Kraton Getting a Kraton 4S V2 Ready for (non-serious) Racing

[Gedrick]

That's some great advice @razorrc, thanks man. Regarding #1, I am running the stock 50wt oil currently. I think that's what is stock, at least.
#2 - out of curiosity, why should I do this? I figured it would help keeping them on, never even considered removing them. Although running on loose terrain like this there's virtually no chance of a traction rollover so I imagine that's why they're unnecessary?
#3 - absolutely - I was trying to make up lost time so I was just sending it, but in practice I was landing on the ... landing.. and keeping my speed up, whereas during the race all the slapping down was killing my time. Several times I would land, give it some throttle, but since it was still decompressing the shocks I lost that traction and slid out.

And of course the chassis getting slapped certainly wasn't helping.

I'll be taking the truck back to the track this Sunday and we'll see how goes without the sway bars! Plus I'll actually have my steering cleaned up which will help immensely.

 

[razorrc]

Stock is 550cst/42.5wt oil.

When weight transfers from one side to the other, the car will want to either roll or slide. You have too much sliding right now... Try removing the front, you should see better off-power turn-in on corner entry.

Hopefully your diff oils aren't too high, you seem to have zero rear tire traction too. Removing the rear swaybar will also help a little bit with that.

 

[Garcbomber]

You’re never going to get a competitive turning radius with locked center diff and square wheelbase, best to put some heavier fluid in the rear and light in the front to power slide/drift corners. Off throttle and deceleration it will be as precise as possible allowing low traction front tire to spin. That’s the way you race a basher especially on loose dirt, love the monster jump on the long straight just like my track. Enjoy!

 

[Gedrick]

You’re never going to get a competitive turning radius with locked center diff and square wheelbase, best to put some heavier fluid in the rear and light in the front to power slide/drift corners. Off throttle and deceleration it will be as precise as possible allowing low traction front tire to spin. That’s the way you race a basher especially on loose dirt, love the monster jump on the long straight just like my track. Enjoy!

No doubt about that, I just threw a center diff in my race buggy and it probably cut the turning radius in half (and the indoor track at this place has some tight stuff, helped majorly). Optimizing for drifting these 180 degree turns is definitely the ticket. Hopefully one day Arrma can come out with a slipper eliminator/center diff kit for this truck! That'd be something, alright. Hard to have a slipper once you've run a car with a center diff, that's for sure.

Stock is 550cst/42.5wt oil.

When weight transfers from one side to the other, the car will want to either roll or slide. You have too much sliding right now... Try removing the front, you should see better off-power turn-in on corner entry.

Hopefully your diff oils aren't too high, you seem to have zero rear tire traction too. Removing the rear swaybar will also help a little bit with that.

I misspoke it appears - just checked and I did indeed rebuild the shocks with 42.5 weight, so it's all stock in that regard. I need to take the spacers off the shocks though because it is sitting a tad too high. Completely forgot to pull them, oh well.

Diff oils, I put 10K front and rear.

I am definitely going to pull the sway bars this weekend and see how goes!

 

[Dales396lt4]

So, how did last night go?

 

[Gedrick]

Unfortunately the race was canceled yesterday - we got a few but fairly heavy batches of rain the past week here in the northeast and the track was too mushy and puddly for racing. Or even practicing, leaving me 4 charged up packs and nothing to use them on

I'll probably hit up an indoor track (non-racing) with the Kraton this Wednesday, then try racing again next Friday. We'll see how goes!

 

[Dales396lt4]

That's too bad. I was looking forward to hearing about the race.

 

[Gedrick]

That's too bad. I was looking forward to hearing about the race.

Yeah man I was looking forward to updating everyone! I've gotten a lot of great advice in this thread and I figure it can become somewhat of a journal of how dialed this particular car can get, even if it can't ever be truly competitive against the kits.

 

[quiznatodd bidness]

You take it back out yet? How’s the improvements?

 

[Dales396lt4]

Good luck tonight. How does the weather look for tonight?

 

[Dales396lt4]

OK it’s Sunday, but We need a report on how you did. I know it’s the Fourth of July weekend but come on man!

 

[Gedrick]

Update! Raced it again last night!

I came in 6th out of 7 racers, and even cooler is that I ran with the 1/8th scale e-buggies due to a low turnout for the trucks. I was running in 4th for a while, accidentally let someone pass me, and then never made it back. Anyway, the car felt MUCH better after dialing in the turnbuckles (steering radius was greatly reduced) but overall had very minimal errors.

 

[Dales396lt4]

Nice! I was looking forward to this update. Great video of the race. Do you feel the truck needs more tuning; it looks good.

 

[Gedrick]

Nice! I was looking forward to this update. Great video of the race. Do you feel the truck needs more tuning; it looks good.

Definitely needs more tuning for sure.

One, it is way too bouncy. I need to figure out how to get to stick better upon landings, because the whole back lane with two singles to flat gets really messy if I hit it fast - it lands and gives a little bounce and skids around a lot. I assume the spacers need to come off my shocks, ideally I'll just upgrade to the K6 shocks so I can adjust them on the fly much more precisely. Two, I am running 50wt shock oil front and rear because this is also a basher and that's mostly what I do with it - but if I grab a different set of shocks entirely I can keep 'race shocks' and 'bash shocks'.

My steering is the last remaining bottleneck honestly. The servo is stock so it's pretty rough, and the turn radius is still abysmal, albeit far better than the last one. I just got more practice sliding through turns so it went a lot better this time around!

Aside from that.. yeah for what it is I can't think of anything else to tune! Power-wise it's great, love the sensored motor combo I have in there, she hauls ass. I bought a proper truggy body and some paint so it'll look prettier soon, and that adds 5 hp right there

My goal for next time is to simply do better than I did the other night, eventually if I keep following this pattern my Kraton will become the Grand Champion of the World!

 

[Dales396lt4]

I run the K6s shocks on mine and I reused the stock spring from the K4s. The K6s front springs are a bit too hard for the track but are great for bashing. The rears are just too soft for me, so I reused the stock spring from the K4s, changed the oil and pistons to 1-2. I wish we had a place like that here in NE Columbia SC. You and the car looked way better in this video good job.

 

[Gedrick]

Took my first win with the K4 this past Friday! I'm really getting used to this thing.

We received a ton of rain like most of the ... world, it seems ... so the track was in rough condition all week, but some awesome folks helped drain it and move a lot of dirt. Once the initial pebbles were cleared it made for some awesome racing, super loose. It definitely takes some practice with this truck but you can drift all the turns quite well without losing much speed. Unfortunately I forgot the GoPro tonight like a knucklehead (this is the second time I've done this this year, where I won a race and didn't have the damn thing recorded) but it was 11pm and extremely hard to see so the camera didn't catch much anyway.

Luckily...

The same fellow who fixed the track from the flooding also happened to take a few slo-mos of the jump up front, and he got a shot of me hitting it perfectly, something I've been getting extremely consistent at.

I was only going against 3 other guys (two SCTs and one other truggy) but I pulled 2nd in both heats, and lucked out in the mains because the leader had a dogbone pop out about halfway through. And he had me by a mile (with a proper kit build truggy). Not the way I like to win but I was pretty happy nonetheless.

 

[Dales396lt4]

That's awesome! As for the camera, I should be scolding you but it's only because I'm JEALOUS that I did not get to see the footage. Great job.

 

[KnowAir]

Took my first win with the K4 this past Friday! I'm really getting used to this thing.

We received a ton of rain like most of the ... world, it seems ... so the track was in rough condition all week, but some awesome folks helped drain it and move a lot of dirt. Once the initial pebbles were cleared it made for some awesome racing, super loose. It definitely takes some practice with this truck but you can drift all the turns quite well without losing much speed. Unfortunately I forgot the GoPro tonight like a knucklehead (this is the second time I've done this this year, where I won a race and didn't have the damn thing recorded) but it was 11pm and extremely hard to see so the camera didn't catch much anyway.

Luckily...

The same fellow who fixed the track from the flooding also happened to take a few slo-mos of the jump up front, and he got a shot of me hitting it perfectly, something I've been getting extremely consistent at.

I was only going against 3 other guys (two SCTs and one other truggy) but I pulled 2nd in both heats, and lucked out in the mains because the leader had a dogbone pop out about halfway through. And he had me by a mile (with a proper kit build truggy). Not the way I like to win but I was pretty happy nonetheless.

Great stuff!! This was a good read. I guess I missed the thread when you started it.
Sounds like a great time!! One of the reasons I never got involved in organized racing is folks just get too serious.. I totally understand, but I just wanna have fun ripping around the track. This is perfect!! Nice job, seems you've made some real progress with the truck. Have fun!!

 

[SrC]

That's a nice track...not overly technical. Is that you driving? If so, nice job! I personally think your spot on with your to do list. Don't over think it and have fun! There is nothing quite like racing with others! The only other thing you might look at is punch level. Don't want it to high. Racing is more about driver than car imo.

+1
@ With a good set of tires ..... The rest is driver control. Work on that mostly.
Surely less damped shocks is important with a confined technical track..
Great that they will let you drive that K4s for fun competition. Many tracks would not. Your K4s Basher rig would not pass tech spec. with sanctioned racing for several reasons. You know this already having run 1/10 class already.

 

[Dales396lt4]

I Wonder why they don't have more Basher classes; you know as a starter type class. It would pull in more novice as well as experienced racers.