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This along sold me on this company. I was on the fence about this kit. After reading this he earned my cash.

My wife hasnt aseembled a kit so you could send one to me in advance. I ( she) will test those instructions out.....lol

Got to make you feel good people are so excited about the car.

If you need a proof reader let me know. I'd be happy to help out.

Tekno RC
I wanted addtional information on your article on Neobuggy, When you folks used the scales this was without the body correct. I was reading your comments some seemed logical but honestly I wasnt completely sold on your comments towards a twin pack setup.

I run a Serpent 811E on our thread we did a weight test and a balance test on pegs it came out very well balanced the 811 didnt fall over when on its pegs.

Since both cars were weight by different camps things will be different. Also as stated things can be altered with different types of batterys, tires. motor, speedo etc or added weight. We didnt add any weights to make up any differences.

I think you have a great kit but pending on the manufacture and how they design a twin setup it can be actually be = or more balanced pending on kit. A lot of other companies make a nitro then sell a E converstion. I bet you would find more issues with single packs then twin.

http://www.rctech.net/forum/electric...hread-170.html

I haven't built a kit in over 20 years, I'll test the instructions for you. I can't wait for my buggy!

Thanks for the comments. At the end of our article we mentioned about the motor and battery and how far they are away from center will affect the final balance. Honestly, the Serpent buggy is the best dual pack layout buggy because the ESC is far out on the right to balance out the motor better.

But others that put the ESC on the center diff or above the batteries really suffer (hence the article).

One thing I would note on the scale readings on the Serpent however is the difference (balance) between individual wheels.

Yes, when you add both the left tires vs. the right tires you come up with a good balance. And also when you add both the front tires vs. the rear tires. But the readings between diagonal pairs varies quite a bit. This will result in inconsistency. So, here's another critical measurement to look at.
---------------
Serpent 811Be:
Right Rear = 833 (43.4%)
Left Rear = 1087 (56.6%)
Difference = 254g (>9oz)

Right Front = 1025 (55.3%
Left Front = 827 (44.7%)
Difference = 198g (>7oz)

Diagonal
Right Rear + Left Front = 1660g (~44%)
Left Rear + Right Front = 2112g (~56%)
Difference = 452g (>16oz, more than one pound different)

Total weight: 3772g (8.298lb)

----------------
Tekno RC EB48:

Right Rear = 860 (49.7%)
Left Rear = 870 (50.3%)
Difference = 10g (.36oz)

Right Front = 820 (51.2%)
Left Front = 780 (48.8%)
Difference = 40g (1.43oz)

Diagonal
Right Rear + Left Front = 1640g (49.2%)
Left Rear + Right Front = 1690g (50.8%)
Difference = 50g (1.79oz)

Total weight: 3330g (7.326lb)

---------------

Given the above numbers based on the two (non-USDA certified ) scale readings for the two cars, you can see that the EB48 is well balanced left/right, front/back and also on the diagonal. The Serpent, while well balanced left/right and front/back has a very heavy left-rear and right-front to the tune of over a 1lb difference when compared with the other diagonal pair of wheel measurements. That's a lot of weight that is not in balance.

The other notable measurement is overall weight. The Serpent is almost 1lb heavier than the EB48. I realize some of the equipment is different, but we've weighed a couple other Serpents around here and all of them were about 1lb heavier with similar equipment.

We sincerely appreciate your post and comments as it really brought another aspect of balance to light. We're definitely not hating on any of the other cars or companies out there. We're simply trying to show (what we think is) an even better way of designing a 1/8th electric buggy. We hope you'll agree and share this info with other Serpent and dual pack owners.

Thanks!

I must say that i am about certain i am going try this buggy out as it is a very nice piece of work. My question is, How are you checking balance with shocks on the car? That is simply checking the tweak. If the spring rates are not dead equal on each wheel, or if the ride height is slightly different at each wheel, It throws the whole test off. The only way to fix this is to eliminate the shocks all together and use identical length tie rods in place of the shocks. This will make the scales measure the actual weight bias and not take spring variation into the mix.

Off this topic, I feel your pain on the instruction manuals. They are a pain in the ass. What i did for the release of my last 2 cars was i had my wife, who has absolutely no interest what so ever in RC build them. Needless to say, it took a while. Good luck with the car. Im sure you will see an order from me in the near future for one. I will say that i do love my Serpent car so its going to have to share the pit table.

I definitely see your point and agree that ride height and spring pre-load will alter the balance of the car. Finding the static balance is very useful in car design. We balanced the car initially in software without any effects of springs or ride height. That was the base line. But we think it's more informative to weigh and balance an actual setup that we are running. You can influence the scales with ride height and pre-load but you can kind of see in the pics that we didn't simply twist the shock collars to get better numbers as they are even.

Here's how the photos went down - I was running my car on the track. I thought, "Wow, my car is running really good right now. I really need to write another blog post!" I took the car off the track, put it on the scales and snapped the pictures you see in our article. I was amazed at how well our virtual concept matched the real thing.

We didn't measure each wheel in the computer (not sure how to do that actually), but rather the left/right and front/rear. However, we moved stuff around until we got everything where we wanted while being very careful to put opposing weight on either side at the closest possible longitudinal positions. We did this specifically to avoid the heavy wheel / light wheel issues we were seeing with the nitro converted layouts at the time.

But yeah, maybe later down the road someone will put some static links in there to see how it balances out without the shocks on there.

To be quite honest, it is more than close enough to work awesome. I have seen the worst possible layouts win and win convincingly. This is a solid layout and i am not knocking it in any way. I do not doubt the balance of your car. I think it looks like it balances out great. I guess i am just trying to say that the Serpent does balance out well also. I think the thing i like most about your car is everything is crunched very close together towards the center. Not just left to right but front to rear. That makes it rotate like a raped ape. You put together a very sweet ride.

Thanks protc3 and I definitely didn't get the impression that you were knocking anything, so no worries there.

I agree, a lot of 'not-so-good' layouts have been winning races for years. I think it's the combination of the driver and setup at the right track. There are so many variables. Along those lines, I know for certain that there will be some people that try this car and end up not liking it for one reason or another. It may not fit their driving style or they may not get it to do what they want in a certain situation. Obviously we hope that most people that try will like how it responds .

LOL, I've never seen a raped ape rotate, but I can imagine it's pretty quick. LOL!

Be prepared, there will be people who dislike but 99% of the time,its assembly or setup error.

Thanks for the respond can you explain you have way more experience. When we used the balance peg on the serpent it didn't tumble over to me that would indicate front to rear side to side vertically and horizontally balanced. Why didn't the serpent fall over it was almost one pound difference law of gravity would have pulled her down.

A balanced buggy that's weighted perfectly left to right only paints half the picture. Diagonal or cross-weighting as used in 1:1 motorsports might be better explained by the link below:-
http://grassrootsmotorsports.com/art...orner-weights/

A quick summary:-

Picture a square and put a peg in the center of the square. If you put any two equal opposing weights on it, it will balance and not tip over. It won't matter if the weights are on the FR or RL corner of the square for this type of balance test. This is why the Serpent car balanced on the pegs. The two heavy wheels are almost equal and the two light wheels are almost equal. So it's in pretty good static balance.

The inconsistencies (and we're not NASA scientists) arise when driving the car. Theoretically it will react in one axis/direction quicker than the other. This will affect left/right steering, landing and launching jumps, and going through bumps where the wheels are leaving and meeting the ground at different times.