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Fifty-Fifty: WT-01 Pro-mod with F250 body

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Something I've have in mind for an absolute age but only just got around to starting - my take on a pro-mod WT-01 monster truck.

The story begins way back in my early return to RC, the best part of 15 years ago, when I added a second-hand Blackfoot Extreme to my small but growing collection.  It came completely stock but was missing the original Tamiya hardbody and was wearing a pre-painted Cross Tiger shell instead.  I ran it as it was for a while, but I'd always planned on some upgrades.  I was new to the hop-up world and what followed was a mish-mash of unmatched parts that turned the original BFX into something overweight, overdamped and overpowered.  Unable to get the 14.4v 550s to play nicely with the Ho Bao monster wheels and axle wideners, I broke it up for parts and sold most of it on, promising myself that one day I would make something better.

For a long time other projects took priority, but in November I went to my long-ignored monster truck parts bin and pulled out all the bits I thought I'd need to build another WT-01.

Unfortunately I had only a fraction of what I needed, and what I had was badly worn, cracked in places and broken in others, so I figured the cheapest option was to start from scratch with a whole new kit.

I found an NIB Mud Blaster II on ebay for under book price, and ordered a JConcepts F250 racerback body, on the basis that this was designed for the Clod wheelbase (10.5") and might look a little neater than the short Brat body over the WT-01's long stride.  I already had a spare transmission with full bearings and a cracked case, an NIP case in which to put it all, and some lightly used dogbones and drive parts, plus enough new bearings to refit the new rear transmission and all the corners.

As a matter of fact even the F250 is too long for the WT-01.  I briefly considered making some staggered suspension arms on the 3D printer to shorten the wheelbase, but a recent post from top builder @IBIFTKH persuaded me to take the plunge and make some custom chassis plates.

So - what you see here - and this really is just a teaser of what's to come - is my own take on the WT-01 shorty.  The chassis plates are made of 0.5mm plasticard as a prototype / proof of concept / overall size check.  If asked I will say that I chose 0.5mm because it's easy to shape and can be cut with scissors as well as craft knife for a very quick build, but the truth is that I had lots of it lying around but I didn't have anything meatier.

I took an old cracked chassis plate and cut off all the protruding parts on the back so I could draw around it and mark all the holes.  I kept the body post mounts in the stock location because I'd already cut the holes in the body.  Then I measured that I'd need to shorten the chassis by 12mm at each end.  The rear was easy - I marked the stock transmission holes, then moved them all forwards by 12mm.

The front end was a different matter.  I hadn't noticed until @Saito2 mentioned in the Cars You Once Enjoyed thread that the front of a WT-01 has no kick-up.  The WR-01 has around 8 degrees in the dummy front suspension mount, but Tamiya didn't bother to make an alternative transmission housing or an asymmetrical chassis plate, so the 4wd version has that compromised front suspension geometry.  So, rather than just bringing the front holes back by 12mm, I measured back by 12mm at the second-forwardmost of the transmission mounts, then angled the entire transmission back by 8 degrees.  As you'll see from the photos this doesn't actually cost and ground clearance - it makes the centre of the truck lower but no lower than the centre of the diff housing.  It would be an issue if I was building a crawler, but this truck will spend the majority of its runtime rooster tailing on the gravel lanes on the Imber Range or tearing up the astro at Robin Hood Raceway, so that extra clearance isn't needed.

So - here's some rough teaser shots of the new chassis plates and the body in place.

IMG_20200115_204304_sm.md.jpg
IMG_20200115_204313_sm.md.jpg
IMG_20200115_204319_sm.md.jpg

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So - what's next?

Well, there's a lot of plans for this truck.  Lots of parts are on order so it won't happen too quickly, but here's a list of new parts that will be fitted:

Tamiya 50520 Short Shock II CVAs in 94mm trim

Yeah Racing swing shafts

Tamiya DT-03 turnbuckle set

Hobbywing 880 dual motor ESC for 3S power

 

Silvercan motors will be staying in place - I'm not going to bother with 4S and modded GT-550s like last time, it's too much for the chassis.

Chassis plates will be made from 3mm aluminium.  A padded space for a 3S soft case LiPo will be left in the middle.  A regular 2S stick pack will probably also fit for venues where hard cases are sanctioned.

Shock towers will be cut from 3mm alu to fit the 94mm shocks.  I will probably add multiple mount locations for tuning, because everybody knows that a shock tower with 4 mounting points is way better than one with a single mounting point, even if you never ever change the mounting position.

I'm considering adapting the servo mount so I can fit two servos up front.  This seems like overkill but it's the easiest way to make the steering arm length equal the suspension arm length for the least possible bump steer.  I had a similar arrangement on my old WT-01 and it was one of the better things about it.

 

I'll probably come up with some other stuff while I'm building.

I'm in no rush to finish but I'm going to the Tamiya Junkies meet on the 22nd Feb and I want this rig to turn a wheel on the astro on that day ;)

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Did a bit more work on Monday night.  I had hoped to be in the workshop on Sunday night but a recent cold snap took ambient temps down around freezing for a few days - still comparatively mild for the time of year but too cold for spending a few hours in a workshop with no heating.  In fairness I had spent a large part of the day in the workshop working on some household lighting projects, but I'd come in, had a hot shower and cooked dinner since then, and the thought of putting my dirty clothes back on to go outside wasn't appealing.

Anyway, no such fears accompanied my Monday evening, so I wrapped myself up in warm clothes, dug out the jigsaw and got cutting.

Bear with me because I'm "between cameras" at the mo - I don't like getting our family camera out in the workshop when I'm cutting aluminium or getting oily fingers, and my phone was perched on the shelf playing German industrial music through an ancient Sony hi-fi amp and some oldskool Wharfedale speakers, so I couldn't even take skanky phone pics.

Anyway - both chassis plates were cut and all the holes drilled.  The only real tricky part was making the slotted hole for the servo posts.  I could have drilled exclusively for my servo size but wanted to allow for some adjustment later.  I then screwed both chassis plates firmly together to tidy up all the rough jigsaw cuts with a file and make sure everything fitted perfectly.  I had to take quite a lot of meat off for the motors to protrude but otherwise the plates were perfect.  Oh, the servo is now off-centre and the horn doesn't twist properly, but I need to investigate my proposed steering solution anyway.  I am considering 3 possible options but I'll have to wait until workshop time on Sunday to decide which to use.

I got everything more or less ready to assemble but by that time it was late, I was freezing, and covered in polishing wax and aluminium swarf, so I left everything where it was and came in for a shower.  Last night I found 30 spare minutes to bolt the chassis together and see how it looked.

It looks somewhat leaner than expected
IMG_20200121_194532.jpg

Shortened chassis requires cut-outs so stock body post locations can be retained
IMG_20200121_194543.jpg

Stock chassis spacer used to make battery compartment closing panel
IMG_20200121_194551.jpg

Off-centre servo issue still to be resolved.  Battery compartment takes a soft 3S or a hard-case 2S stick pack
IMG_20200121_194558.jpg

Side-on shot shows how much ground clearance was lost as a result of adding 8 degrees of caster
IMG_20200121_194626.jpg

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Still a fair bit of work to do before I can even test-run:

  • resolve steering problem
  • pad battery compartment and make safe for soft case LiPo
  • fix electronics to outside of chassis

and then still more to do before the truck can be considered finished:

  • fit body posts
  • measure, design and cut shock towers
  • fit shock towers and CVA shocks
  • fit turnbuckles and CVDs to all corners
  • test-run
  • disassemble, sand and paint all alu components
  • prep, paint and decal body
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Amazing work! Would the GF01 8 deg front knuckles fit to add more caster for even greater improvement? I know they are silly expensive though. 

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OK - more updates.  I managed to blag an entire day in the workshop on Sunday with the sole purpose of getting some projects closer to completion.  I had hoped to fix the Clod first but I was missing some M4 allthread, so the WT got bumped up the list.

First-up I removed the front shocks and measured the shock mounting point's extended position relative to the bottom arm radius.  I made sure not to over-extend the suspension so I don't end up with binding driveshafts when the wheels are off the ground.

Next-up, I measured full geometry - bottom arm radius, top arm radius, shock top mount, relative to the centreline of the chassis.  Plugging all of this into Autocad Fusion 360, I was then able to add a 94mm radius from the bottom shock mount to work out where my top mount could be so as to have the suspension extended to the max I wanted with a 94mm shock installed.  Then I just moved around that radius to find what looked like good positions to add the shock top mounts.  I added 4 options, 6mm apart, and then another bigger radius with 4 additional points, so I have the option of installing longer shocks or lowering the ride height later.

Then I printed this out onto paper, glued it onto some 0.5mm plasticard, cut, drilled and test-fitted to make sure everything was dandy.

DSCN0201.jpg

Here you can see how much additional downward travel I have allowed for (compare to the rear bottom arm in the picture, which still has the stock friction shocks installed)

DSCN0202.jpg

 

Full compression with 94mm shocks is thus:

DSCN0205.jpg

 

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Next I went back to CAD and tidied up the design a little.  What I had so far was functional, but not pretty.  Then I had the genius idea of glueing the design directly onto the alu sheet so I could cut around it with the jigsaw.

DSCN0207.jpg

Unfortunately this didn't work, and the paper got lifted off by the saw.  No bother - I printed another design, glued it to some plasticard and cut around it, then used this to mark the rough outline onto the alu sheet.  Drilling the plasticard and the alu and screwing them together helps to keep everything in place during the drawing phase.

DSCN0208.jpg

A bit of work with jigsaw, repeat for the rear mount, screw both together, drill holes and finish edges with a file:

DSCN0209.jpg

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...btw please excuse the dog-ends on the floor - I was sawing at my wife's end of the workshop and she never cleans up after herself :p

 

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I digress...

Mount installed:

DSCN0210.jpg

At this point I only performed a cursory installation of the shock.  However it would appear that I have ended up with less extension than originally planned.  I either made a mistake when I altered my design or something when awry when drilling the holes.  I might have to go back to my design history as a mistake there seems more likely.  Anyway, it is of no consequence, as shall be shown later.

DSCN0211.jpg

 

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By this time I was way behind schedule and my workshop day was running out.  I officially only get one workshop day per month (assuming my other day off is spent at an RC event and I decide not to have a day writing music in the studio instead) and I wanted to make the most of it, so I put the camera to one side while I tested the suspension.  A surprising fact was that the Tamiya CVAs were way too soft for the weight of this chassis.  I suppose it shouldn't be a surprise because all that 3mm alloy adds a lot of weight, but the sad fact is the soft Tamiya springs bottomed right out as soon as I put the weight on them.

Now, I could have tried the hard springs, but the well-read among you will recall that I recently ranted about over-hard springs, and indeed I have a set of rather attractive 100mm coil-over shocks that have some hard springs attached, for which I can't find any suitable softer replacements.  These have come to my rescue, resolved my unexpected loss of additional extension due to whatever mistake I made in production of my new towers, and added just the right amount of springing too.  Also they partially solve the issue of installing a Tamiya ball-end spaced out 11mm from the bottom arm, because the bottom arm is stepped and Tamiya ball-ends only have a certain length of thread.  These shocks have integrated bottom balls so they can be installed with a long screw and a spacer.

That long bottom screw is now probably the weakest point in the suspension.  I'm not really sure there's a perfect solution, but a possible idea is to 3D print a part that 'fills in' the step by screwing into the stock assembly screw locations (WT arms are two-part screw assembly) and also into the shock mounts.  Resin 3D printed parts can be a bit brittle, but the ability to spread the load across multiple screws will reduce the likelihood of bending the shock bottom screw or splitting the bottom arm.  I will investigate that later.

Anyhoo - on with the project.  I experimented with a few locations but I think what I have now works best.  I can now drop the truck from about 2.5 feet with a 2s hardcase in the rails and it will absorb the impact without bottoming out or bouncing off the floor.  I tried from around 3 feet and the front gear case touches the ground, but I consider that OK because under normal conditions the gear case will survive an impact with the ground better than the shocks / towers / arms / other components will survive a shock bottoming out (which is what happens with the stock springs).  The damping looks great and the suspension is firm but compliant.  There's not quite as much static sag as I'd hoped for but enough to make it viable.  Considering this truck will be jumped, it's better to have the travel than the sag.

Now - the eagle-eyed among you will have noticed there are two steering servos.  One is a fast unit from Trackstar, the other is an old Acoms that had seized and had the innards gutted, so it is just a bearing.  I will add more photos / details later but essentially this is a way of reducing bump-steer.  It's not perfect due to the location of the servo horns but there might be a solution to that if I try some different servo horns that allow me to link both sides on a different radius to the steering arms, so I can mount said arms further inwards.  Watch this space.

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Finally, some gratuitous body-on shots.  I'm not a fan of the sunken-body wheels-way-out stadium truck look, nor the body-so-high-you-can-see-air-above-the-chassis look that comes with installing big wheels under a pickup shell.  For this rig I'm hoping to go somewhere in between.  My plan to use the stock body posts has been foiled by the shock towers, which will interfere.  Bad news is I will have to plan my decals to cover the holes I've made, good news is I can now install body posts where I think they will work best and not interfere with the rest of my design.

DSCN0213.jpg

DSCN0214.jpg

 

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Well written thread. I like the path you are taking with the truck as well with the home sawn components. I have to ask as I'm in a similar stage of my own project and also using Fusion360 for my design work. 

When transferring a paper printout to the material, do you pick up any errors from original design to printout and what format are you exporting your drawings to for patterning your final part?

I had intended to blue the aluminum, scribe, punch, drill and mill based on dimensions but didn't want to commit without a means to double check as I go from a digital design to a physical part.

 

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3 hours ago, geniusanthony said:

When transferring a paper printout to the material, do you pick up any errors from original design to printout and what format are you exporting your drawings to for patterning your final part?

This is a problem I crossed just yesterday, as I'm new to Fusion 360 and CAD in general, and I was surprised to find there is no simple print option in the app.

I designed my part as a single sketch.  I then right-click on the sketch in the tree view on the left-hand side, then click Save as DXF.  There are options for scaling which obviously should be left at 1.

design.png

 

Then I open the file in Inkscape.  Any program that deals in DXF files should be fine, but Inkscape is a proper vector graphics tool so in theory gives total control over scale and position.

From Inkscape I can print to an inkjet printer.  As long as the printer settings don't specify any daftness like Fit to Page or anything, it should come out in the correct scale.  I checked the first print with a ruler to make sure the holes were of the correct spacing.  I was able to glue my designs onto my plasticard and cut it to shape to prove it would fit :)

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In other news, the elves have been in my workshop again.  It's the only explanation I can find for the missing DT-03 turnbuckle set that I bought just a couple of weeks ago.  I can say I'm reasonably sure it arrived in the post because I think I remember opening the package and looking at it.  That said, I ordered quite a lot of packages that week as I was hoping to buy the last bits I'd need to finish this rig properly.  It's possible they never arrived.  It's also entirely possible that they arrived, got bundled up with a load of other bits (both RC and non-RC) and carted to the workshop, where they've been filed into an inappropriate place.  I've pretty much spent the majority of this evening turning the workshop up and down, then the places in the house where parcels get put, then all the jackets I might have worn while in the garage, car boxes that might have been opened while I stashed stuff away, the motorcycle tail pack, the van seats, a number of shelves that I rarely visit except to find things I've inexplicably lost.

So another set has been ordered, pushing the grand total for this build up to somewhere near an RTR stadium truck.  Which is quite annoying.

If the missing set turns up then fair play, I've got a few other cars that would benefit from turnbuckles.  But I'm now wondering if they'll go the way of the tailgate of my NIB KBF body, and never be seen again.

Interestingly I was only moaning just yesterday about the missing set square.  I had a tidy up of the workbench on Friday evening and I put the set square in its usual place, hanging from the end of the plastic racking on the block pillar.  The next day I was working on the garage when I was distracted from my task by the most almighty crash.  I leapt out of the way thinking the overhead storage was coming down.  However I couldn't find a single thing out of place.

A day later I went to retrieve my set square and found it missing.  It's a small thing but quite heavy, so it could feasibly have made that noise.  I pulled out the trolley (upending my cheap and nasty 40-piece tap & die set all over the floor in the process) but still couldn't find it.  Ideally I need a full tidy of that part of the workshop, as it gets full of leaves during the winter, so it will probably turn up then.  It's possible, I suppose, that it collected the turnbuckle set on its way to the floor and both are now lying lost and forlorn in the same dark and dingy corner, but I'll be surprised if I managed to miss both of them whilst pulling all the storage stuff out.

Anyhoo - that stopped play for tonight. I could have got on and sorted the body mounts but I decided to fix the links on the Mod Clod instead.  An extra 11mm each end (courtesy of some long RC4WD rod ends) has resolved the awkward stance and negative caster.  But that's another story.

I've managed to blag a solid few hours on Wednesday free from both wife and child, so time will tell if I manage to spend it all finishing this project (assuming at least one set of turnbuckles shows up and/or arrives in the post) or if I sack it all and work on some music instead.

:)

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9 hours ago, ThunderDragonCy said:

brilliant job. Loving this. I fully comcur with your stance on truck stance too, if you catch my drift. 

It is neither stanced nor a drift car, it is a monster truck....

 

 

;) 

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Updates!

Well - not too many updates, but updates nonetheless :) 

Been a pretty crazy week but I did manage to get in the workshop quite a lot, so quite a lot has got done.  My new DT02 turnbuckles arrived promptly so I was able to get on and fit them, along with the Yeah Racing CVDs.  Now I hadn't actually tested the stock Tamiya dogbones with the current level of suspension travel, but the YR CVDs don't like it that much.  OK, they're not completely binding, but spinning one wheel in the air causes the other to jump a little.  Not great for longevity, so I have opted to move the shocks to the upper row of mounts to reduce the downward travel.  This works a bit better for full upper travel too - when dropped flat the bottom of the truck will slap the ground, but when pressing on the nose the shocks bottom out just about the same time as the bumper.  That's not great if it lands nose-down from a jump, as there's a lot of weight in this rig.  So now it's likely to bottom out in a heavy landing and save the shocks, arms and towers from potential destruction.

I finished my steering system, although I didn't have any turnbuckles in the right size, so right now it uses 3mm threaded rod.  I will try to source some turnbuckles later, right now the costs are spiralling so I'm focusing on what I need to finish, not stuff that will rarely be used.  (Although in fairness I'd probably adjust the steering turnbuckles more often than the top arms...)

No pics unfortunately - my camera was inside and my phone was being used to play tunes thru my ancient Sony hi-fi amp via a skanky stereo-jack-to-dual-RCA lead.  That's how I roll in my workshop, none of your fancy Bluetooth-enabled battery-powered speaker with enough power to blow the doors off.  Call me old-fashioned but I'll stick with my Wharfedales and power consumption rated in polar bears per minute.

So - with functional steering and suspension, there was no reason not to go for a drive.  No body installed and 2S battery plonked between the rails, I went for a blast up and down the lane.  It's tarmac and poorly lit, but there are some uneven paving stones on the neighbour's drives that I can bounce over.  This truck handles like a dream.  With 2S and silvercans it doesn't really have the power to get itself in trouble, but those blue shocks are pretty good.  (I checked and they are the same as those on my Top Force Evo, and that's always done me nicely).  They're soft enough that the chassis gets some nice lean in corners (like an OG Slash) and transfers on accel and brake.  It handled the bumps on the neighbour's drive well.  TBH over really rough still it'll probably want stiffening up or it will bottom out all the time, but on the smooth it went really well.  The addition of front caster make it feel a lot more stable in a straight line, and I added a miniscule bit of toe-in too.  Otherwise the suspension is largely neutral.  (I haven't put it on a setup board yet, so it's just done by eye).

In other news - as the keen-eyed among you will notice - the truck has a name!!

It's been bothering me from the start, all good projects should have a name, and a monster truck should have a proper name that can be written on the side.  As I usually do when I get stuck, I opened up a Notepad editor and wrote down all the things about the truck that define it.  So - Ford, 250, dual motor, 540, 4wd, front/rear reverse gearbox, symmetrical (let's forget for now that it isn't symmetrical any more...  Actually the fact that it isn't symmetrical probably defines this truck more than anything else - and for that alone, playing on the symmetry angle seemed like a good idea).

And that is how I came about the name Fifty-Fifty.  It's an F250, so 50 is already part of the name.  It's symmetrical, like fifty and fifty.  And it's a custom rig, so odds of it finishing a lap are 50/50.  I kinda like it, anyway :)

Colour scheme has been locked in - decals designed and ordered, paint on its way to me now.  Just got to hope for a dry day to get it sprayed...

Here's a preview:

sample2.png

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This is reading really well, does need some pics though!

The name  suits the truck and I will most likely steal some of your ideas in the future  (my M03 / M04 Minortaur may get a reworking this year). looking forward to seeing the end result.

As for old-school hi-fi, after the hassles I had with my Panasonic wi-fi speakers hits weekend, I was desperate to free my AE109s  from the loft.  What are your Wharfedales?  I got my Mum a brace of Delta 30.2s a few years back. 

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On 2/3/2020 at 1:01 PM, Badcrumble said:

As for old-school hi-fi, after the hassles I had with my Panasonic wi-fi speakers hits weekend, I was desperate to free my AE109s  from the loft.  What are your Wharfedales?  I got my Mum a brace of Delta 30.2s a few years back. 

TBH I'd have to pop up on the shelf to check.  I got them back around 97/98 from a hi-fi shop in town.  I'd had some money come through, so I decided I'd kit out my studio.  I bought the Sony amp, Wharfedales, two Yamaha cassette decks and a Sony CD player.  Studio monitors?  I didn't start reading Future Music mag until a year later.  I'd never heard of studio monitors.  I thought a studio need whopping big hi-fi speakers, so that's what I bought.  I went with separates because I thought that would make it easier to hook up my keyboards and computer, but it didn't, I still needed a mixer.

TBH they did me well for years, I was still using them as my primary studio monitor until around 5 years ago until I joined the 20th century and bought some Alesis M1 mk2s, and they only went in the garage because I couldn't bear to get rid of them.  The acoustics are pretty bad in the workshop (mostly due to where the speakers are located) but they crack out a good beat when I'm up there alone on a cold night.

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More updates - pace has slowed down a bit over the past week as I've been waiting on (yet more) parts and been working on other things.  Been pretty much non-stop on RC since the end of December so it's nice to be drawing near to the end of this project and to the Tamiya Junkies meet on the 22nd, which will mark the end of a crazy period of modding.  Maybe I'll actually get to run something :o 

Anyways - I had trouble mounting some existing body posts on the chassis as it's a bit narrow, and making another bracket looked like hard work.  Fusion 360 and my Elegoo Mars came to the rescue as I managed to knock up a bracket in a couple of hours.

DSCN0219.jpg

Actually my first attempt went wrong - somehow I managed to measure the hole distance 5mm out, so having waited for 4 hours for the part to print, I had to discard it and start again.  Oh wells.  Then I ran out of resin printing the first one and had to wait 2 days to start the next.

Still, here's one fitted, using body posts that I had lying around:

DSCN0220.jpg

DSCN0221.jpg

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both brackets printed and fitted, and body mounted:

DSCN0222.jpg

DSCN0223.jpg

DSCN0224.jpg

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Tonight was supposed to be a long workshop night, but tomorrow is my daughter's 3rd birthday and we hadn't even wrapped her pressies yet, so I spent a large part of the evening covered in sticky tape and losing a fight with wrapping paper.  Next year I will 3D print a box around her presents and save myself all the hassle.

Anyway, I managed to find time to cut out some 0.5mm plasticard and fix on some sticky-back foam to make a battery compartment.  It will fit a 2S hardcase or 3S softy.  With the pack fitted I was able to mount my Hobbywing ESC and Turnigy Rx on the front body mount plate.  There's just enough wire to hook up the rear motor.  That done, it was time for a test-drive.

DSCN0225.jpg

DSCN0226.jpg

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Not too much of a test-drive - it's pretty dark in the lane behind my workshop and wet too, thanks to Storm Ciara, so I didn't really want to get it all wet and dirty.  No shell either as I'ill need to paint it this week, somehow, and don't want to get gravel rash on it already.

How does it drive?

Like a peach.  I'm really surprised at how well it goes.  3S power gives it plenty of punch, it will spin up the rears on the wet concrete outside my workshop.  It slides nicely on the tarmac but doesn't get too out of shape.  It leans and rolls like a full-size truck and although it will probably get itself in knots around a fast circuit, it's surprisingly good on tarmac.  There's a few bumps that I blasted it over to see if it would jump, and it does - takes off without hitting the ground and lands without bouncing.  Superb.

Current issues - I notice while it's on the bench, the bottom arms are twisting under torque from the shocks.  There doesn't seem to be a solution to that.  I have to have the shocks mounted that far out so they don't touch the towers.  I suppose I could space the towers forwards and mount the shocks in behind?  I'll have another look at that another day.  I probably need to design a brace for the arms like I promised, I have a feeling the screws will twist out of the arms sooner or later.  I don't usually add alu arms as they transfer too much force into the chassis in a crash, but in this case it might be necessary if my brace doesn't work properly.  I'm investigating some tougher resin which might enable me to make an entire new bottom arm (or part thereof) which will have deeper shock mounts.

At the moment there's no battery strap / top cover.  Not sure what the long-term solution is.  I don't have a strap long enough to go around the entire chassis and TBH that's a bit ugly anyway.  It would be nice to print something out but I can only print small parts on my resin printer.  I need something in place before the 22nd as I'll want to run it on the big track.

Decal design has been sent off to a local mate for printing, other generic decals on their way from MCI.  Body is cut, JConcepts lexan cuts so smooth that it doesn't really need any finishing either.  Will wash and mask it tomorrow night and find time to clear off the paint bench this week.  Then it's a case of waiting until the humidity is low and leaving the halogen lamps on for long enough to bring the heat up.  Got a two-colour design in mind that should be done in no time.

Virtually all my other cars are ready for the Junkies meet so I've already started playing with stuff in prep for the first Iconic Cup round in April - more threads about that in the next couple of weeks, I expect :)

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