What I do is just spray a lot of paint in the fins. You will see it only get 1 centimeter or so down. So take it am turn the body upside down and with a few taps on the table the paint should have flowed all the way down.

Hi guys, I thought I'd put a couple of pics of a 12th car design that I am working on at the moment. This is the first stage of the design, so it is n't anything totally differant to anything else out there at the mo. It uses a AE front end and a modified Trinity rear end for now but I am working on a new front and rear end which will be added later. The main features of the chassis is that is has been milled out under the t-bar. This lowers the roll centre of the rear end but can be brought back to the normal level by putting a washer under each pivot. I was aware that there was less material around that area of the chassis I made the cross brace fit at 5 differant points to try and add a bit more stiffness back to the chassis. I wanted to gauge some feedback from you guys if you don't mind, once the front end has been built, I will of course, stick some more pics on here, the same goes for the rear end, which incidently, should be something 'out of the ordinary' if all goes to plan! Cheers guys, Chris.

By the way guys, how do you get bigger pics on here? I had to keep making the pics smaller because it said that the file size was too big, so how do you put bigger pictures on here please?

to post a larger photo, I go to a photo album site and upload the photo there.

Then load the photo up in the broswer page and right-click properties of the photo and copy the link. Sometimes you have to remove the mumbo-jumbo from the end of the photo link.

So example, I posted a photo onto www.flickr.com

http://flickr.com/photos/10693482@N08/2133965435/

I rightclick the photo and the link shows

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2034/2133965435_272151fe44.jpg?v=0

I then copy that link and click the insert image button in the post and past the link. I delete the tail that is not part of the file path "?v=0"

The car looks very nice Chris!!

Cheers mate, I have a couple of ideas that I am working on in the chassis depatment at the mo. I'm going to cut out a hole a the front to mount my PTX transponder, that's quite fashionable at the mo and I may make a upper pod plate that has an extra hole sticking out to use one damper tube in the same manner as the new AE car uses the new shock for side to side control of the pod. Also trying something else out with regards to the t-bar. Then on top of all this, the front and rear ends need to be sorted! This is only ment to be for fun as well!!

Hello Chris,

nice looking car indeed! (great need for larger pics though )
I see you're using a Trinity BW based upper motor plate... no problems with the flex?
A driver at my local club is driving the Trinity BW and found it easy to break:

Black Widow new upper plate

Good luck with your updates (the single tube rear susp,...) !
Keep us informed/posted with pics

Grtz,
Benedict

Whilst on the subject of scratchbuilt cars...

Amazing...great minds must think alike because that is nearly exactly the same suspension idea I had discussed with Jason almost a year ago. The shock mounting is different but the bottom graphite link and top links are exactly what I was looking at.

Very cool stuff you guys are doing. Burt had some cool ideas he discussed with me a while back also. You guys have some real creative minds. Keep it up

It works pretty well too with 2nd place overall in the National Championships Sportsman Class (nothing faster than a 12x1) last season. First year back racing after a 15 year break too.

I started on the design back in the early 90's but never progressed with it due to giving up racing and the materials not being available. Carbon fibre was a lot more flexible then. It also looked clumsy with 6-cells in it. I did build a prototype back then but never drove it. Got some pictures somewhere.

Despite it looking like a lot of car it still only weighs in at 830 grams with a PT fitted. If anyone's after a compact pivot ball design I can recommend the centre pivot off the BMI. Couldn't have built the car without them!

Thanks buddy. It looks really cool.

Hey Paul,

thats a nice car, i've heard about your car and i've seen it running, i've just never seen it in its birthday suit before. What oil and springs are you using for your side dampers?

cheers Steve

Depends on the dampers. The side shocks i've used most have been off an AE 1/18th scale buggy as I've found the damping too heavy on the VCS shocks - too much friction in the seals. Tried the VCS shocks again at my local club the other night and the car was awful. Just finished refitting the Associated ones.

For the side springs I've settled on the AE silver. Ran AE green on the first prototype but there was less leverage with that set up as the shocks were mounted higher. I'd tested the shock set up on a modified L4 (no tweak screws) for 4 months before building the first prototype and tranferred that geometry across. I then lowered everything for the car in the pictures.

Damping wise I switch between 30wt and 40wt oil in the AE shocks. The 40wt still gives lighter damping than the VCS shocks fitted with 20wt oil!

We did some tyre testing a few months back and discovered the car likes a harder rear tyre. Been running Jaco Prisms and it cooks the yellow tyres within 4 minutes and the grip goes off. I just drove round the problem but I'd given the car to Andrew Smith to try and that's when we discovered what was going on. Now run Magentas when the grip is low and switch to Double Pinks as the grip goes up. Always run Double Pinks on the front.

What's the majority vote nowadays on bodies to use for med-high grip?