New stuff from SpeedMerchant

Bruce and the gang at Speedmerchant have released several new parts for their 1/12 Rev 7 and the 1/10 WGT3 this week. I have the new front springs and the Optional Top plates/shock mounts on the way. I will of course tell you all about them when I try them out but honestly, Speedmerchant just TQ'd and won the WGT Carpet Nats with all this stuff. TQ'd Snowbirds, won 1/12 at Snowbirds. What could I say to make them sound any better right? So I will do my usual copy and paste job straight from the horses mouth (and website). One thing of interest first, the front and side springs will also work in my F1R, so I can test them out there! Looking forward to trying out the .019s fronts in the F1. I bought an extra set of em!

First off is the WGT graphite bumper, 4mm thick, stout, ....
"Pete Robinson did a ton of great testing over the Winter, and we came up with this design.

Besides doing its' obvious job of protecting the front of your chassis, the bumper also gives the car a little more high speed steering especially at the end of the straights.

Pete used one of the 1st production ones to TQ the Snowbirds, and Donny Lia TQ'd and Won the ROAR Nats with one too."

The new .024 Linear Tweak Springs are now available. They are part#5069.

Updated the Linear Tweak Spring Conversions (part#5065) so they include the full range of springs .018 thru .024.

The stiffer Linear Tweak spring was used by Paul L. to win the 2012 Birds in 12th Mod.

It's a set-up that we haven't run for quite a while, but Paulie certainly proved that it is a very viable solution, even with the lighter LiPo cars.

Back in the "round cell" days, I would often set the cars up with our firmer .023 Progressive Tweak Springs hovering about 1mm above the link ends.

This set-up made the cars very smooth & easy to drive "on center", but when the car got into a corner, the chassis would lay over, hit the very firm .023 tweak spring, and presto....instant steering.

The set-up was exactly what we had on Mike Dumas's cars used to win the 2007, 2008 & 2009 ROAR Carpet Nationals.

When we started testing our Linear Tweak Springs, as well as moving the springs in-board, we got away from the "hovering" method.

I think Paulie proved it's something we should at least re-visit in testing.

Maybe you should too.

Here are our new Front Springs.

There are a lot of front suspension springs on the market, but we've always preferred the feel and got our best results from the standard Associated spring.

For years the staples in racing have been the .018, .020 & .022 variety.

In hand and on the track, these springs have always felt/worked the best.

About the only issue everyone has with Associated springs is that they "collapse" way too easily.

So, we met with our "Spring Guy" who has done a tremendous job for us over the years starting with our line of Progressive Tweak Springs and then more recently our Linear Tweak Springs which have been adopted by tons or racers all over the World, and used to win every major race in the past 2 seasons since their introduction.

Our biggest goal was to get that "dampened" feel that only the Asc. springs seem to have....but we didn't want the "hit one board and collapse a spring" syndrome either.

We also wanted a slightly longer spring so the "sweet spot" in the springs' range was larger. Going .020" longer gave the best results.

What we came up with was a front spring that is "pre-worked" by the manufacturer. Through a special process, the spring material is manufactured in a way that it is less susceptible to collapsing while at the same time having a dampened feel that is awesome in hand and works even better on the track.

When SpeedMerchant Team driver Pete Robinson put a set of the new .019's on his Rev.7 at this year's Nats, the first words out of his mouth were...."These things are like R/C Porn". LOL.

Donny Lia ended up TQ'ing & Wining the Nats World GT Class with them on his car & Dumas took 3rd with his World GT. In 12th Mod, Dumas ended up 2nd over all while putting in the quickest 8-minute run of the week taking the win in the 3rd A-Main. We ran the new .019's on both 12th & WGT cars.

By the end of the week, several "Team" guys throughout the building had switched to them..... we got nothing but "Thumbs Up" from those drivers.

The new springs are part #'s....

#7001 = .017" SpeedMerchant Front Suspension Springs

#7003 = .019" SpeedMerchant Front Suspension Springs

#7004 = .020" SpeedMerchant Front Suspension Springs

#7005 = .021" SpeedMerchant Front Suspension Springs

#7001 = .023" SpeedMerchant Front Suspension Springs

I've got the new Optional Top Plates/Shock Mounts up in the on-line store.

Part #1772 is the set for the Rev.7, and part#1773 is for the World GT3.

We've been testing these for a while now, and they are a great tuning aid. Donny Lia just TQ'd and Won the ROAR Nats with the Long/Middle set-up on his World GT3.

Mike Dumas ran Short (stock Top Plate)/Middle on his 12th Mod car taking 2nd overall and putting in the fastest 8-minute run of the week in the final A-Main at the Nats also.