Germany, July 2002
Last year we had
great fun driving our Proceeds in Gouda, the Netherlands.
We decided we should do this again, and a few weeks ago
things just "happened" to fal into place. David and his
girlfriend, Andrea, had a few weeks off from work, and I
could get some days off, too. Since we had done the
Netherlands last year, and Portugal was not feasable this
year, on such short notice, David's place was the preferred
choice.
David arranged some tracktime for us to play around, I informed my boss, and all was set.
Today my wife and I started packing the car for the Drive to Germany. I have spent all week getting the car ready, and going over and over the stuff I need to bring with me, making sure I didn't forget something. This morning is the moment of truth.
The car is completely full with our clothes, and boxes with tools, grease, tires, fuel, lexan bodies, starter box, and spare parts. Oh and the Proceed ofcourse. We left early (around 7:00 am) to beat the traffic in southern Germany. We had a great drive, did some stops at nice highway reastaurants (Rasthofs) and arrived at about 14:30 at David's, where we were to spend the week.
Since I just drove eight hours to get there, we unpacked, got installed and made it into a relaxing evening. Nice food and a lot of race-talk to catch up on. During talking, I masked and painted a spare Toyota GT-1 body I brought with me.
The
first track David suggested was "Greuthof". The main reason
for this is that Greuthof can only be driven by IC
(Internal Combustion engine) cars on certain days of the
week. Every wednesday, en every other saturday from 14:00
until 18:00. This is not much time, and we had to do
this track.
Greuthof is also known as the "monte Carlo" circuit, because the track is situated on the side of a hill. This makes the track going down hill in the twisty-bendy part, and uphill on the long sweeper. The drivers stand is on the top of the hill.
We had anticipated on braking lots of parts driving on this hard track with 3 Proceeds (Andrea's, David's and mine). We trusted on David's spare parts stock. Surprisingly, we did not break parts. I beleive I ripped out the threads on one schock ball-cap, but we had some spares (the infamous HPI body mount kit which costs 13-something euro, and you only need the 2 ballcaps that are on there. Great).
In the
picture on the right we can see David heading downhill for
the hardest part of the track. The hardest part is actually
shooting through the chicane after the combined righthander
you see in the picture. The chicane is hard to see in the
shade, and the drivers stand on the top of the hill with
the track laying downslope is kind of a funny perspective.
If you get the chicane right, you are pretty much allways
late for braking into the left hairpin which is just
outside this picture, on the right. Just when you think
"Yesss" you hear your car hitting the fence and you start
thinking "Noooo!".
Getting this track right is a task which takes some days I guess. It is very unforgiving, and has a small driving line. The fun of this track is the funny situation uphill, and the fact that you feel great just for getting your car around the track once without too much trouble.
At the
track we had a few club member looking at our Proceeds.
Having 3 Proceeds on 1 pit table is kind of rare in Europe.
And it took an 8 hour drive to do it :-).
David took it slow on Greuthof. Het told me he broke quite a few parts there, and I wasn't surprised from the looks of the track. After the first lap, I totally understood it, even. At the end of the day, the total parts score came down to my shoch-ball-cap, and a damaged ko-propro servo of Andrea's car, which was fixed after replacing a 1.50 euro gear.
We had to stop driving at 18:00 hours because of regulations, so we packed up, and headed home for dinner.
Because we were home quite early,
it was still light. So, David suggested setting up his pit
table in their garden, next to the barbeque so we could
prepare the cars for the next day, while barbeque-ing.
Andrea's car, with (soft) red springs is on the far left, David's (stock black springs) in the middle and Rolf's (hard blue springs and red MultiPlex Servos) on the far right. I could have actually used a setup with the red springs, but we were so carefull at driving at the Greuthof track, and talking so much, that I didn't bother to change them.
If you look carefully at the picture with the grill, you'll notice my Proceed on the right with white Picco front rimms. Following David's suggestion, I had been driving David's white proceed front wheels today, and although it looked funny, it does give you a better visual feedback of what your front wheels are doing. Besides, the rubber on those rimms was quite nice, too. Lots of traction.
The evening turned out great. We wrenched, grilled and talked until it got dark.
|
|
|
|
Andrea: David, is my car ready yet? David: With all these Proceeds, I can't tell which is yours! Rolf: (pointing at Rolf's car) I think this is Andrea's, you'd better set it up to beat my Proceed! (grin) |
In the evening, we had great fun playing with fire. This log has 2 holes in it, some wax and a fuse. You can light it, and it continues to burn for quite some time. We actually had to drown it to stop the fire. This picture was taken the next day. |
When we continued wrenching in the garage, I discovered
that my front belt really needed replacing. The sides
were schredding, probably from hitting/rubbing against
a twig or something that came in there. You can see the white Picco front rimms lying on the table. |
After a good night's rest on
the kingsize airmatrass, we had a breakfast many hotels can
learn from. Rolls fresh from the oven, and on-line weather
forecasts which looked too good to be true. Sunny, with
partly sun, and more sun at the end of the day. Predicted
temperatures: 27 degrees celcius (and did I mention
"sunny"?).
Today, the Fichtenberg track was on the programme, David's club track. We packed the cars, and in some miraculous way my car seemed to have been shrunk during the night (or was it my lousy packing). Leaving our luggage in David's house, only packing my Proceed and some tools and stuff, my car still looked quite fully packed.
During our drive to Fichtenberg,
we were again treated with the nice mountain views Germany
has so many of. Because I packed the camera (real smart
planning) Astrid, my wife, could not make pictures of these
nice views. But, surprise surprise, the Fichtenberg track
turned out to have these great views, too!
The image on the left shows the view from the parking lot. The parking lot is actually a grass field, you can see it's fence on the picture. We were there pretty early, so no cars parkes yet.
The image on the right shows a herd of cows, grazing just behind the Fichtenberg drivers stand. These are pretty funny cows, running up to the fence every now and then to see what's going on, or expecting food, whichever you think is more plousible ;-).
When we started to
unpack our cars and set up shop in the pits, the 1/5 scale
guys showed up with their very good looking cars. These
cars are much more a scale model than the 1/8 scale cars.
1/5 scale cars have brake disks on all wheels, with
realistic looking callipers, brake ballance controllers,
hydraulic even on some. The car owners took their precious
cars out on the track, placing them besides the kerbs, and
shooting pictures. This went on and on for about an hour,
not a car was started. When the photo shoot session was
over, the cars were picked up, packed, and they left
without having driven a single lap. It looked real funny.
David explained that for some people, these cars were actually only considered a mantle-piece, or even a financial investment. In every club, you can see different "movements". In this club, there is a "1/5 pretty car" movement, and a "1/8 race car" movement. You can see this on their site too. Lots of 1/5 scale pictures (but not in the original resolution of the expensive camera you see...) and movies, but almost no 1/8 scale. I guess the 1/8 scale guys are too busy racing. ;-P
Meanwhile, we had set up David's EZ-up pit tent, and the
wooden pit tables. I had my own pit table, which I
thankfully used to put my tools and starterbox on. With all
the stuff we took with us, the pit tent was almost to
small, even.
The owners of the "Naomi Campbell" cars kindly thanked us for waiting, and left. We started our cars and took them out on the track. Fichtenberg is an ex-kart track, making it extremely wide and large for a 1/8 scale car. You can imagine the screaming engines of our cars when zipping around. Lots of full throttle, so a bit richer top end to be on the safe side at first.
When
driving the Fichtenberg track, it actually turned out to
have a quite narrow driving line. When doing full throttle
while not being on the traction line, the car will not
steer. My inexperience sent my Proceed into the feelds
quite a few times. Luckaly David was there to get my car
and Andrea's when we decided to immitate lawnmowers.
Andrea and I showed to be at roughly the same level, so we had quite a few laps of close racing, which almost allways ended up in "brain fade" and a crash. David got quite some excersise ;P
In the afternoon, while we were having great fun, more people showed up, and we actually saw some great 1/5 scale action. Although a lot slower than our 1/8 cars, the 1/5ths are great fun to watch, as they dive under braking, and lean in the corners. You can clearly see the weight of these cars, the brakes have a hard time stopping them, and the engines need to work to accellarate them. I really enjoyed watching the close racing of 3 particular cars. Great show.
The mood at Fichtenberg got better and better, eventually up to the point we (1/8 guys and girls) raced together with the 1/5 scale guys. The track is wide enough, and as long as everybody is carefull, nothing serious will happen. Having expensive cars makes you carefull about them.
Later that afternoon, a guy showed up with this great
looking, brandnew 1/5 racing car, with all kinds of
proffesional looking equipment, and began to set up shop.
We thought nothing of it, the more the merrier. When he
actually put his car on the track, he showed pretty
unexperienced driving to say the least. When the car was
heading towards him, he made the classical
"turn-left-when-you-ment-to-go-right" error on more than
several occasions, hit the same rubber band outside the
curve twice.. in one lap!. I think a 1/5 scale is not a
cheap car to start with when you've never driven a car
(which was clearly the case), but we did have fun watching,
and made fun of the guys walking around to turn-marshall.
While waiting for this guys practice laps, we got to work
on cuttig or freshly painted bodies.
At one point, he started walking around the track, with the transmitter in his hand, driving his car slowly in front of him, like a Tyco. It was only a matter of minutes he got hit in the foot by a car going full-speed. At this point we were "a bit annoyed" about this gentleman who showed no clue whatsoever about racing on a track. Everybody stopped racing when he was on track. That was kind of fun to see, too! Quick! everybody get off track! On some occasions it took less than 20 seconds for the track to be cleared of clean running cars, and all but this clumsy car was dribbling around.
No offense to newcommers, but when you walk around the track like that you are showing no respect to others at all. Not Ok in my book. I wouldn't even have mentioned it in this report if all he did was drive clumsy. Anyway, on with the programme...
During our garage-talks David and I came up with a great idea for mounting rubber tires on a Proceed. David had these rimms, complete with tires, which fitted the Proceed. We used today's sun to make great pictures of this. I made the article when I got home. You can find this article on this site, here.
We continued to on-off race until the evening, and we had a great barbeque at the track.
Today was planned as a 1 day driving stop, to be able to
enjoy the town, talk some more, maybe sit in the garden...
As it turned out, we could not resist, and went back in the
garage to wrench on our cars, while Astrid and Andrea did
some (fun) shopping.
David exchanged the old chassis on his car for the new lowered Delta type. You can see the old chassis with all the scratch marks, and the new chassis with the bigger holes. The new chassis makes it easier to reach the servo saver, and makes the parts sit lower in the chassis plate. The new chassis is approx. 50 grams lighter than the old one.
I tried to sistract David from the fact that is side belt was missing, but after taking the picture he did mount it. (Jee, that new chassis drives funny!)
|
|
|
|
Because the parts are
sitting lower in the chassis, and closer to it, David had
to use his Dremel to make the front Aluminum Delta pully
fit (image on the left). Close inspection revealed that the
pully was slightly rubbing the steering servo.
Because we HAD to try the new chassis, we decided we had a loung enough break fro driving, and went to the track. Astrid and Andrea just arrived when we were ready to leave. They shook their heads, and after telling us that we were hopeless, they went inside to continue their day's rest as planned. At the track, the new chassis showed to be a big improvemend over the old one. The chalkboard still had last day's finishing results on them (image on the right). I finished the average 53rd, Andrea (81) beat David (87) and Dieter finished last. You can see the prize money top right... Okay you got me, those are channel numbers, and the prize is the prize of some car for sale.
Today was a Fichtenberg raceday again. The whole track to ourselves, and all four of us present. On the way over to the racetrack, Astrid just had to stop at the Aldi supermarket. We didn't plan on buying anything, but you guessed, we went out with our hands full of stuff we didn't really need. A thermos, chocolate liquer, and some spicey saucages for snack.
A funny thing I noticed, is that in the Netherlands, we only know 1 kind of saucage, the "bratwurst". In Germany (the land where this meat originates) they have all kinds of flavours and subtle differences. Even at the simplest supermarket, more than 15 different types of "bratwurst: are not unusual. We took some of these with us, needless to say!
We arrived at the track,
started our "daily ritual" of unpacking, setting up the
pits tent and setting up our tools, cars and starterboxes.
After a few laps of great racing (Andrea and I were really
competative), it started to rain, and we even had some
lightning to go with that. We quickly went into the dry and
safe pit area under the driver stand, and Andrea and David
pushed the tables more under the pit tent so the tools
would stay dry.
The rain didn't go on for long, and
after it stopped there were these nice vapour clouds
hanging over the track because the tarmac was still very
hot from the sun. The clouds do not show up very nicey on
the pictures I took, particularly not after downsizing them
for this article. You had to be there I guess.
While waiting for the track to dry, David and I got a chance to talk about the track (yearight, like we didn't talk all week). Fichtenberg is an old gokart track, in the middle of a nature preserve. The problem with this is that it is forbidden to transport new tarmac to the track, it is forbidden to transport tarmac into these preserves. The top layer of the circuit showed a little erosion allready, and it is clearly a matter of time before this track becomes unusable. It would take maybe a few years, but still. Maybe a solution in the form of plaster or whatever can be found, or some deal can be made with the authorities. It would be a shame to see this track dissapear.
Astrid, my
wife, has problems walking, and for that, she has this
electric go-kart which she uses to do grocery shopping and
stuff. It's not quite an electric wheelchair, more of a
kart for slightly larger distances. We took this cart with
us (ofcourse). When the rain stopped, we decided to put the
cart on the track, just for fun. In the left image, you can
see Astrid making fun of the incredible cornering forces.
The image on the right shows David in Astrid'd cart, trying
to find a better line to beat Astrid's laptime. Ofcourse it
takes ages to get around this large track with speeds not
higher than 12km/h. It was a very funny sight, and we had a
great laugh about it.
The track didn't dry up onto the point we could drive again before dark, so we decided to pack up.
Today was to be our last racing day, so no time to waste! Andrea and I were to race each other again, which proved to be fun because of the close competition.
David dropped us at the start/finish line, and there we went. David running all around track to turnmarshall our cars, and Andrea and I trying to keep up with each other. Unfortunately, I got to eager, stayed on the throttle to long while not having my car under control. I smashed my car into the boards at the long sweeper. Loosing some foam from the rimm, and pushing in a ball kingpin in the lower a-arm took me out of the race, making Andrea the winner. Congratulations! Keeping your car in one piece is the first and probably most important step in winning races.
I heard this several times at the forums, and it all proves right: "To finish first, first you have to finish". Andrea and I proved this once more!
Later that day, I also tore up my
front belt. I had fixed this belt befor by cutting it with
scissors, because the sides were damaged. This time, the
belt gave up on me finally. I took the front apart again,
and installed one of David's super belts. These are cheaper
and more durable than the HPI belts. It did take some time
to do this, because we were constantly chit-chatting like a
couple of old grannies at tea.
Smacking my car into the boards, and my built giving up on me, replaced quite some would-be-racing time with wrenching time. Oh well, if I wanted to be racing 100% of my time, I would have to buy some RTR electric, never "hop-it-up" and make do with driving carefully at tyco-speeds. Driving a car which could desintegrate when something goed wrong is actually quite some kick, if everything stays within proportions.
David brought Andrea's
electric model motorbike to paly around with too. We had
great fun with this thing. It is a real motorbike, without
side wheels. It stays upright because of the rotation of
the front and rear wheels. The battery is placed near the
ground, and the only way of steering this bike is moving
the battery from left to right with a servo. Because it
takes time for the bike to react on this, it is really hard
to drive the track, and make it trough 3 turns. We actually
had to reapair it a few times because the battery wires
blocked the movement of the battery pack. This made it
impossible to go left.
Because it was so hard getting the bike around, it looked really clumsy seeing somebody else doing it. you actually get brave, thinking "I can do that". Shortly after shouting to the driver stand "I'm next!" you'll find yourselves in all kinds of trouble, with the bike falling in all directions but the one you want it to go. We actually had 1 driver, and 3 turnmarshalls, to keep setting it back on track.
We laughed to tears about this. Never thought a simple motorbike could be this much fun.
That evening, we went to eat out, in the "Schnitzel Fabrik", where they had these great schnitzels, so big they actually didn't fit on a normal plate. We couldn't even finish them up completely, taking them home (which is a custom here).
As all good things must come to an end some time, so was this. Today we would leave for the Netherlands again, so we started packing early in the mornig.
One quick
experiment before we left: we decided to take a rear lower
A-arm, make the hole slightly larger by grindin a little
rimm inside the hole with a Dremel tool. After that, we
took some epoxy glue and fine glass balls David had bought
for htis experiment. We let it dry, and force-screwed a
Delta ball kingpin in the hole. To test it, we actually to
a hammer to ry to smash the ball kingpin into the A-arm,
simulating a severe side-crash. It could actually tace
quite a few fairly hard hits from a hammer before stripping
the threads. I think we found a way to get some extended
lifetime from the A-arms!
You can actually see the damage on the hardened steel ball on the picture on the right. In this picture, the thread still holds. We did manage to damage it, and the second version we did was actually even better. Maybe getting the quality consistent is a problem, we have to try out some other glue types aswell.
As out experiment starts to get out of hand, and we loosing track of time, Astrid an Andrea point out that ir is quite a drive to the Netherlands, and we should stop now. Too bad, I actually wanted to go to the race at Turkheim which David was planning on racing next weekend. But that would not be feasible, because I had to work on monday, after driving home sundaynight. Besides, we had been racing and talking for a few days allready, and were actually starting to get fysically tired (bunch of old men eh?).
Just before we left, we thanked David and Andrea for their great hospitality and company. If I had to pick something I didn't like about this vacation, it would clearly be the duration. Too short!
|
|
I would like to use this last line to thank Andrea and David again for the great "Proceed Fun Tour Europe 2002 edition" we had at their place. It was a great vacation, and it took us quite some time to recover from it :-)
After mounting the new chassis,
2 things came to our attention: The front upstop
mount (not sure if it is called that way) mismatches.
Because all suspension parts sit lower, including
radio plate, the front stop mount wants to sit lower
too. But there is no grinded deep enough for the
"screw holder" to fall into. We had to file this
down.
The back plate shows another
funny thing, which is caused by the same effect. The
rear suspension parts are sitting lower in the
chassis, which means the backplate it sticking out
under the chassis. Unless you want to rip out the
screws of the rear backplate, you better file this
down so it aligns with the chassis.