The Dirt Nitro Challenge 2020

The 2020 Dirt Nitro Challenge was a great start to the racing season for me. I faced tons of challenges, had good times with great friends, made some new friends, and had a great time. This year I decided to bump up to the intermediate class and race along side some of the best up and coming racers from around the planet. In addition to switching classes, I also changed from the TLR 8X platform to the HB Racing D8 platform. I was extremely impressed with how easy to drive the new buggies were and how they easily soaked up the very rough racing surface. I seemed to be plagued with gremlins this year, but thats how racing goes sometimes.

I want to thank Oscar Lopez, Buddy Blacksmith, Lance Hubbard, Jeremy Hase, Gil Losi Jr, and Kevin Tomsovic for all the help in the pits.



So I started off DNC with painting up some fresh bodies for my HB D819rs and E819 buggies.

I ended up painting some bodies last minute for Buddy Blacksmith. He wanted a day time and night time body, so I did my best free hand paint job to date.






A photo of my HB Racing E819 E-Buggy before a qualifier.









A shot of my Hot Bodies D819rs Nitro Buggy before the storm.





Here is a shot of the beginning of the track. This was a MASSIVE rhythm section that cause people lots of carnage.

A shot of the center of the long rhythm section.



















The end of the rhythm section led into a vary sharp turn that kind of skewed your judgement on how close you were to the pipe.


















A better shot of the sharp turn after the rhythm section. There were large craters through this section, which really unsettled many vehicles.


















This is the triple immediately after the sharp turn. You can see the holes in the track leading up to this section of the track. I was very easy to get this part wrong and end up in a hay bail...



















After making it over the triple, you had to 180 turn into a large double. Its easy to see all the holes that threw people all over the place.



















Once you made the double, you hit a small berm and into this center triple. Most people double singled out here, but the brave racers would rail the berm and hit the triple


















After the triple, you entered the center section of the track. This part of the track was bumpy, but you could really get some speed through this section.



















After getting through the center section of the track you entered the massive step up. It was easy to get this part wrong and end up in no mans land... This was probably my favorite part of the track since you could pick up easy passes against poorly set up buggies.


















After the Step up you faced a bumpy roller into a double. The downside of the double was rough... A lot of people struggled through this section.

After the double, there was a berm into a huge triple. This was a full speed triple that required a ton of speed. It was really satisfying to make the triple, but it was easy to get it wrong. The landing of the triple led into a uphill turn that had tons of large holes. this was a slow is fast type of turn. The turn led into the final jump of the track. It was a large double the led into a slightly off camber landing. Coming off the landing with too much speed led to some bad things... you had to get the speed just right otherwise you hit the beginning of the rhythm section really wrong or you simply flipped over in the middle of the lane.



















I had the honor of pitting with the AKA crew down next to HB Racing. All the major manufacturers were out in full force making for some really great competition.


















Another shot of some of the other race teams at the event.


















A shot of the HB, Mugen, and JQ Pits.





















I had a really rough go in qualifying... My E-Buggy fell apart on me due to some king pin issues. I ended up performing a mod which I will cover in a later post. Long story short, I couldn't catch a break. I had poor shock oil choices for the first qualifier, the second qualifier I broke, despite it being my fastest pace of the race, which only left me with my final qualifier.




For Nitro Buggy, after finishing my first qualifier, my brand new Picco Blast engine had a bearing failure, which caused dirt to be sucked into the engine... completely destroying it. I was really bummed since this engine had so much power and performed really well otherwise.

Gil Losi Jr helped me get my spare engine running before my second qualifier, but the engine had not been run in over a year and I barely made it through the qualifier.






After Failing to get the spare engine to run properly, and with 30 min left before my final qualifier, I went over to the Mugen pits to see if Adam Drake had any spare engines for sale. I was able to purchase a fully broken in engine, install it in 23 min, and have Adam help me put a tune on the engine all before my qualifier. I was able to make it with 4 min to spare and finally got a decent run on the track with my nitro buggy. If you have not used the OS Speed AD2 engine broken in by Adam Drake himself, you are missing out on some serious performance and convenience. The engine ran perfectly out of the box, and with a slight tune I was on the track racing without issue. I was blown away to say the least. Shout out to Adam Drake for creating such a great engine and providing such a awesome break in service.








One interesting thing was that the race got rained out at one point and all the pros started competing by trying to throw various footballs and Frisbees into two trash cans. Its really funny to see the pros get so competitive of even the most basic of challenges.






















The shot of the opposing "team"





The DNC 2020 was a great experience and I am really blessed to have been able to race it again this year.



Here are videos of my Main events! I was able to make One bump in Ebuggy!

Intermediate E-Buggy D main

Intermediate E-Buggy C Main




Intermediate Nitro Buggy G main

 Overall I had a great time at The 20202 Dirt Nitro Challenge. My HB Racing buggies performed great in the rough conditions. Thank you to my Sponsors Team Trinity and AKA for all the support. Thank you God for all the blessings!

-Matthew Garcia

4 cell Lipo Nitro Head heater

So I recently made a tool for me to use my 4 cell lipos with a 12 Nitro Head heater.

First, you dont want to kill your lip battery. I purchased a low voltage cutoff circuit to help with that. This device lets you set a voltage and cuts off power when the input voltage reaches the threshold you set. Get one HERE   The heater I used you can get HERE. The Voltage regulator I used you can get HERE ... You want the 10 amp version.

I ended up using an old box that a servo came in! I try my best to upcycle stuff when I can.






















I used a body reamer to make some holes in the plastic for the wires to go through.
















Here is a shot of the Low voltage cutoff circuit. You can just put the wires in the green tabs and tighten it down with a screw driver. Be sure to pay attention to the positive and negative terminals.















I measured/eyeballed where I needed to make holes and made some. I then put some clear double sided tape to secure the circuit in the box
















You can see the different wiring here. So the red and black wires will be going into the output of the voltage cutoff circuit. and the yellow and black will go to the head heater. But first we need to grind off those tabs so we can adhere this to the back of the box.




















I filed down the tabs with a small hand file.

Once things are smooth, You want to strip the wires and start connecting things.






















As described previously, you just hook up the red and black wires to the proper output terminals on the cutoff circuit.



















Once you have the wires connected, you can use more double sided tape to adhere the regulator to the back of the box





















Once you have things stuck together, you can add a battery connector of choice to the input of the cutoff circuit. My choice was deans!






Shoe GOO those holes!!!















Another look at the product.






















The particular heater I used came with a xt60 connector with some alligator clips. I just cut the clips off and soldered  them to the output of the voltage regulator. That is the Black and Yellow wires. Be sure to add shrink wrap and make thing look half way decent. Otherwise if you are not going for looks, electrical tape will be fine.



















Plug in you battery and see if it work! You can set the cut off voltage by holding down the button until the numbers flash. You can the select up or down to select your voltage and then hold again to make the selection.


I dont go lower than 3.2V per cell to prevent damage to the lipo. So in my case I set my 4 cell lipo to cut off at 12.8 volts.




 One important thing to note, I shoe gooed the wires coming out from and going into  the box in order to prevent them from getting pulled on. You can use tape or gorilla glue or whatever. I found that the shoe goo worked best and provided a clean look.






 Here is the finished product! The numbers read out the current voltage of your battery and I have found this set up works really good. I get about 40 minutes of heating from my 6950MAH 4cell lipo.

Thank you Jesus for such a great life.

-Matthew Garcia

RCGP USA 2019

The 2019 RCGP at Thunder Alley Raceway in Beaumont California was one of the most enjoyable and stressful races I have been to in a long time. I want to start by thanking RaceAKA and Team Trinity for making the finest products and providing outstanding service on and off the track.
 I would also like to thank Oscar Lopez for all the help in the pits! Thanks to the TLR and AKA crew with all the help on setup and in the pits! 

The track was very challenging to say the least. The shot above was in the early morning while many of the racers were doing a track walk.

The RCGP was truly a world class race with some of the best talent and brands from all over Planet Earth. It was truly a sight to behold seeing all different brands and RC media present.

Here is a shot of the pit next to the track, more brands, more racers, high tensions. 

More team pits back over by the restrooms. Most of the top drivers from all over the world were in attendance.

More team pits out in the field to the left behind the track. That blue easy up way back in the distance is where I was pitting with Oscar. The winner of the RC2 class Camden Lime is the white easy up pit next to the TLR pits.













More Pits in the field behind the track. So many manufacturers and their drivers were making their presence known.














A shot of the interview area where the paid pros got to interact with the RC media














A shot of the fully stacked pit stand. You can feel the tension in the photo, the pressure was real for the pro guys.














A shot of me living my best RC life! I may look ridiculous, but I love having my race videos to review in order to make adjustments and see how my car behaves with certain setups.





















The RCGP is a Nitro buggy only race. It was really refreshing to only have one vehicle to worry about and maintain. At the same time, you end up being hyper focused on setup and other changes.










I was working really hard to find traction with the control tires that were given to us. That was probably the worst part of this race, the control tire... I had a heck of a time trying to find traction where ever I could















This is the first Race where I tried out the new Picco Blast .21 engine. I literally broke in the engine the day before the race and it was race ready by qualifying. Going from the LRP to this engine, I noticed that the Picco felt much more powerful.












 More vanity shots of my buggy!

 This was a really interesting part of the race.. At the RCGP they use this rack/gate apparatus that is very reminiscent of motorcross style gates. I was really fun to pick you spot based on your qualifying and try to navigate the carnage the often follows a starting gate like this.

Another shot of the starting gate.

The coolest of this race is that there are limited entries and you get to be up close and personal with a lot of Pro Drivers. I went through the pit lane and snapped a few shots right before one of the Mains.

 My first time seeing an Sworx

 The JQ buggy looked surprisingly good.

 The Champ of course.

My qualifier with the start gate! Check out the carnage!



















My Main














I really enjoyed this race and I hope to participate again in 2020 if I can secure my spot. Despite the control tires and the interesting starting gate, and the pursuit of the setup I really had a great time at this race and met a lot of really cool people. Definitely going to put some of the other RCGP races scattered all over the world onto my bucket list of races I want to attend. Really great job done by the track crew and the race organizers for putting on a memorable race. 

Thank you AKA and Team Trinity for all of your support with keeping my tires, motor, and batteries dialed.

Thank you Jesus for such a great life.

-Matthew Garcia