MR03 First Impression (race tested)

I finally have my MR03 that I have been waiting for. Actually I was a bit skeptical of opening the box just because of the stories I've been hearing about the "glitch" problem. I've had this box since Thursday night but did not open it until Saturday. I just don't want to have to suffer from "AM" desease if you know what I mean? :)

First thing I did was check the front suspension if there's any type of binding/notchy feel but with the front springs installed, it's kind of hard to tell so I took those off. I was sliding the top arm and the knuckle up and down the shaft and it felt grainy from the bottom of the shaft all the way to the top. So I did my mod, polished all the pins. I also checked the top pivot ball if it is binding on where it's sitting (top arm) but it's not. It is very smooth, I left that alone.

When the polishing was done, the right side arm was super, super smooth while the left side was only smooth in the bottom part of the kingpin but when it reaches the top part of the kingpin, you can feel a notchy feeling that seems to come from the inside of the top pivot ball. I started tearing it apart again and found out that the "notchy" feeling that I was getting was from the front spings. Yes, the front springs. I tried lubing the top and bottom of where the spring sits and this actually got rid of that "notchy" feel. Now both sides have a very smooth suspension action although I didn't have to put grease on the right side suspension.

I haven't put the car on the track so I don't know how long the smoothness will last or maybe I just need to move the springs around. I don't know yet but I will do some testing today so stay tuned...

Notice the grease on the left spring.

I was scared to have that glitch problem; with that in mind, I did not even bother opening up the top cover to expose the board. I did some precautions though when I installed the damper plate system and the motor tabs. Please see below:

For the screw, I used the small screw (M2x4).

The M2x6 screws (which are the once that we normally use) may hit/touch the +/- terminals inside the board so to be safe, we are using the M2x4 screws with the spacers flipped (spcers flipped will be described below).

This is to show M2x4 screw on the left and M2x6 screw on the right.

Spacer "flipped": Like the first one. Normally, you'd install the spacer like the once behind. First one is sunked in while the one in the back should be close to flushed if not sticking out by a mill.

The right side spacer/screw is how you'd want yours to be. Reason being is because the M2x4 screws are a bit short. It barely reaches the chassis to have a grab on. By fliping the spacer, you'll have enough reach for that damper plate to stay put without frying anything.
*note: the left side spacer was done like this for comparison only. Please put it the same way as the right spacer.*

On the motor tab side. You want to make sure that the eyelets or motor tabs that goes on the board is not touching anything next to it. Not the cap in the middle nor the legs on those fets or else... KA-BLAMMM!!! HUGE explosion!!! Just kidding, you'll fry a fet or two or maybe your board but no explosion. :D

Usually I would solder my wires but it is very convenient having a screw in motor wire type instead of soldering them. :)

As for the glitch, none yet (knock on wood). I hope I wont get it because this is not cheap! lol I'll let you know how it goes tonight.

Update:
While testing the car on the bench before putting it on the track I noticed that the the throttle wasn't working but the steering works. I didn't do anything but replaced the motor by desoldering the wire on the motor itself. I didn't want to mess with the wires screwed in the board since its working perfectly. Anyhow, the motor or the board was making this humming sound everytime I pull the throttle about 10% on throttle. Same sound that you hear when you're slowly pulling the throttle and you're holding both rear wheels and waiting for the fets to blow. That's how it sounded. I didn't want to pull the throttle all the way just because I know I will blow the fets so I changed my motor to see maybe it was the motor but it wasn't. I then looked at the tracing on the board without pulling out the cover. I snipped the motor eyelet/tabs even more to almost hair line and used countersunk screw just to be safe. The button head screw seemed like it's touching the other components on the board but I'm sure it's not. Anyway, by snipping the eyelet/tabs I was able to get the motor back up and running. What a relief!

Put the car on the track and from the get go the car is already good with no glitch or whatseover. So far the car is running good, doing 9.8 fast lap. About .20 sec slower than my MR02 and my friends MR03 but then again I didn't have a charged pack... :) We'll see how it does tomorrow with a freshly charged pack.

Track Test: The car had off-power steering, better than my MR02 but the on-power steering pushes (understeers) more than my MR02. Here are the few things I've notice on the MR03 that's causing it to understeer on-power.
1. Frontend sits too high
2. soft T-plate
3. rearend sags on-power
4. stiff front springs

What I've done to the car:
1. Since we dont have optional springs at the moment, I went ahead and used stock MR02 spring and PN red limiter cup.

2. stuck with stock plate. :(
3. installed atomic top shocks w/ PN green springs
4. PN regular springs is what I'm going to be testing on tomorrow. We'll see which one will work better.

Update: 11.08.2009

I've only have the car for two days, 11/7-11/8th... unopened board cover and untouched board...

click the pic.

Update: 11.10.2009

After sending out an email to Kyosho America about the glitch that I was having, I started stripping down the car to its stock form. I didn't even bother trouble shooting the problem because I didn't want to do anything that will void the warranty. This morning, I received an email from kyosho and was told to try the kt-18 radio first before returning my MR03 back to them and bam! The glitch was gone! I still wasn't convinced so I asked Peter's helios with his module to see if I'll catch that glitch and I didn't but when I used his own module on my radio, my MR03 started to glitch again...

There's only two things that I can think off that's causing this glitch on my Futaba 3PKS radio:
1. PN 3PK module adaptor
2. Radio Settings (but this settings works great on my MR02... I'll have to check on that later.)

The MR03 is working fine w/ zero glitch however, I wont be testing this for now because I need to start working on my AWD.
I took 5x videos with the kt-18 radio waiting for that glitch so that I can return the car to kyosho but there was none... please see for yourself. ;)

Last night, we had our Friday Night race at FPR with few fast guys running in my class. I decided to race my MR03 car before I transfer the board to my AWD. The MR03 that I raced last night, comes with whatever mod posted in the above pictures. Which is basically stock frontend and T-bar.  I'd like to test the cars capability vs the other expert drivers that I race with every Friday. In our level of racing, there's no such thing a total domination since the level of driving is the same, it is all about the car's setup and the driver's focus/concentration on their driving.

During practice, the MR03 dropped a fast lap of 9.74 while everyone was still working on 9.9x sec lap with their MR02 with USA motor. The fastest lap on the track is 9.67 with my MR02 running atomic USA motor geared at 13/53 (64 pitch). The 9.74 fast lap that the MR03 did was with a PN 70 turn motor geared down to 12/53 (64 pitch). Keep in mind that our track is big, we house 24x 16 tiles. The car was definitely not the fastest (staright away speed) however, it was very consistent. It felt like I was one with the car. ;) During qualifiers, everyone in my class was working on 35 lap pace while my the MR03 being very consistent, was knocking on 37 lap pace and our fast lap difference were the same to only about .10th of a sec. Please see video below. ;)

Last Round of Qual:

A-main result:

MR03 (black car) video: fastpaceracing.com/content/elite-racing-fast-pace-racing

MR03 set-up: (12.13.2009)

PN Green Springs Front
PN #5 T-bar
PN 94-98mm Motor Pod
PN disc damper v2
PN damper spacer
Atomic Ti Damper Plate
PN +1F delrin wheels
PN +1R delrin wheels
PN 20 F super glued sidewalls
PN6 rear radials
20-50 wt. oil for DDS
PN 12t 64 pitch pinion
PN 51t or 52t 64 pitch spur
 Ceramic Diff Balls
PN ultra light weight shaft
QteQ Diff kit
SC430 test body