DavidNERODease

The rear of the Eclipse is not anchored to the chassis - they just put the spring back there instead of putting the spring on the centre damper. Awesome video though. I have studied every Corally design but had not seen this which I think is brilliant.
http://www.rctech.net/forum/attachme...209-x-907-.jpg
Just add pivot balls instead of using a flex plate and it would be awesome.
The John Elliot Honda House special had the rear centre pin and was pretty good apparently. Still very different from the Eclipse which is a normal link car in disguise.

XCELL

iTrader: (10)

I think Schumacher missed an opportunity to really get into the 12th scale market by sticking with this concept. Just my opinion of course...

Patrick

DavidNERODease

Myself and another racer pick up our kits from the local LHS (Cedar Creek Hobbies) this Friday. I will start the build this weekend. To me the chassis looks almost perfect. My only concern is adjusting front ride height - if the ride height shims from my X12 fit this car, I will cry real tears of joy.

DavidNERODease

Wow, this is a beautiful kit! The steering knuckle is crafted from hard anodised aluminium and well everything just looks wonderful. Kit came with tools, all the fluids even thread lock and battery tape!

DavidNERODease

The manual looks like they actually built the car before printing it! It has proper tuning tips. I love Schumacher.

DavidNERODease

It came with the optional body height adjusters too and I just love how when Schumacher announces a kit... you can actually buy it!

TrevCoult

Just use the supplied kingpin shims, it's pretty easy.

Happy you like the kit! Yes it does come with pretty much everything you need. Any build questions just ask. The setup at the manual is a very good starting point.

I recommend you polish the kingpins if they aren't already a mirror finish, and also sand and seal the lower beam with CA, a good technique for this is on the CRC web site.

DavidNERODease

https://photos.app.goo.gl/bQS8giQz8CbFSQZA9
A closer look at the beautiful steering bits!

Erhard

We have also bought one from CS electronic which is in our neighbour village.
Now we have Eclipse1 and 2 in the family.
My son will have the E2. I prefer the E1 for its superior front end design, which does not automatically imply its faster.
The new front of the E2 is very stiff due to the alloy hub carriers of the Atom. Seems to be less play in the front wheel guide. The front wheel of E1 has quite much front wheel play, which i dont like. It is mainly caused by the upper ball joint, but also the hub carrier hole tolerances.
How can such a wheel be reliably kept in plane with the road/track surface? Under load changes it wobbles some degrees of angle.
I find it funny to then adjust camber in 0.75° steps.
Situation is much better for E2, but also here hole tolerances could be tighter.
At least its low in friction already without grease lubrication.
I dont know what status is with the competitors chassis. I came back to RC cars because of my son and we ran Schumacher Supastox now for 2 seasons.
The last time I raced before that was with the legendary Schumacher C-car in the 80's.

BR Erhard

cyclone

The first UK BRCA Modified national was last week. First time racing the Eclipse 2 production car for myself and it went almost great in Modified! 3x Eclipse 2's in the Mod A main.

Im Andy Murray, teamdrive for schumacher 1/12th cars in the UK. If you have any questions i'll try to answer them on here as regular as possible. Please ask and i'll try to response when I check back here.

Shame I crashed at the start and a few too many times. The car drove fantastic. Next time!

Maybe see some of you at the IIC in a couple of weeks?

DavidNERODease

I'm still building - builds super easy but I'm very meticulous these days. The rear pod assembled perfectly. My first club race will be next Friday.

Erhard

Hello Andy,
this sounds great! I hope you will let us know about more good setups (in addition to the manual suggestion), if possible.
For me as an engineer I can not understand, why the chassis was so radically cut by long slotted holes, just to to have adjustment for the servo, which is rarely needed to this extent. It almost looks like a predetermined breaking point and is a very asymmetrical kind of weakening the chassis with no need. Especially with the upperdeck front mounted, there is only a little part of the chassis that can take some energy from a front crash. I am sure you had no direct problem in a race, but longterm, we use chassis for a season, and this is certainly not prolonging chassis live. For that design, I hestitated buying the car for quite a while. But what should I do, Schuhmacher is my favourite brand since the C-car.
Sorry, I seem to be always complaining, but my intention is to improve things.
Maybe a better way would be to have the slotted hole in the servo mount, not in the chassis. I know, servo mount is an issue always ;-)

Is there a way to tune the Ackerman steering, or would you say it already is optimum like shown in the manual? In the manual, there is no suggestion made.
I observe less than Ackerman geometry for low angle and more than Ackermann for very wide steering angle. Bump steer is moderate to none, depending on angle and whether its inside or outside wheel.
How much steering maximum angle would you suggest? It has wider limits, than superstox for example. Also no suggestion in the manual.

Best regards, Erhard

Erhard

One more question, what is roll centre shift, mentioned in some spec sheets? Is it tilting the side bars, by raising the front joints ?
It would to my understanding shift the roll centre at the position of the rear wheels, as well as tilt the roll axis (which always goes through the the pivot ball joint.)
I used that a lot for the Superstox due to its much to high roll centre.
2nd question, is there a list available of the spring stiffnesses (N/mm) of available springs? The superstox springs came with stiffness data, which made it easier for spring decisions.

BR Erhard

cyclone

Hello, BR Erhard.

Actually the chassis strength in front to rear bending is more than adequate, even including the slotted servo mount design. Myself and many of the team have been running this design on heavier ATOM cars for nearly 2 years. I have also done tests for nearly a year now with it using modified 1/12th scale on the original Eclipse. No chassis damage present at all.
Further, due to not using countersunk screws, but flat based (special servo screws), there is zero offset strain on the chassis, which we believe to be the real reason to avoid having an asymmetrically mounted servo to the chassis.

We have tried to optimize our own completely unique geometry. This includes camber, caster, axle trail, kingpin offset, width, wheelbase and ackerman. They must all be considered as a set, and that is why our ackerman is very different. The hub position is where you find our change for this. The more rearward trailing arm gives more inside to outside wheel lock difference than other brands. If you wish to go to conversion, there is another hub position to achieve this. But i never run it.
My setting is done on arrowmax setup gauges and i always set the inside wheel travel to between 30° and 31°.

By the way, I have mapped the commonly considered 'Ackerman' change by moving the servo saver balls forwards. I moved them 4mm forwards of straight, and the actual change to inside- outside wheel lock difference (ackerman) was so nominal it shouldnt really be considered as this tune. I think the maximum variance at any degree of steering angle was 0.1°. For this reason, we use a slightly forward in the middle link angle, to provide between inside wheel control on lock.

If you look/ use the pod base parts from the eclipse 1 kit (still fits), you can adjust the height of the centre pivot ball. This front/rear axle through this ball is the roll centre at which the rear suspension rolls about, and is its roll centre. I always use the eclipse 2 setting now. The side links need to be adjusted to the same height, so look at the eclipse 1 documentation if you wish to try it, but there is really no need. Our lowest roll centre is best, only to be raised if traction roll is unavoidable any other way.

Schumacher 1/12
Rear Spring Chart
black = 3.87lb/in
silver = 4.62lb/in
gold = 5.52lb/in
old white = 5lb/in
Nickel = 6.5lb/in
old Yellow = 7lb/in
old Blue = 10lb/in
new red = 10lb/in
black ultra = 13lb/in
old green = 14lb/in
old red = 19lb/in
old black = 26lb/in

Front Springs (gt12)
Black = 7.42lb/in
Silver = 8.91lb/in
Gold = 10.69lb/in
White = 12.83lb/in

Hope this helps,
Andy.

Erhard

Hello Andy, thank you very much for the valuable and highly appreciated information!
Regarding the roll centre, there is an adjustment of a different kind possible, this is what i mentioned earlier:
It is not a law of nature, that sidelinks have to be parallel to the chassis. Imagine yourself, what happens if you tilt them a little by raising the front ball joints.
The roll axis still goes through the pivot ball centre point. But now it is also tilted in the angle of the side bars!
Now the roll centre is different, because the roll center is the height of the roll axis at the position of the rear wheels/rear axis. The roll centre is not the height of the pivot ball anymore.
I found that at least Robert Krens used this type of modification (U4594 is used as a spacer, U7297 is the connecting bar between chassis and side-link joint:
"Used U4594 to raise U7297 = Raised side link +2.5mm. "
Link: Google--> schumacher eclipse setup petitrc take Robert Krens MoF Limburg

Is this what they mean in the eclipse 1 spec sheet for roll center shift? or is it as you mentioned just raising the pivot ball?


Best regards,
Erhard

P.S.:

I tried to illustrate how to lower the roll centre, by tilting sidebars, but it seem i am not allowed to upload yet in this forum :-(