R.C. Racing

A very addictive hobby.

If you want to go motor racing but lack the funds, skill or nerve then this is a great way to experience the fun part of the real thing. I was invited to a slot car day at a friends house but when I got there the slot car track was deserted and they were outside with two newly purchased Tamiya RC cars. Go and buy one they said, they are on special, only $179 for a complete kit already built. I resisted for half an hour then headed for the local RC shop. My first car was an Audi 4WD DTM car on a Tamiya TT-01 chassis. Now a lot of people will say these cars and especially the entry level kits are just toys but if you measure their worth in the amount of fun you can have with them they are worth every cent and more.

The date on that photo says 14/1/09, now just over two years later I have 11 cars, I did say it was addictive. The next project after the Audi was to buy a kit and completely build a car, that was an easy choice, it had to be a Mini and it had to be painted black, the make and colour of my first car. I spread out the parts and started work, it was easier than the instructions made it appear.

I now had a problem, the body looked too good to race so I bought another body kit from Hong Kong. Retailers here complain that online is hurting them but who is making the money. $79 for the kit in Sydney or $13.90 from Hong Kong plus $20 postage. I decided on a red and white colour scheme and started spraying.

Same problem, too good to race so I ordered another body kit.

I decided to make it simple, plain white, this one finally hit the track and has been an absolute rocket. I added superslick tyres and replaced the plastic internal bearings with stainless steel.

We had another problem, racing on driveways soon gets boring. Our numbers had grown to 8 and we needed a proper track. We had a perfectly good tennis court sitting there unused so decided to convert it to a race track. The method we used was to buy lengths of PVC pipe and create a series of chicanes. Corners are reinforced with sand bags.

The sand bags are essential, contact with the pipe is constant and brutal, rubber tyre marks are scored along the pipe on the apexes and damage to rims and suspensions parts is unfortunately quite regular.

We haven't quite worked out which is the best racing line as you can see from the following photo, everyone has their own idea.

Competition is fierce with some of the group spending large sums on new cars, tyres and high performance parts.

I have totally rebuilt the original Audi with aluminium chassis parts, stainless bearings, a brushless motor and wide sponge tyres, it's now way beyond my ability to control it.

This is fun with a capital F, we run timed laps, motorkhanas but the most popular event is the very destructive open racing. 8 cars on the track at the same time. We are getting better but contact is still frequent, after each meeting the track is littered with pieces of plastic bodywork but at the end of the day it is really quite inexpensive.

I have also built a couple of display cars, the Dakar Touareg and the Porsche GT Cup car dont go near the track but were satisfying to build and paint.

The F1 car is used on the track but the combination of a brushless motor and rear wheel drive is taking quite a while to master, it goes like a bullet.

A great hobby, one that brings the group together every 6-8 weeks for an afternoon of serious FUN !!!!!!

Phillip Island

We are very lucky to have two of the best race tracks in the world in Australia, Bathurst and Phillip Island, that luck is offset by the fact that after these two the quality drops away very quickly. Phillip Island and especially the annual historic race meeting provides some of the best racing and exotic car viewing available here.

Located on the edge of Bass Straight the weather can be very unpredictable, the following two photos were taken 24 hours apart. We had no garage accommodation for the cars so had to sit and hope that there was no hail, amazingly even with such an intense storm there was not.

The event attracts cars from all over the world, some for display but many to be raced just as hard now as when they were originally produced.

Minis
Amongst my Porsche friends not many like to be reminded that Minis actually beat Porsche at The Monte Carlo Rally, just to make sure everyone was paying attention they did it twice, would have been three times except for some monumental rule bending by the French organisers. The following car was not one of the winners but was part of that same small group of factory cars, this one was raced by Rauno Aaltonen and Henry Liddon but crashed in The Acropolis Rally. 

More Mini action.

Just a few of the display cars.

It's so good to see cars like this in original or better than original condition.

 I wouldn't want to be in the slipstream when one of those chains broke.