Element6: Inertia and Momentum are the enemies in racing.

          When I started out in R/C some 44 years ago all I cared about was making laps. At that time it was in a pond or lake racing one of the two nitro powered boats my Dad had built. Having come from a racing background my Dad had taken the time to lighten and balance things in the boat like removing the standard radio box and built one lighter. He removed unnecessary fiberglass from the hull and around the edges. Drilled and filed down the aluminum motor mounts and balanced the props and the list goes on. Having taken note of that it sunk in right after we started running r/c off-road buggies and the industry was making goodies so fast that we didn't have to do so much by hand anymore.

    Now...fast forward to 2012 I noticed that a new class was really starting to take off. 17.5 2wd buggy. At that time I was racing for Tamiya and our top dog buggy was the 201. It already was fairly light but it still needed a few things and thus I set out to build the lightest buggy I could without simply drilling holes and cutting stuff off. To make a long story shorter the Track'ster was born and it had things on it back then that we take for granted now. Direct drive (no slipper) 64 pitch Spur and pinion, all Titanium hardware, ceramic shield less bearings, ceramic diff balls, cut transmission gears, aluminum out-drives with aluminum dog bone / CVA's, light weight body and at that time the industry had just come into Big Bore shocks of which I stayed with the small bores up front. To say the least I had to add a BUNCH of weight to it to make it pass tech. However, It's first time out to race the Track'ster won the inaugural Top Gun Shootout at SDRC.

   So these past few years I have been running Schumacher buggies. To my chagrin the 4w buggy (Cat L1) is a tank! The 2wd at the time (Cougar KC) was good and with a few bolt ons could get the weight right. Racing and testing both on the dirt and on the carpet have lead me to a new product line of carbon fiber products to help not only the Schumacher line of race buggies and their new Cat L1 Evo (which has lost some weight) but also their new 2wd the Cougar Laydown.

   Our new line is called Element6 and we will not only be helping to reduce weight but also changing a few things that we have test/race proven that there either needs to be an alternative part to tune with or simply a better approach at a geometry. We don't build parts to simply replicate unless there is a purpose to change. 

Stay tuned!

~Jimmy