Wreck it Sideways

Last week, I’ve posted some teasers of a project of mine on our Facebook page, as well as here on our blog. In the pictures you can see, amongst other things, sketches for a new chassisplate for an RC car. This is part one of my buildthread, which shows you all the steps that were taken to build this chassis.

Read more after the jump….

As some of you might know, Ricardo has modded his Cyclone 1st gen to a chassis with the battery laying perpendicular to the drivetrain, which improves the L/R balance of the car, as well as the F/R balance and the center of gravity of the car. After doing some research on the internet, I found this pic:

This car is being driven by someone from the Hikotech RC track in Japan. I decided to name the chassis after the place where this conversion was first done, that’s why it’s called the TC-H. After seeing some more pictures of it and measuring Ricardos car, I found myself inspired and started drawing.

This is a first sketch of what the chassis plate should look like. Both Ricardo and the Japanese guy have just redrilled their stock chassis, but I wanted this one to look professional, so I decided to make an entirely new plate out of 2mm thick carbonfiber sheet.

I chose 2mm thick over the common 2,5mm because this will give some additional flex to the chassis, which is a good thing(up to some point of course) when drifting.

This is how everything looks like on the carbon sheet. I’ve covered the carbon with some 3M masking tape, so that I can easily draw on it, and to protect the carbon.

Then I centered the holes…

… before I drilled and counter sunk them. This is done in order to make the bottom nice and flat, and to protect the the screws.

Here you can see how close the new carbon is fiberwise when compared to the original chassis.

Then I’ve started cutting away all of the exces material with a small grinding wheel on the Dremel. With that done, I used a sanding wheel to make all of the curvy lines on the chassis plate, after which I sanded and filed the edges so that they’d be straight.

And this is what it looks like now! As you can see, I havent sealed the edges and holes of the carbon, since I can’t find my tube with superglue…. Left is the original one, the sketch is in the middle, and the new one is on the right.

I am very pleased with the result so far, now I’m just waiting for some 100 USD in spares and hop up(and CS) part to arrive, and then I can start assembling the chassis.

Stay tuned for more, since there is still a lot of work to do to this chassis before we can test it!

Note to self: Buy an even better dust mask, still experiencing the taste of carbon after 24 hours and the accompanying headache is a sign that you’ve breathed some carbon dust… and that stuff ain’t good for your health!

– Bop