This years ROAR nationals will take us into the mountainous area of Pennsylvania. The track is actually kind of in a valley in the mountains. The track is mostly made up of white powdery dirt a lot like that of the Nationals in Colorado a couple years back. The only difference is, this track see’s more sunshine and the dirt can go from low traction to super traction in a matter of a few hours of hot sunshine. The track itself stays together and really doesn’t break up all that much. It can get a bit dusty, but with the right moisture, the track condition will make for some great racing. The warmup layout was quite interesting to say the least. There are almost two straightaways on the track. You have a long front straight, followed by a diagonal straight into a banked oval turn. This is LCRC’s trademark in the track layout and they try to retain it from lay out to layout. Other than that, it only had a couple more tricky sections. The 6 pack, or double, double, double was easy, up until the point it was dusty and some of the jump faces started to deteriorate. The other hard section on the track, or more so hard on the car was the 5 foot step down, or drop off. This proved really challenging on the cars suspension and ability to absorb.

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Round 5 of Southern California’s Grass Roots series went off last week, and we attended on Sunday. This race was at one of our favorite tracks, the Palm Desert RC Raceway. The weather was nice, a little hot mid day (97f), but not too bad.

Qualifying went well as I TQ’d the first round by 10 seconds. My second round was a little slower with the worse track condition. The track was too dry and it was getting bumpy and slick, but I still held on for the TQ position. Read the rest of this entry »

One of the most common issues that comes up is The ballooning of Tires when running in  Extreme Speed conditions as well as  holding tires on to Bead Lock wheels . These conditions are the result of using Extreme high capacity Batteries  and Brushless Motor resulting in extreme speeds of your RC vehicle.

Today I’m going to go over with you some techniques / tips to help eliminate both of these conditions.

 First you need to gather up some supplies.  In this case, I’m using the 1159-01 Trencher SC tires and mounting them to our Renegade 2731-03 SC Bead Lock wheels. You’ll also want some Gorilla Tape (Duct Tape) a tube of Permatex (I’m using Ultra Gray in this application), and some Isopropyl Alcohol for cleaning the tires.

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After returning from the National of France Round 2, I went to the Electro Liege GP 2012. The track was completely redone this winter, the amount of work put into it was enormous. With the welcoming atmosphere I decided to run my 1:8 buggy and my 1:10 short course truck. The weather was being capricious, so the organizers decided to do one qualifier and three final rounds.

In the 1:8 buggy final my car was perfect, I win the first 2 finals of 1:8 Short race and the last two finals, obtaining best lap in two categories. Good day of racing with victory in two categories. The results were very good, I used Pro-Line’s Blockade M3 tires and they were perfect for the track!

Thank you to all my sponsors: Hong Nor – Pro-Line Racing – Castle Creations – KO Propo -GensAce – Max Racing – RC Tworks – Leader RC

- Robert Raphael

We raced in the J Concepts Winter National Series at SmacTrac, St. Louis, MO, in February.  Dillon took TQ in 4wd Sportsman 1/10 Buggy and took 2nd in the triple A-mains.  He did well in Mod 2wd 1/10 Buggy, also.  I ran Stock Truck and Stock SC and got into the D and C mains, I had a great time and my M4 Suburbs with Pro-Line closed cell foams performed well.  For the 1/10 buggies, the M4 Suburbs and M4/M3 Scrubs with Pro-Line closed cell foams work superbly!

Dillon is the one on the left.

We are looking forward to outdoor 1/8 season, which starts this Saturday.  Dillon and I are looking forward to the first big race our track, St. Louis Dirt Burners, is hosting, the Futaba/OS Engines Nitro Challenge.  Dillon’s got his BullDog buggy body all painted up and our BullDog truggy bodies are being painted as I write this.

Congratulations to Kevin Willetts for winning the Reader’s Rides contest!

Kevin submitted a Pro-Line GMC TopKick towing a Pro-Line VW Baja Bug and won!

Title: Riptide Race Rig

Description: Savage Flux tow vehicle sporting a TopKick body and Big Joes. The Baja sand rail is all alloy with mostly Venom parts. It is Slash based. Mohawk SC on the front and Sling Shot SC in the rear.

Very cool, Kevin, nice work!

Don’t forget to submit your ride at http://www.prolineracing.com/blog/submit-your-ride/ for a chance to win.

Current IFMAR World Champion Cody King and TLR’s Ronda Drake stop by the Pro-Line booth for a chat with The Dirt’s Joey Christensen.

Once again it was time to hit the road to Coral Springs for the JConcepts Super Cup Championship Series race #4.  Friday practice at CSRCCC had threatening skies looming overhead with a thirty percent chance of rain for race day, Saturday afternoon.  Well all thirty percent seemed to pour down Saturday morning.  A few phone calls were made and now there was a plan B which was put into effect to relocate the event to Basher’s indoor RC Raceway in Palm Beach Gardens Scene of Rd 1.  Special thanks to Brian Buckley owner of Basher’s RC Raceway for having a well prepared venue, able to host 185 racers at a moments notice.

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Check out what was new in the Pro-Line booth at RCX 2012!

This past weekend I was attending the second round of the RC Pro US Series South Division in Lafayette, LA at Finishline Raceway.  The crew built a very fun track for the field of 120 racers, and I was very excited to get back on the track coming off a great finish at the Texas State Series Round 2 race a few weeks ago!

PRACTICE

My first impressions about the track were it was very fast, fun, and LOOSE!  The track was very dusty and they were watering every now and then on Friday.  My XT8 was fast as usual, and after some suspension changes to my XB9 to get some more grip, I was ready for qualifying the next day!

QUALIFYING

The qualifying format for this race was 4 rounds of 5 minute heats, and then your best 2 runs deciding your qualifying position for the mains!  Qualifying in truggy went really good.  In the first round, my M2 Revolver VTR 2.0′s were awesome and I had a fast run resulting in a 3rd overall behind Mike Battaile and Derek Guidry.  I still made a few mistakes though.  It was very hard to get a clean run just because the track was so fast and you had to be very consistent with the caliber of drivers in the Pro class.  In the second round, I put M3 Revolver VTR 2.0′s on the truck, and they were a lot better.  I got 4th overall behind Mike Battaile, Derek Guidry, and Denver Houghton, but still made some small bobbles.  In the 3rd round I got another 4th overall.  My plan for the 4th and final round of qualifying was to go out there and try to get a very fast run, and I didn’t.  I pushed it way too hard, which resulted in many mistakes, and a 7th overall for the round.  My qualifying efforts set me up to be 4th on the grid for the 45 minute main on Sunday!  I knew that a lot could happen in a 45 minute main, so I was confident about getting a good result come Sunday!

In buggy qualifying, my goal was to get top 5 runs every time I went out.  I knew that with the amount of fast guys here, it would be hard to do, but I knew I could do it!  In the first round, I was on a really fast run, but I flamed out due to a low idle.  The second round went very good.  My M3 Blockade’s were hooked up and  I drove a fast race resulting in a 2nd overall behind David Joor.  I still made some mistakes though.  In the 3rd round,  I had another fast run with some mistakes, and got 3rd overall behind David Joor and Derek Guidry.  In the final round of qualifying, my receiver went bad on me in warmup and I was forced to not race the round.  But, with my 2 good rounds I was still 4th overall on the grid for the 45 minute main!

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