Mi2 First Impressions

[Menace PJ]

hiya all

Mi2 is a great car nice to build( provided all parts there)

turn in is great....but i get severe power on over steer which cases the car to "snap" out of corners.

any idea?

[Barry_Hughes]

Move the rear links. Outer - move to inner hole, and move the inner rear link in one hole (nearer the diff housing) adjust link to give 1 degree neg camber.

This should do the trick, it may pay to do the same at the front, but try just the back first.

[robh]

Hi Folks

I had the first race with the Mi2 today and I was getting the same 'snap' out of the turn.
I'll move the the rear links, thanks for the advice Barry.

Other than that I was very impressed with the car, in the first heat,(before the rain) I was 6 secs of FTQ then the rain came and I discovered how much Rx's dislike water. ::)

Any other setup tips anyone?

[axpayne]

I also suffered with similar problems and tried various camber link locations with minimal effect.

I built my car pretty much as the build instructions in the manual. The build instructions show the rear shocks being connected to the wishbones in the 3rd hole in from the wheel. However, all the online setup on the Schumacher site show either the 1st or 2nd hole in from the wheel. Which location are u folks using?

I was running indoors on carpet with carpet dragons. The cells were in the middle location front-back and left-right.

[Bt]

Well i run on slippy floor with yellow mini spikes and the snap is very noticeable. If you drive slow and steady its allright but when you need to chase it on a bit the back end is all over the place. I moved the rear links to the inside top hole, removed the roll bars, put harder springs on the front and moved the rear shocks in a hole both top and bottom.

The car is alot more driveable now but can still get better i think. I want to try the low shock towers, you'll notice alot of the drivers are using them in the setup sheets but they arent available yet. This should help give alot more droop on the rear and give more sideways grip and stop the snap. The car still goes well with the back doing its own thing ;)

[MarkB]

Hi guys,

Got my first dry outdoor running with the Mi2 at WLRC yesterday, and also got power on oversteer. Using my trusty XXX-main turning book to change one thing at a time it got better, but not as good as I'd like.

Softening the rear suspension helped - blue springs moved to inner top hole, although it then started to roll a lot. So went to Yellows front and Reds rear and a lot better. Also moved the cell position from rear to middle and that helped.

Was planning to experiment with suspension links next time, and seriously considering running 2 degree front blocks - simply ran out of races ;)

The lower suspension mounts must be close as mine arrived last week. They are very short and obviously designed for non-Schumacher shocks - like the Tamiya ones some are using...

Overall I was delighted for a first run outdoors meeting ;D

Cheers
MarkB

PS - indoors on carpet the Mi2 has been awsome btw

[Luke Hobson]

thats wierd, when i saw Paul Oscroft's (2003 BTCC stock champion) Mi2 on carpet at broxtowe it was know where, even i out qualified him by 15 places :o

luke

[alexoutrim]

i am very pleased with my MI2. I have been racing it for about 4 weeks now and have been loving it. The only thing i have a problem with is that the back end seems to step out a bit, but it is still controllable though. I am stuck on what springs to use really for the rear. I am running on carpet, and am using blue springs front and red on the back with an anti roll bar on the rear aswell. Any help would be great

[mattr]

matthews car stepped out at the back when
we first ran it ,tried different set ups not much
better. when we race at norwich i go with
a mate whos a 8th rally cross driver who
said if the top link is too long it lets wheels
lean over too much causing car to break away
we shortened top link front and back ,like
a diff. car

[al]

thats wierd, when i saw Paul Oscroft's (2003 BTCC stock champion) Mi2 on carpet at broxtowe it was know where, even i out qualified him by 15 places :o

luke


leave oz alone, ;D ;D ;D he has been strugling with that he seems to be getting there now and he feeels that the car has good abilitys in comparison with the mission that he way driving for 2 years. he hopes for yet another very succesfull season with his btcc and brca stock championships - good luck

[Luke Hobson]

i wasn't taking a dig at paul, it just seems that at was looking like that, but at don valley it did look somwhat better.

luke

[al]

Im only messing, ;) he had massive tweek on his car for ages but after finally sorting it out his car looks great

[axpayne]

yesterday I called Schumacher (spoke with a Chris) and discussed my problems and setup. As a direct result, racing last night, my car totally different and a major improvement from it's last run.

The main differences were:
fitting the role bar front and rear
red springs on the front and blue on the back
rear shocks 2nd hole in on the wishbone and 2nd in on the shock tower.
the use of the diff instead of the oneway. this may well have had the biggest impact.

I notice on the setup sheets in the book and the website a rear shock length on 68mm is suggested. I found this is not a practical length as the ball joint is not screwed far enough up the shaft and the piston compresses to the top of the shock body before the chassis touches the ground. Schumacher suggested running 66mm.

I tried a series of small changes for each race, with a noticeable difference each time. More time is now required to tune in a setup I really like.

Thanks to Chris at Schumacher I now have a good starting point.

[Bt]

glad to hear its going better, i've got some things i want to try out tommorow night at the racing, hopefully it will help the back end stick that bit more and make it go even quicker ;)

[merc190provan]

;D

Try fitting some different shock absorbers, the topcad ones are great, they are long enough to run the rears upright which is where we found you need them.Try removing the little spacer plates from under each inner mount. Front shocks 50wt blue springs,rear shocks 40wt red springs with two hole pistons (topcad).Front shocks lower middle hole and one hole in on the top. Rear upper link in lower outer most hole inboard and the most inboard on the hub not the lowest!! Shortening the front upper link will take away steering so experiment with settings to suit.1 deg camber front and rear with neutral toe on the front and two deg toe-in on the rear for carpet and three deg for tarmac.
Make sure you loosen the top deck screws pressing the chassis down onto a perfectly flat surface,set up board is good, retitghen screws.
If you haven`t touched the diffs from new then rebuild them!!
I used this setup on Matt Rowes car and it was excellent on carpet and apparently was dialled at the weekend at Ipswich although i wasn`t there to see it.

Hope this is of some help .

Regards,

M.Smith

[Bt]

Went out with my much changed car last night and it was bloody awesome :D For this week i changed the car to long wheelbase on the rear, backed the ball end on the rear shocks off by two turns to give me some droop on the back and moved the bottom ballstud for the shock back to its original hole.

Ran 2mm droop all round, slight toe-in on the front and added quiet a bit of weight to the car as it was well underweight :) 30g just behind the motor and 30g on top of the servo. Could do with maybe moving the cells forward a bit as i think there's still a bit too much weight in the back, once it started fishtailing it was a real pig to get back but there was no snaping last night, well unless it was me on the throttle having some fun (floor was very slidey last night) :D damn good fun.

[Andrew_Carter]

Ran my Mi2 carbon on carpet sunday. Managed to make the top end of the A very impressed with it! ;D

Well done schue!

[alexoutrim]

I also ran mine on carpet on sunday and it was just amazing, changed to long wheelbase at the rear. Only problem of the day was that the pin in the driveshaft ripped out of its hole. I will definatly upgrade them soon though.

[Paul_U]

Also raced mine yesterday at DMS, car was AWESOME got 3rd in 19t A and finished 4th, desipte doing the same as alex in the 4th qualifyer, it was an excellent day.

Paul

[robh]

Hi

I've done a second outdoor meeting now and i'm getting there. well ish ;)
I managed to stop the back end stepping out mid to exit of turns, inner top links to the outside at the rear and shocks on outer most holes top and bottom at the rear.

I do seem to be getting a bit of power on understeer but the car is quick and easy to drive. I'm basically using the spool setup from the manual with 1.5 deg toe at the rear. Blue front spings 45 oil 3 hole and grey rear spings 30 oil 2 hole.

The spring rates do seem to have quite large steps, i.e. grey to blue, does anyone use other spings/ know intermediate rates?


I've just been looking at the LRP masters results and Teemu Leino used his Mi2 to get second place overall against a very strong field. Good to see top a placing for the new car, (kicking some hpi ass.) :) ;)

[Andrew_Carter]

Robin

Your answer to springs is associated! i and quite a few others are running associated springs but have to run shock spacers to bring the ride height up. I wont have this problem soon as i have got some Tamiya trf shocks! ;D very nice! just need the lower shock mounts now!