no this is a good right up thank you for this
You are most welcome.
There are virtues to both, but I agree for off road stuff, the modern shafties really can't be beat.
There are some really interesting, geeky aspects that people like Cecil Schumacher used to elaborate on regarding belts and ball diffs. Something to do with the way belt drives don't come into their own until loaded up.
Another very interesting argument against shafties for touring cars was the dreaded torque steer. That and the transfer of power through 90°, unlike a belt system.
I used to race a control rubber class, SCR Nicads and then later NiMH on brushed 27t stock and 19t super stock motors, over the winter with touring cars. I really enjoyed racing my Schumacher Axis.
I was an early adopter of the TC3 and it was clearly much more competitive for this type of racing than the other cars. I was a solid B final kind of racer with touring cars (190mm ones were new to me and weren't based on buggies!) until I adopted shafties - where I suddenly started placing in the A.
The composite bath tub chassis never tweaked, my belts never slipped, fluff couldn't get into my driveline and it was patently obvious it was faster in every meaningful way. Faster
for me. Suddenly, I was the highest placed privateer.
Then onto the Yokomo Silver Surface SD Shaftie. It was a thing of beauty, but it wasn't as resilient as the TC3 and it simply wasn't setup ready for control rubber classes. In fact some friends, 2 brothers and team Schumacher drivers, got a CML sponsorship and raced the Yokomos as well. I went down the Rayspeed chassis conversion route, team Suzuki steering arms, whilst they stayed with the SSD but used different shock towers for theirs.
I modified my driveshafts and drive cups with Serpent pin cushions.
Again, I placed my Yokomo repeatedly higher than my sponsored peers, who had terrible trouble breaking their rides.
The dreaded hub carriers of doom:
Note the revised item on the right - it needed this.
Yokomo fanboys got annoyed with anyone that said there was something wrong with the hub carriers. Until Yokomo themselves addressed the issue!
I think to be honest, I could have just stayed racing my TC3 every winter for a decade and it still would have got me into the A. But where's the fun in that?
But then there was this one guy - a brilliant driver - raced his Losi. One of these:
A tank of a car. But he was always fast. The exception to the rule in my opinion. Sure, there were belt drive Xray and Schumacher cars, but he always placed highly.
Another highly modified Yokomo:
This was a totally different era, where touring cars where still being honed into what they are now. Of course, we have so much more power, cooler running motors, fans, lighter batteries, more voltage, lower CoG, greater grip.
The advantages of belts came to the fore in touring cars around the time brushless motors were endorsed for affiliated racing, primarily because of consistency - by having the motor mounted in the middle, transverse, with the belts running down the middle, you could use torque transfer to your advantage. It was easier to manage. It wasn't because belts were more efficient than shafts - but simply because the layout was more competitive at the highest levels.
Long gone are the days where soaking belts in WD40 to soften them up, in an attempt to keep up with the shafties - by freeing up the transmission was an actual thing, a hack.
Things have really, really come along....
I would happily run a CAT 3000 off road again and I regret selling off my old cars to be honest. It was a blast.
In the middle row, from left to right:
Cat 3000, Losi XXX, Cat 3000, Cat 3000, Bosscat Works. This was what I'd put in the boot each week at one point, with 3 of us racing across multiple classes.
Moving on a few years.... here's my most recent Shafties....
And sometimes 2WD is good too!
Schumacher stayed with belts - because why fix what isn't broken?
HA
