Project Ringbearer: TLT-based leaf sprung monster

[Mad Ax]

Final order of the day was something to locate the battery at the front, and stop it lifting out of the tray.  A couple of bits of L-section will do that.

I had to completely disassemble the entire chassis to fit these, as I had to drill two new holes in the rails (first mods to the rails so far, I think?) so this part of the build took a long time

Filed, polished and fitted with proper screws

fin.

[Mad Ax]

So - we have battery, transmission, suspension, steering...  Next plan is probably to finish bracing the shock top mounts and work out how to fit the body.  I need to dig out the actual body I'm going to use on this rig and see if I filled the body post holes.  If I didn't then I'll probably just use posts and be done with it, if I did then I'll need to come up with a post-less solution.

Transfer case had been ordered but might not be here for a week or two.  That isn't really a problem, as I'm supposed to be racing the new rallycross car next weekend at Mendip, so I won't have much workshop time to fill.

Stay tuned for an update in a fortnight or so

[Aerobert]

This is such a cool project.  I love all the self-made parts and the fact that you have polished them. Looks great.  Can't wait to see it finished.  👍

[Mad Ax]

Well, after setting myself up for a two week wait, my transfer case arrived today.  It's a neat little thing, listed for 1:16 scale, but I'm sure the gears will be chunky enough for the light use this will get.  It's quieter and has less play than the last gearbox I ordered from Aliexpress, looks like it'll be easy to fit.

If only the evenings were warmer, I might get a little more done after work, but with another cold snap predicted, I think I'll have my work cut out trying to get the rallycross body painted ready for race day next weekend...

[Mad Ax]

The weather was really good on Monday, and although it was reporting around 8 degrees on the workshop thermometer, the sun at this time of year shines right into the back of the workshop from mid-morning until early afternoon, so I took advantage of the New Normal and had an early lunchbreak to go get some vitamin D.  It might have been 8 degrees, but the sun was strong enough that I could take off my thick coat and woolly had and, for the first time in 2023, enjoy being outside in a T-shirt.

I wasn't planning on just standing around in the workshop soaking up rays, though.  No, I had a transfer case to fit.

Here's the diddy little unit.

It might be small, but as I suspected, the gears are chunky.  This will be fine running a mild 540 brushless setup.  It seems better made than my last Chinese transfer case, too - very little float on either of the shafts, in spins smooth and free and is very quiet.  The only downside is the supplied screws are made of that cheap cheese metal, and the recesses for the nuts are too small to get a wrench in, so I had to use the blade of a screwdriver to jam them.  I'd replace the screws with stainless but I don't have any long enough.

I wasn't sure (and still am'n't) if I should mount the case above, below, or through the floor.  Whichever I choose, it needs to be more or less central, so I measured the centre point and adjusted from there (dead centre interfered with the existing screw holes).

That'll about do it

[Mad Ax]

For now (because it's easiest), I've fitted it on the bottom.  There's still buckets of ground clearance, shaft angles are good and it looks about right.  I think if I was to flip it and mount on top, the shaft angles would be wrong.

[Mad Ax]

However - it's possible the shaft angle from the transmission will be too steep here, so possibly I'll want to cut a recess in the floor to lift the transfer case by (at a guess) 8-10mm.  That adds a lot more work and gets rid of the nice flat interior floor for adding my electrics onto, but from outside it'll probably look really clean and ultimately, if that's what I need to do to make the shafts work, that's what I'll do.

It's kind of exciting that I'm not a million miles way from wiring up the motor and taking this thing out for a spin - but we'll have to see.  I'm racing this weekend and again in 2 weeks time, and the weekend in between I'll possibly head out for a walk, depending on the weather, so unless we get some warmer evenings it might be a while before any more progress is made on this one.  There again, I said that last time I posted an update, and look what happened!

[87lc2]

Neat little transfer case you have there, I like it.  As you said it looks like the drive angle from the trans > case will be a bit extreme.  I was going to suggest exactly what you said, cut a recess in the plate and get the mounting tabs of the case on top but leave the outdrives underneath.  Would probably give all shafts a decent enough angle for a leaf sprung truck.  Looks great so far.  

[Mad Ax]

So I had a look at this in a few spare minutes yesterday, and the angle from trans to case isn't quite as bad as it looked.  But, I think @87lc2 is right, it would be a neater solution to recess the plate.  There's loads of space to do this without impacting electrical mounting space.

Maybe I'll get a little more done late this evening, if it isn't too cold, and I get the van loaded up for Sunday on time.

[Mad Ax]

So!  I figured it was time to stop procrastinating and make some progress on this rig before I have to pack it away for the summer silly season.  First thing to do was finalise the transmission mount.

Here's the angle on the props again.  Front is fairly steep but it turns smoothly.

I had planned to recess the transfer case above the floor to reduce that angle, but then I'd have to chop into the floor to clear the props down to the axles, which would almost cut the floor in two.  Since I need the floor for rigidity, and since the prop was working fine like this, I decided to leave it be.

I would, however, have to cut into the floor to get the prop from the transmission to the transfer case.  I started by using a stepped hole cutter.

Then added another cut close by

Then I filed the join flat and polished it smooth.  I should have test-fitted because I had to take way more off, and could have saved a lot of polishing time.

Final fitted shaft

 

[Mad Ax]

I wanted to test-run this beast, so I stuck in the power system and took it out for a quick roll in 2wd mode.

It worked well enough, although the ESC needs some setting up, I'm not sure if I ever had a programmer card for it and the manual set up is really awkward (it requires squeezing and holding the throttle to enter a parameter, then looking up the number of flashes in the book, then throttling again to change the parameter before 4 seconds, otherwise it stores the parameter and exits out of the edit), so I just did the bare essentials and left it alone.

This has been a fairly tidy job so far, so I decided to be tidy with the wiring too

including this neat trick that I got from Roadkill Garage

While I was tidying things up, I cut the corners out of the battery door so they don't catch on the shackles when opening it up

[Mad Ax]

After that, I wasn't able to put off mounting the body any longer.  I have been using an unpainted body as a template, but with the truck nearing completion, I decided to get the Ringbearer body down from storage.  It's got some custom body mounts from a previous project (actually using the same chassis rails) which are making it sit way too high.

old body locating bracket made from styrene sheet

it was glued in there real well, and took a lot of effort with a Dremel to get it out

[Mad Ax]

And that's as far as I got.  I wanted to let it settle for a while before I started making body mounts, as I wasn't 100% sure how I wanted to proceed.  I didn't want to rush into making brackets only to pull them all off again next week.  I think I've got my plan sorted now, but I'm not sure when I'll get around to this again, as I've only got one more free Workshop Sunday between now and the 1st round of the Iconic Cup, and I haven't even looked at the M-03 since it raced in Carlisle last May.  I might get the odd evening here and there, maybe, but otherwise this one will go safely into a storage box so it doesn't get damaged while I get ready for the summer.

[Mad Ax]

Updates!  After pulling out lots of project boxes during the Great Workshop Tidy of 2023, I remembered how much fun I'd had putting this truck together and how much I was looking forward to doing more with it.

It was late morning on Sunday by the time I'd sorted through several tubs of screws, E-clips, springs, wires, body clips and all the assorted paraphernalia that gets dumped into To Be Sorted tubs while I'm working on projects, and put them all into the appropriate places.  So, I jumped up into the storage area and pulled this one down to start work.

I began with a (mostly) clear workbench.  There's always a few items that just sort of defy being put away.

This is what came out of the box.

The chassis looks pretty crazy, since this was supposed to be a basic chassis-rails-with-leaf-springs build.  All that extra add-on stuff for the shock towers and leaf hangers makes it look a bit mad.

I stuck on the wheels to remind myself of the stance.

[Mad Ax]

This truck has got a real classic look to it, even with the body just resting on the chassis.  Like something you'd have seen right back in the early days, when Bigfoot was just a promotional vehicle wearing off-the-shelf parts.

[Mad Ax]

I spent a long time deliberating over how to fit the body.  I didn't want to drill post holes having gone to the effort of smoothing over the stock ones, and most of the postless mounts that I've tried have been fragile or awkward.  I figured I could do something different here, since this is a scale build, similar to how I did the body mount on the tow truck.

First, I'd need some side plates over the chassis.  I had planned to stick on some ABS sponsor plates when it was all finished, but since I needed something structural, I decided to remake the leaf hangers.  I deliberated for a while over using aluminium or FR4, and in the end I decided black would look better than polished.  I mean, polished might have been OK if I'd made it full length (it actually needs more weight as the shocks and springs are too stiff), but I didn't have enough material for that.

So, I managed to find just enough FR4 left over from the Hotshot build.

I had to pull off the chassis rail, along with all the hangers.  There's a heap-load of screws to remove to get this truck apart.

So, these alu parts that I lovingly crafted and polished, well, they're surplus to requirements now...

New part roughly cut

[Mad Ax]

Test-fitting to, well, test that it fits

Now we have a side plate that fills the gap right up to where the body floor needs to be.  We can make a full floor later and screw it onto here.

 

[Mad Ax]

I made a replica for the other side, and filed them both down to a neater shape.

Here it is fitted.  New holes pre-drilled along the top to hold the L-section I'll use to attach the floor.  This saves me having to pull all this apart again, assuming I don't change the designs yet again.

And that's all I had time for.  I had to head into Bath to pick up my daughter, battling heavy rain and heavier traffic to sit in a supermarket car park waiting to transfer the child, like some dodgy black-market deal.  Still, it's really nice to be making progress on this one again.  Wife has decided that next Sunday will be Christmas decorations day, and there's still a garage clearance on my radar, so...  We'll see!

[Mad Ax]

Sunday the 3rd of December wasn't quite as cold as it had been for the previous few days, but it was still pretty chilly in the workshop, so I decided to light the burner for the first time this year.  I've avoided lighting it that often, as it's a thirsty old beast with a door that doesn't properly seal, and it can eat through a crate of precious firewood in a day.  Still, it was useful for heating up my coffee, which had gone cold while I faffed about with the kindling and environmentally-friendly firelighters.

I started the day by liberating some lung-damaging chemicals from a flat sheet of FR4 that was delivered earlier in the week.

The plan was to make a floor pan that the body would rest on.

Notched around the body mouldings.

To stop the body falling right over the floor, I glued on these strips of styrene box section.  I didn't have enough to do all of both sides (more has been delivered this week) but this was enough to prove the concept.

[Mad Ax]

The floor pan needs to rest on top of the chassis, but there are wires and things to accommodate, so I had to cut out a hole.

Slices cut with the cheap Aldi bandsaw, then drilled out for easy snappage.

Cleaned and filed (while wearing appropriate mask, obviously).

Here it be.

It fits!

[Mad Ax]

Properly lining up the whole cabundle wasn't an easy task.  First I laid on the plate, then put the body on top and shuffled it into what looked like the right position.

Then I used a marker to mark where the floor pan came to on the vertical plates.

I made these brackets from some alu L-section.

Then clamped the floor down to make the first drill hole.

All holes driled

[Mad Ax]

I decided to put a larger drill hole in so I can get to the set button on the ESC without removing the floor pan.

And here it is, fitted!

oh...

Well, that wasn't part of the plan!  Despite all my careful measuring, the body has ended up several mm further back than I intended.  I don't know where I went wrong - maybe I knocked the floor when I was making the mark?  You can see the mark here:

[Mad Ax]

The simplest solution was to re-drill the holes.  I took the opportunity to check and correct the centralisation, too.

That's better!

Lined up perfectly

Nice stance.  Kinda narrow, but that's how the stage 1 trucks were.

[Mad Ax]

After realigning the floor, it was catching on the slipper.

Solved

I'd gone to the effort already of making a rear battery tray, so I needed to cut more out of my floor to make it usable.

[Mad Ax]

At this point I thought I was done, and was going to come in for the night, but I knew I had to cover up the spring hangers at the front, so I dug out the original Clod bumper and made a bracket for it.

Nice!