If you haven’t read my PREview of the Schelle rack, I’d recommend reading that 1st to give you a basic description of what this product is and my 1st impressions. In continuation, I wanted to take a closer look of the “optional” wider setting on the Schelle rack and report to you my findings. Unfortunately, Portland is in a weird (typical weirdness) off-road vibe right now and I have to apologize to those who have been waiting for a while as options and time were very limited.

Portland currently has a new off-road indoor carpet track that is off-road for 3 days and 2 of those days are race days. We also have a clay dirt track that has just re-opened it’s doors with new owners and have yet to do a track change. Currently, the track is half a year old and not the primo racing surface to do product testing as there are a lot of cracks in the clay that will make testing very inconsistent! Anyways, I decided to take half the day off from work and do a little running at the indoor carpet off-road and this is what I found.

Installation

When you get the rack installed, you’ll notice that it’s smooth as butter and has zero slop. It completely takes away all the slop the stock Kyosho bushings and on top of that it is very, very nice and sturdy. The one thing you have to be careful about upon installation is do not over tighten the screws otherwise you’ll have a lot of binding or lock up the steering.

**TIP** If you want to be able to lock your rack down, you can add .1 and .2 shims in between the bearings to act like crush tubes.  Also, if you’re adding the rack to your car that already has aluminum bell cranks, then you MUST use thread lock as stated in the instructions. If you don’t the screws will slowly back out and cause you to DNF. 2wd cars are not fast with 1 wheel steering! If you are using it with the stock plastic bell cranks then you’ll be fine as long as you don’t remove the rack 100 times as the plastic holes will start to get loose too.

Once I got the rack installed with the default location and zero washers for ackerman, I ran about 4 packs to get used to the track as well as making setup changes to my car to better suite the carpet conditions. After many changes, I was happy with my car and felt it was easy to drive and also easy to push. Next up was to change to the WIDER optional hole and see what it does.

Changing hole location was easy. I just popped off the ball cup and used a 5.5mm wrench while holding the nut on the backside. After the ballstud was unthreaded completely, I slid the lock nut over a bit and moved the ballstud to the outside hole and tightened. Changing both took less than a minute and I was done….. well not totally done b/c if you look at the wheels, you will have to reset toe-in and then you’re ready for action.

The Test – On Carpet

Taking it easy and getting a feel for the car, my initial impression was that it was pushing a little bit more than before….. just a little less aggressive. Having made no other changes, I was surprised that front end grip was reduced. Then I started to overdrive to see what the car would do and then I noticed the car was a steering like crazy.

Well that’s odd…. then I thought about the initial description by Schelle stating, “In testing, we found that the wide pivot setting produces a more predictable steering feel as the chassis leans in the turns.” So when I was cruising around, the suspension really isn’t working too hard, hence the push. The harder I started to drive and throw the car in the corners, the suspension would compress it’s maximum and under severe compression, the bump-steer/camber gain change would be noticed the most. The harder I drove it, the more the car would steer. I felt though I needed to set up the turns a bit and turn in harder and the car would execute along with it. If turned in smooth, the car would not steer as well through the turn. This is probably because the suspension wasn’t compressing enough to feel the change in bump-steer/camber.

In a way, it was like driving a car with relaxed steering, but at the same time have the aggressive steering if I was throwing the car in turns. It’s hard to describe. Imagine driving a car with  mellow 30 degrees caster blocks, but then if I wanted to driver harder, the car would drive like it had 20 degrees of caster and twitchy. The amount of affect it had on steering is dictated by how much the shocks are compressed.

Conclusion

So who is this rack for? This upgrade are for people who are constantly thinking about how to get their cars better. The types that sit and read about setups and trying to figure out…. “Okay, what can I try next?” It is also for the people that like having nice trick stuff that was designed with style and flare and not just functionality. Being able to adjust ackerman as well as bump steer via the inner ballstud is very trick as there are no other racks on the market for 2wd buggy that can do both. Having options is always a plus and if you’re a driver that knows what he or she wants from their car…. then this is definitely a piece to play with.

You can get it direct from Schelle via their website and I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend this product for those who have yet to get a metal rack for their RB6. Oh, it must be hot b/c it’s out of stock!

The prices are inline with Kyosho prices, but you get more adjust-ability and 4 bearings for ultra smoothness and zero slop. Did I mention this is one awesome looking piece??!! I’m looking forward to more great Schelle products as Kurt is always innovating new ideas for the RC community.