Originally Posted by
fredswain
It should be pointed out that the fundamental suspension geometry of the B5 was the same as the B4 and the B3, which was derived from the 89 and 91 IFMAR stealth cars so designing a whole new car isn't a must. They've taken what has worked and have constantly refined it over the past 25 years rather than constantly reinventing the wheel. Just because a laydown gearbox won the worlds doesn't mean that it's the best design. That's a bad trap to fall into just like thinking that the winning car's setup sheet is the ultimate performance potential for the car. Those setups keep changing though. Learn what changes affect the performance of the car and learn to tune around your own driving style and then evolve and improve from there. It's easy to copy what you see. It's hard to achieve the same results.
Correct!!! The molds are very costly so changing every year or so its going to imposible. AE will change a design when they feel they have to change so many parts that the complete platform is not competitive.
Doing injection molding is not as easy to do as 3D printing and the cost are astronomical when you compare the two. The laydown tranny does have advantages over the other designs but those advantages can only be noticed in very high bite situations. We only race on carpet, outdoors is mostly for nitro since the tracks are big and very nasty. 1/8 buggies and some short course trucks is what normally races here outdoor that are electric. So in my situation a low center of gravity will help. But that does not mean that a normal 3 gear won't be competitive.