wtcc5

Just awesome! Thanks for posting, documenting and writing up all details! The path looks really nice with a lot of ground change. I wanted to do something similar with my friends this year, but it didn’t happen, because of the different time schedules everybody has… Maybe doing it alone, like you did, is the way to do. Thanks for this report! It was a good read

Lets move to the front. This is "All new" how Xray would advertise. I reduced the complexity of the front, by redesigning the bulkhead and the body post plate: Front arms fitted: Then without pictures made, I added all the small parts left and now can show you the result of this conversion. Front in detail: Rear in detail: The whole new chassis:

This thread continues (finally) I printed all parts and threw them to the others. Where they caught dust for two weeks. Today then I had one of my favorite ways to spend a day: Watching motorsports and fiddling with R/C parts. It started with the rear section and the chassis plate. I drilled and thread formed every screw hole before installation. Overall I am pretty happy with all the 3d printed parts: Because of the use of Yokomo cardans, the rear mounts are wider and I cannot use the R/L-mount-connector anymore: After the chassis preparation I could finally install the tasty new gearbox: Everything fits very well. I was just surprised, that I didn't need the spacer for the forward gearbox mount... How do you like the shocktower/shocktowermount? The motor protector slides without gap into the rear chassis end: The only print I don't like are the rear hubs. The support was a bit ineffective and makes one side of the hubs look fuzzy. Luckily that is just look. The Yokomo axle has slightly different bearing distances what forced me to make my own hub... Both sides finished: The battery will fit too Rear completed.

@ruebiracer: I am unsure what to do with the dampers. Initially I wanted to use the BBX front dampers. This would be a standard 4 damper layout then. I also thought about using four short touring car dampers in a horizontal layout with a central mount in front. Tomorrow if time will allow, I will check if the latter could work.

With so many changes made, I want to make sure everything fits, so lets print: A day later and the car is parts again: The new arm mounts now are very close to the gearbox: The new arm extension design: ... and then I forgot to make more pictures The good news: the fitment is fine. The shocktower and the arm extensions will get another refinement. During the build, I was wondering why the rear tires have no toe-in, even though I made the arms pointing forwards. The Novafox must suffer from understeer badly, because the hubs are toe-out. So I will switch them later. This will also result in less spacers for the camber-link... nice As I also worked on the body and wing, I can present teaser pictures of the look this car will have:

@dmiles: It is a fun buggy, but not a performance machine. It tends to grip roll if there is more than loose dirt. My personal choice would be leftover electronics with a bit more steam to rip and bash.

@DPR250R: I really want to do that, but I want to use this car in the Tamico Offroad Cup. The rules are very open, but I have to use the original lower arms and the chassis. So an arms replacement is in this case not possible. Hence my struggle

I am having all kinds of mini problems with the rear at the moment... I printed the rear arm extensions, but because the Fox arm is not really short, it is in the way of the extensions, so I had to go for a wide design near the hub mount: A lower plate will connect the outer mounts with the arm. Like that, I get a good width: It is a bit close at the wheel and I don't like this design. Next, I added the rear dampers. Here again a lot of fine tuning is needed to get all the distances right. As you can see, I am not there, yet: Too much shims on the camber link, too. I can reduce it a bit in my next design, but because of the big spur Tamiya wanted for the BBX, I cannot do much here: Once I get it all right it will be a nice car. Already like the look, even though I will still change a lot: The last days, I worked a lot to optimize the rear layout. I will need to go all-in regarding the space and part design. For example: The rear arm mounts got a lot smaller to now fit 4mm closer to the centerline. This will allow the arms to move further in to have more space for a nicer extension geometry. Also the shocktower moved 10mm to the front to bring the damper more rearwards and allow big-bore-springs. The BBX rear springs are too stiff for my liking and this light car. In this process every part for the rear needed to be changed. I now fancy the use of Boomerang wheels and rear hubs to not get to wide in the rear. I bought golden Super Hot Shot wheels to keep the golden look

Had a good evening trying the prototype designs: The gearbox-shocktower-connector: Lower chassis plate: Gearbox installed: Rear shocktower and Avante mounts: Installed: Rear arm mounts: While I met the most difficult hole positions, I also made some silly mistakes having collisions with the gearbox housing and topdeck, as well as arms and lower chassis plate. Overall every part got a bit of change for production.

The F190 is in the top three of the most beautiful F1 cars of all time on my list and the F189 is pretty close. Here is my build/restoration thread for it:

Indeed a unique and narrow design. Maybe they tried to reduce power-on-oversteer… Final steps now for this pre-build. Tires and hexes or better call it circles were installed. I tried to install Super Astute tires… in front no problem. In the rear I learned that the later rims have a larger diameter, so I need to find other fitting tires from the Tamiya catalogue: That concludes the pre-build. On the weekend I worked a bit with CAD to implement the BBX gearbox. I had a unavoidable collision with the rear mount of the upper monocoque and decided to replace it with a upper plate, that will also support the rear shocktower. For the mentioned I ordered Avante rear shocktower mounts. The lower gearbox plate will also be replaced by a longer plate, that will also replace the battery lid. Like that I reduce the complexity of the buggy further and now have the feeling, that this will become a wonderful racing fox: A test print is produced as I write these words. I also build the BBX dampers last night and find them very smooth and easy to build:

I promised to look what I have and this is it: A lot more used than I remembered… The second set from the left are rain tires.

I continued with the rear: Seems like I forgot to make pictures building the diff... It is a unique design, very simple with clever ideas and very slim, but outdated and it looks like it breaks easily. The arms sit very tight in the rear and won't move on its own. Then it was time to attach the rear unit to the chassis: The motor sticks out quite far

I started the Novafox build yesterday. And like @Sgt.Speirs today said when we met: "Tamiya cars have a soul.", this car definitely has one. Already the first step makes this obvious with the monocoque design chassis: The steering assembly is as simple as in any F103 chassis. What disturbs my freedom a bit, are the uneven long steering links. The servo saver also doesn't meet my standard and knowing the high-torque won't fit, I installed it to see where it collides. For now it fits with a bit of shimming for the lower front plate. The steering assembly is on my list. The car definitely is a fast build: The front suspension is the Boomerang-standard and consists of many tiny screws: Unfortunately it has a lot of slop in the ballmounts and also comes with bumpsteer galore. The steering geometry is kind of off. Under full throw the inner wheel wobbles...

@ruebiracer: It is definitely the most versatile gearbox for its flat bottom mounting points, the sealed geardiff and the available slipper. The only downside is the 8mm high floating motor. That kind of disqualifies it for real competition in my opinion. For the Fox it is great, because it had the motor higher also.