Modified Carisma GT14B - The Switch Hitter

[matisse 1581]

My second time around at this hobby was back in the late 2000's, it when i first found TC and actually took up racing rather than bashing. I severe lack of clubs in the bristol/bath area meant that it was really Micro racing as far as buggies went (never been an on road'er), so Micros it was. 

FF to 2011 and i'm part of the crew running the BRCA Micro Section and it's national series. There was a lot of change in the micro scene then, RC18's & Mini-T's gave way to the FTX Blaze/LRP Shark, which then got lengthened and had big bore shocks thrown on (my fault) and then the Carisma GT14B came along.  At the time is was a pretty standard 1/10th 4wd buggy shrunk to scale, slipper, ball diffs, saddle packs etc.  all well and good and very fast, but i couldn't help fettling and ended up creating a chassis that was a little ahead of its time. Here's how i described it back then....

"After a year of running the GT14B i started to think of how it could be improved and ended up designing a new chassis - The Switch Hitter.

The key concepts behind the Switch Hitter are:
More even weight distribution (and hopefully improved handling)
Increased battery space
Increased flexability for electric installs.

Weight balance is the key, as the entire chassis stems from here. One of the signature parts of the GT14B layout is the saddle packs, which in a 16th scale car, forced the motor to be placed at the front of the car, in this case front right. With the motor weighing close to 90g, it always seemed to effect the handling by pulling the car right under acceleration and causing it to be a tad nose heavy in flight. (at least i thought it did)
so, as i've never been wedded to using saddle packs, what happens if we rotate the motor mount by 180deg and have the motor at the back left?

okay so it's not rocket science, but it should be easier to balance the car with the motor on one side and a lipo on the other at the rear.
I'm hoping that this configuration will also take the bite out of the steering, making it an easier drive and provide a better front/rear weight balance.
Those of you who are awake will have noticed that this means you have to run a single pack lipo, but i don't see this as being an issue, especially as the saddle packs are costly and hard to get hold of.

quick recap then;
1) weight balance - check
2) larger lipo space - by altering the layout and having the longer drive shaft to the rear of the drive train, we can fit a lipo of up to 65mm between the posts (and probably 75mm if you take the posts out).
a quick look around has thrown up lipos of up to 1300mah that will fit, more than enough juice i should think.
3) ease of electric installation - check! with no motor up front, the servo can go on either side, with your esc of choice and rx as well, no need to mount it on the top deck.

oh, and the name? Well, it's october and i've been watching far too much baseball. "

 

And then a couple of years later I sold it.... big mistake, huge. but I dropped out of RC and when I got sucked back in earlier this year, i started looking for one ( a few were made, but not many). I thought i'd never find one again, but then...

It's not even my old one, which is even more amazing.

so in essence this is a rebuild thread for a lot love that I found again.

 

[matisse 1581]

already stripped it down and given everything a clean, and then had a brainwave, now that i have the chance why not get the chassis copied? that way I can run it without worrying about it being a one off. Shipping it to a bud tomorrow to begin the process.

 

[ACCEL 2014]

"Lurking among the gothic shadows of Bath", is Mad Ax's location,, he's up on all the racing in your area i believe , hit him up, he's a masterful kinda of guy and he's swell to.

[matisse 1581]

12 hours ago, ACCEL said:

"Lurking among the gothic shadows of Bath", is Mad Ax's location,, he's up on all the racing in your area i believe , hit him up, he's a masterful kinda of guy and he's swell to.

yeah, were part of a local bashers group back in the day.

not much has changed, in fact the scene has got worse in someways over the years here.

[matisse 1581]

Chassis is off being scanned and put into cad with a buddy.

Aiming to tidy up the hole placement a little and looking at whether it’s possible to lengthen the chassis to increase wheel base.  It’s currently 190mm wheelbase, which is part of the old BRCA regs for micro racing, but at 210mm wide it’s a weird shape. 
 

To make this work though we’re gonna need to find longer central drive shafts.

the current set up uses two dog bone shafts of different lengths, with the shorter at the front of the slipper to aid weight balance. 

To keep a similar layout but accommodate a longer chassis we can use one of dogbones that drive the wheels and the longer centre dogbone in a similar layout.

 

That’s an extra 27mm which would push the wheelbase up to 217 (perhaps 220), which is into the 12th scale buggy range.