# HARC Round 2 @ Gulf Coast Raceway!!!



## Courtney Vaughan (Apr 11, 2007)

Man, what a day! IMO, this was a huge success! 67 entries is a lot for Houston these days! Congrats to Smiley who walked away with $110 cash for his two class wins!

A HUGE thanks to Jeff, Phil, and Mike for hosting this race! Jeff told me that this was the best turnout for a Houston-area race that he's seen in 2-3 years!

I'm a little tired right now, so I don't feel quite like elaborating on today's race much, but check out the pictures below.......EVERY pit table was jam packed, people were pitting from their trailers, and we had more spectators than I've ever seen at any Houston race.

Again, this was a big success, and a huge step in showing the local tracks that we support them and we all want to get out and have fun. You could literally feel the excitement in the air!

I will have some cheesy videos posted on Youtube.com in the next few days, and I will also post some more pictures. BTW, there was a couple of people in from Austin, and one of them brought a 3-camera rig and took a lot of video.....hoping that he'll put it all together and post it soon!

P.S. for those of you who didn't stay for the expert A-main, that was probably the best race I've ever seen! All 5 top spots were grouped together for almost 10 of the full 15 minutes, and they kept trading places back and forth. Smiley and Jake finally started to pull away from everyone, and that turned into a full-blown 5-minute brawl! It don't get no better than that!


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## Donnie Hayden (Mar 7, 2005)

I just wasnt feeling my driving today. Me and the buggy are usually united as one, but today it just didnt happen. I had a great time other than that!


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## Big Phil (Apr 27, 2007)

it was awesome that was some close racing great job to all the racers and you to jerry.i want to thank the guys that stayed and helped pull up the pipe and lock up you know who you are thanks WOW what a day!cant wait for m&m.


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## Gary (May 21, 2004)

That is whats called a "World Class Facility"! I have never seen those pits before. VERY, very nice!


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## Guffinator (Aug 27, 2005)

Gary said:


> That is whats called a "World Class Facility"! I have never seen those pits before. VERY, very nice!


Oh yes, Mike's is definitely world class.


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## cjtamu (Sep 22, 2004)

Awesome. Glad to see things are going the way we hoped. Bummed I had to miss, but family has to come first. Gary, you need to put that Mod Truck together and get ready for some racing when the weather cools. Mike's grooves very nicely. Last time I raced there Kev drove my T4 and ran red Tapers on it. Been a long time since we've had a track you could run those tires. M&M is of course good for electric and Gary's track is too.


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## Gary (May 21, 2004)

cjtamu said:


> Awesome. Glad to see things are going the way we hoped. Bummed I had to miss, but family has to come first. Gary, you need to put that Mod Truck together and get ready for some racing when the weather cools. Mike's grooves very nicely. Last time I raced there Kev drove my T4 and ran red Tapers on it. Been a long time since we've had a track you could run those tires. M&M is of course good for electric and Gary's track is too.


Ill have a T4FT coming pretty soon. Ill be running mod!


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## Guffinator (Aug 27, 2005)

I've actually been looking at the Duratrax Evader. If I ever get a 1/10 off roader again I think I would give one of those budget kits a try.


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## cjtamu (Sep 22, 2004)

Guff, the Evader is a fun truck. It's a copy of the old XXT. But there's not an ST out there that's as good as the T4. I think Losi has a new truck coming out, I'd like to see it. The 2 things with the Evader are: 1) it just doesn't handle as well as the T4 and XXXT, and 2) parts supply. You can run a lot of the XXT chassis and suspension parts on it, but not other stuff.


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## Big Phil (Apr 27, 2007)

Guffinator said:


> I've actually been looking at the Duratrax Evader. If I ever get a 1/10 off roader again I think I would give one of those budget kits a try.


the sport works looks great and its cheap i thought about geting one myself still might check it out dont buy the evader breaks to easy


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## griz (Jan 9, 2006)

*World Class is right*

That is an awesome facility. I had a great time. Little long on the drive. I didn't get back to Granite Shoals until close to 2am. I'll have to bring the wife along next time so she can drive home. My brother was called into work so I decided to go on home last night. I shot plenty of video almost 7 tapes. I am just now starting to capture it into the computer. I'm pretty beat today so it will probably be tomorrow before I start to edit anything. But you never know. The bright end of the track kinda messed with the cameras. Especially when the sun got low. I had to stay in the shaded areas to get the cameras to expose properly. I can adjust the one I'm holding. But the satellite cams need to be on auto exposure in case things change before I get back to them. I still need to experiment with the manual settings on the cameras. But I don't want to do it when I'm filming a race in case I screw it all up. I'll do that when I go back to the sand drags or something like that. But the little bit I did look at was pretty cool 

Griz


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## nik77356 (Jun 8, 2007)

ya i probly had the worst luck out of everybody yesterday. universals kept popping out, burned up 3 throttle servos. i never finished a qualifier!! i did actually finish the c main and won it!!!  couldnt start the b main because i burnt out another servo. kevin was having problems with his too. o well. maybe ill do better at m&m


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## nik77356 (Jun 8, 2007)

jerry did you have fun yesterday?


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## jerry23 (Sep 16, 2005)

cjtamu said:


> Guff, the Evader is a fun truck. It's a copy of the old XXT. But there's not an ST out there that's as good as the T4. I think Losi has a new truck coming out, I'd like to see it. The 2 things with the Evader are: 1) it just doesn't handle as well as the T4 and XXXT, and 2) parts supply. You can run a lot of the XXT chassis and suspension parts on it, but not other stuff.


Truhe is running the new losi truck. didnt get to see it close up though. looked awesome on the track though.


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## jerry23 (Sep 16, 2005)

Had a blast little bro. I didnt have any good luck either. i just like showing up to start shizzle with all my homies.


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## nik77356 (Jun 8, 2007)

ya i had a blast too. lots of frustration but fun none the less. thanks BTW, for letting me use a servo. i owe you a servo now. one of the three i burned up yesterday


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## jerry23 (Sep 16, 2005)

No sweat, it was a backup. Dont even worry about it.


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## nik77356 (Jun 8, 2007)

anybody got any pictures of the racing?


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## ballou (Jan 16, 2006)

nik you need to reset you linkage and end points burning up 3 servos like that somthing is causing a lot of stress on the servo


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## ballou (Jan 16, 2006)

had a good time yesterday would of been better if i hadnt distroyed my motor but all in all still had a good time


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## nik77356 (Jun 8, 2007)

my endpoints were at 30% on brake. and at center i still had space between the collars and the arm


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## ballou (Jan 16, 2006)

what about on throttle the carb only opens so far


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## Big Phil (Apr 27, 2007)

ballou said:


> what about on throttle the carb only opens so far


Are you sure?LOL


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## nik77356 (Jun 8, 2007)

ya my settings were fine. i dont think my throttle was even opening all the way


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## griz (Jan 9, 2006)

*what about the servo saver*

How tight is your servo saver? Something is out of whack. Unless you had 3 bad servos to begin with.

Griz


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## nik77356 (Jun 8, 2007)

griz i only had problems with my throttle servo. i was running low end servos on throttle but now im afraid to try a high end servo to see if i had bad servos. i burned out a hitec 645mg, a jr z270, and a jr590, the last one wasnt even mine. it was jerry's!!


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## ballou (Jan 16, 2006)

something in the linkage or radio isnt set right somewhere did you turn on the car and radio set all the setting back to zero centering it up before you put the servo horn back on and the set you epa and stuff ?


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## David Early (May 3, 2005)

Low end servos can't take the beating. The brakes is where you really stress the servo, Unless like Phil said, the throttle end point is not set.


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## nik77356 (Jun 8, 2007)

i centered everything up. from my experience that 645 has handled alot. it handled steering in my revo forever. all my endpoints were set.


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## justinspeed79 (Mar 9, 2006)

Nik, I was having the same problem with my Spektrum system for a while. I was having throttle and steering servos burning up for absolutely no reason. A couple even went out just sitting on the bench. I spent days scouring the internet looking for someone who had an answer for me, but everyone just kept saying it was setup wrong, or the servo can't handle it, or basically, you just don't know what the heck you're doing. Which is very frustrating after 15 years in the hobby BTW. Anyway I can't remember where I got the idea, but I finally started running my power wire to the 3rd channel on my receiver, haven't had a single problems since then. Knock on wood. So, the problem isn't fixed, but it isn't a problem anymore. Not sure if that would work in your case, but it might be worth a try.

BTW, thanks again for pitting for me Saturday.


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## nik77356 (Jun 8, 2007)

n/p justin. sorry about your main tho. at first i had no idea what happened. i was so out of it. thats why i like universals over cvd's, but no one makes gas truck universals


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## justinspeed79 (Mar 9, 2006)

Yeah, I was pretty bumbed when the CVD broke, but that's racing. It's my fault for not having them shrink wrapped. I wasn't driving worth a **** anyway LOL. I still had a great time though. It's nice to get out to the track and see a good turn-out. Can't wait till M&M, might be driving something different too.


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## nik77356 (Jun 8, 2007)

ya hopefully i do better at M&M


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## nik77356 (Jun 8, 2007)

will you have your revo?


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## Donnie Hayden (Mar 7, 2005)

My driving flat out sucked saturday. I actually did good in the main untill I got hung up on the coping and had to wait for someone to rescue me...... Marshalling at it's finest.


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## ballou (Jan 16, 2006)

yeah there was alot of that going around donnie


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## Courtney Vaughan (Apr 11, 2007)

I don't want this to turn into a b*tch session, but I too was interested to see how each time I would go out to race, there were 8-10 people in my heat, then I go out directly after to marshall, and there'd be 3-4 people with me plus a little girl........that's not really very fair to the next class. 

Phil, I think it's time to start enforcing the penalties for not marshalling.


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## Big Phil (Apr 27, 2007)

I have a evil plan in the works to take care of this problem. Donnie no marshall in the world could have helped your outcome sat!LOL


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## griz (Jan 9, 2006)

*A suggestion for the track layout*

From a purely videographer point of view it would be nice if there was one big air jump on the track. The jump coming off the front stretch gets good air but there is no way to get a camera in position to get it on tape. You can kinda get it from the side but you don't get the effect that you would if you could shoot it head on. Anything you can do to limit the sun coming in the side late in the afternoon would help as well. It just blows out the image and if you try and compensate the part of the track you are trying to film is too dark. I ordered some nd filters to use next time I come down. That might fix the problem with the light. Its a tricky place to shoot with all the different light levels. And its so big that you have several 'zones' that are basically different in the way you set up the cameras. Not complaining actually it was a very good experience for me. Shows me I still have a lot to learn to be able to get clean tape anywhere I go. I'll figure all this out before I come down again. I was kinda disappointed the light screwed up those low angle shots into the first double. But I can move the camera a bit to get rid of that but the angle won't be quite the same. Just takes more practice but I'm still pleased with the results since that was only the 3rd time out with the rig. The videos are posted on a lot of boards. People are pretty impressed with the track from the feedback I've been getting. One guy from Lake Charles said he's coming to H-town soon. Hopefully it will pump up your attendence a bit.

Griz


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## Snellemin (Jul 22, 2007)

Yes, the track does come out great in your vids. The cars zooming by really gives you an idea of how fast these things are really going. I have only one beef though and I hope you don't get offended. The music is too loud, kinda takes away from the cars. Or it can be that the music is almost the same frequency as what the motors make. Maybe use an EQ and tone down the frequencies between 1 and 4Khz on your music. But great shooting nevertheless.


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## insaneracin2003 (Feb 22, 2006)

Griz,what board is he on?,the guy from Lake Charles? We have a ROAR Regional coming in 2 weeks and I would like to get some of those La. boys out here. Shoot,I might know some of them from my old stomping grounds.


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## Big Phil (Apr 27, 2007)

good point griz the new lay out will be much better tol done a great job on the new one i really like it.Its more of a drivers track we just have to find some drivers. just kidding.LOL


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## jerry23 (Sep 16, 2005)

I'm a racer not a driver.


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## griz (Jan 9, 2006)

*Here you go Paul*

http://www.rctech.net/forum/showthread.php?t=173589 is the thread he was the first poster. Yea I was thinking when I saw that it would be a long drive but actually its not that far from Lake Charles. I lived in Natitoches and Ruston while I was in school. I've been to some wild parties in La  I might end up coming up for that race. I did a quick budget on going to Colorado today and its going to be very close. And after driving to Houston I decided I'd have to take 2 days each way and have a couple of days to rest up before filming to keep from getting too tired and putting my health in danger. Add in the altitude as well. Its a little over a mile high at the track in Denver. I'm sure that it would affect me just like I'd never lived there now that I've been at sea level for 3 years. If I don't go to Colorado I'll be coming back down there for the Regional.

Griz


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## jerry23 (Sep 16, 2005)

Thanks for comin down and making the Vids Griz. Hopefully it gets our track alot of due attention from some outta towners to come over and race.


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## Donnie Hayden (Mar 7, 2005)

LOL Phil! I was having a OFF day. But the truth is, it really does suck to spend the money you do to race only to have to wait and get marshalled by a KID... Is safety not a concern or what? I know it's not the corners fault when us drivers screw up, I was more worried about one of those kids taking a head shot. I know in the past it was a big deal about kids being on the track(s)...Especially when 8th scale buggies are running. My son is 8 and I dont allow him on the track when buggies or truggies are running. I think this should be enforced at every track, Not just for the drivers, Mainly for the kids safety.


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## Courtney Vaughan (Apr 11, 2007)

I too was very concerned about that little girl out there (although she was doing a better job then some of the adults!), and everytime I would drive up to one of the kids I would think "man, if I beamed one of these kids, I'd be in deep do-do! even if it was a total accident!"

again, I don't want this to seem like we're all complaining, but I think we need to all review the marshalling rules before the next race.


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## Big Phil (Apr 27, 2007)

I think i said i would take care of this like 10 posts back.


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