Pan Car Body
 

RED: in post#142 you have pictures of HPI proceed body...is there a 1/10 pan car version? Where? Sotrmer hobbies has some but they are not in stock...

YYHayYim-Hot bodies makes a pan Toyata GT1 body, but it is a wide body. It will not fit your car. I am making modifications to my car in the future to make it wider. This is not needed. It's plenty fast. I just want the experience of the wide car, so I can write about it. I have a nice piece of 6061 T6 Aluminum on the milling machine right now.


axle182-Thanks for the post. I started with stock setup too. It did not work too well as it had a couple of problems on my track.

The wide car will give a significant amount of additional rear traction (think Pontiac Grand Prix's old slogan - "Wider is better". . .it does make a difference) and, with the high downforce bodies (like the Peugot and the Toyota) you'll see immediate improvements.

We've tried other bodies (like http://www.vansinvent.com/jpegs/d054c.jpeg ) which did okay, just not as good as the "big two" - the downforce that they create is a significant portion of what you'll be feeling. I highly recommend that you at least give it a shot. If you don't have one or can't get ahold of one, PM me and I can sell you one of my spares (I have both Toy and Peu)

as far as the axles go - I've broken and bent enough for 3 people. . .all by myself! :D Actually sheared one and had the diff plus wheel go spinning one way with the rest of the axle and the other wheel going the other way (and car sliding to a stop. . .)

I, personally, like the yellow RPM axle - it's fiberglass and is slightly flexible. Not good for putting power to the ground, but good for durability. The stock AE axle (and others) is durable and works great. You shouldn't ever need to tighten down hard on that little stud (on the diff end). . .Your diff shouldn't be that tight. . .


The double-clamping hub on the left side (non-diff) is a great addition, even without the diff-side hub. When we had new people get cars, this was one of the very few "essential" hopups we recommended.


Glad to see you making such good progress John! :D

Boomer-Thanks. That extra downforce is what I wanted to experience. I have a long fiberglass axle on the way.

vtl1180ny-put that 3.5 in there and give us a report.

Here is a pic of the Front end widening kit. The parts started out as 1/4 inch 6061 T6 Billet. The part is .125 thick at the chassis, it rises, tapers and ends up about .1 inch thick on the outside end. Finish is a Satin Bead Blast Finish. I have removed the bumper for clarity in the top view. The tie rod ends are not hooked up.

John

boomer,

I have tried widening my pan car rear wheel by putting spacer. It felt better in going through chicane or s curve. However, to my surprise, my car had tendency to oversteer if compared to previously neutral car.

I'm not a chassis engineer but I suspect that the tire outer edge exerted lesser pressure thus it lost some rear grip.

I don't know all the details about your car, however I do know that we have worked with this before and in nearly all cases a wider car was more stable and, ultimately, faster than a narrow car. I believe the only case when narrow is faster is in straight-line speed and that is only because of the reduction in frontal area or some such.

If you spaced out your rear axle, you only spaced out the one side, right? In order to get the width out of the diff-side, you need a different diff-hub for that (don't know the part number) as well as to carefully space out the other side.

If you just space out the axle and then remount the body. . .it's going to be crooked so I'm not going to assume you did that. :D

But making a narrow car wide is more than just spacing out that axle. . .

You'd really need a wide pod like that off an L2 or similiar, plus the correct axel for it....

The Pantoura and L3T use a 12th scale pod and axel....

IRS makes a 1.25 inch left side clamp on hub. This and a spacer might work for an experiment. I have the long axle and right hand hub coming as well. I agree that a wide pod would be stiffer and better on the left side, but offsets of the wheel to the pod on both sides will be similar with a narrow pod. Anyway what I am looking for in the wider car is that 17% increase in front and rear downforce from the wider body. In theory if you widen front and back you get less lateral weight transfer also. This alone should improve the car. If you just widen the rear you may be changing the relative roll stiffness of the back compared to the front causing the loss in rear cornering traction.

Boomer,

Dont worry I am not that stupid in putting the spacer only to one side of the car. Making one side wider than the other will cause the car to torque steer as you floor the throttle.

HPI 10g rear pod is really narrow, so I dont need to buy new axle to make up for the extra spacers.

Even for my 1/12 L4, I replaced the original AE axle with Kawada axle, you can add 2 spacers safely without having to worry that the axle runs out of length.

John, you don't happen to have a relative named Kevin from Upstate NY???

Not that I know of.

I installed the low roll center kit today. I used steel Losi JRXS female ballstuds (ballmares) instead of the supplied aluminum ballstuds. I would rather have the better wear resistance and strength on the 1/10 scale. I had a few problems at the track. The servo came loose from the pan from vibration. The screws were loose. Might be good to put some LocTite on the screws coming up from the bottom.

First Crash Damage.
I had a rear side pivot female ballstud pull up through the lower pod plate from a crash. The center ball which is hard to tighten was also loose which probably put more load on the side pivot. The new low roll center ball can be through bolted with a locknut on top so this should eliminate this center ball coming loose. I was planning to replace the philips head screws, which have a smallish head, with Associated Flat head machine screws. I had done about half the screws near the center pivot. I was waiting for the low roll center kit to do the other half. Too late. The bigger head on the screw should prevent this type of damage. The Associated screws are also slightly proud of the surface so they act as skid protection on the bumps. I can replace them as they wear.

I run the narrow 12th scale rear pod on my X10 without any problems. I use spacers on both sides to correct the width. I also use Corally longshaft pinions to reach the spur.

thanks for the report.

I received my Wide IRS axle. To my surprise it is a nice graphite piece with a D ring flange although it's advertized to be fiberglass. I took some measurements. It looks like I will only need a 5.5 mm spacer on the left side. 9.5mm spacer on the right side. Pinion is just shy of reaching the gear. Still have to test the low roll center kit and the 200 mm Lotus body first. Then I'll do a wide car test.

I found the long shaft pinions and Corally Jack the Gripper available at Corally USA, so I will shoot for 235 mm rear width.

Most important is that you get the axle centered correctly. From what I recall, my rear axle is somewhat narrower, I believe approx 220 mm. You can use it as a small setup aid. Wider rear axle means more steering.

I have the rear spacers made now to widen the car to 235 mm. Width and symmetry are within less than .5 mm. You can see the problem with the pinion not quite extended far enough. I have the longer pinion on order. Thanks for the tip.

On my car the front is 15mm narrower than the back. This might be part of my problem loosing the back end. I am going to start out even and full width front and back and make changes from there.

Also notice that the Aluminum pinion shows some wear, but it is very even wear across the teeth since I have added shims internally to prevent gear wobble. I have steel pinions on the way. The gear should have less loss to friction with better alignment.

The New IRS diffs with ceramic balls are silky smooth compared to the old part. It also takes quite a bit less tension to prevent slip of the gear. Some of this extra smoothness is probably due to having a center ball bearing on the diff gear.