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Too much work!!
kingr - 9/6/04 at 10:12 PM

Just thought I'd show you all what I've been upto lately and give a bit of a warning to those still at the chassis stage. I'll start with a bit of a story, are we sitting comfortably........

Back in the dim and distant past (last year) while I was still at the cutting up metal tube and welding it stage, I had some difficulty getting the curved sections for the rear panel of the chassis. To keep things simple (and because I don't like the tightening radius on the standard RC rear panel) I decided to use the same radius for top and bottom. It all went fine, and despite having tried to think of possible problems caused by doing this, I didn't think of any.

Fast forward several month and I receive my fibreglass bits (thank you Darren) and start to do the ally paneling, which goes fine, aided by the fact the I'm not contending with a composite radius. However, and I'm sure you've all seen this coming, with the suspension and wheels back on it suddenly becomes apparent that all is not well, the arches go further back than expected and there's approximately a 1-2 inch gap between the rear panel and arches.

Anyway, to cut a long story short (and it's been plenty long already), I ended up having to use expanding 2 pack foam, followed by fibreglass, followed by a skim of filler, followed by a respray of the arches (as if all that flatting wasn't enough fun the first time around!).

The upside of this is that since I was fiddling around with the rear arches anyway, I decided to mount and blend the rear light blocks, which I think looks pretty cool and I'm kinda fond of the swept rear arch look.

Here's a nice picture of the offending articles, the left hand one is properly polished and mounted, the right is just gently held in place.

Kingr Rescued attachment IMGP0339small.JPG
Rescued attachment IMGP0339small.JPG


blueshift - 10/6/04 at 12:38 AM

I don't get it. Why was there such a big gap just from changing one of the radii?

I ask because it's chassis time for us and we might want to do the same thing and order GTS bodywork.


Ben_Copeland - 10/6/04 at 06:48 AM

I'm using caterham rear arches, and about 1/4 of the way round from the back edge, theres a gap of an inch or so...

All i did was put all the bolts in the wing, and slowly tighten them up... it pulls the wings and ally together. sorted..

Might be the same as your talking about ?


kingr - 10/6/04 at 08:27 AM

blueshift : If you use a small radii the curve starts further towards the back, so you'd have a bit more flat space on the side to mount the arches to. With the bigger radii, the flat flange on the wing is trying to join with a surface that's curving away from it.

Ben : I think yours must have been a different problem, if I'd have tried doing that it would have just snapped the fibreglass flange.

Kingr


Ben_Copeland - 10/6/04 at 08:52 AM

Thats what i thought too... but the ally pulled a long way, before the fibreglass even moved