-2 degrees of caster is really inadecuate for onroad cars. The happy point lies somewhere between 3 and 6 degrees, many times up to 8. This is why all larger scale 2WD race cars use this much. YOU WILL NEVER SEE A CAR RUNNING 0 DEGREES, and very little, if any, less than 4. Another advantage is working with your roll centers. I wrote a whole article about this before, but with a front upper arm mount, you can adjust the roll center in my favorite way, by raising the inner pivot of the A-Arms. Lastly, you can adjust your camber angle so your tires wear evenly under all kinds of different track conditions.

The last thing that is amazing is the weight of the cars. I have had to add about 6 grams of balast to the bottom of the chassis to get to a racing weight of 175.8 grams. This is with a FULLY HOPPED-UP Car, WITH A FRONT BUMPER ON IT!!! This was unheard of with the MR-02's. Balasting is a good thing though, it allows you to play around with the weight of the car and locate it in the most effective spots for your car balance to be as close to perfection as is possible.

Hope you enjoy the pictures! CT