Hey all, remember me? (probably not)
It's been a few months, but... well... I'm back. I promised a slow build, and that's certainly what this is turning out to be. I am making progress however at $20 a month! Now, there was a bit of criticism about using RC parts to build a vehicle of this scale and able to take the kind of abuse these games can dish out: hopefully I'm not making an idiot of myself in going this route, but even if I do fail we've found one more way that doesn't work! Regardless, these are worthless without pics. And so despite my reluctance to do so earlier (as all I had was a collection of parts), I have bitten the bullet, and begun assembly! (Misc hand clapping sounding in my head...) This is the overall layout of the foundation I'll be building on. The base is a 36X2Xsomething (I think 1/8th?) chunk of aluminum from Lowes. As mentioned, I'm going with T-Maxx parts for the suspension, and have assembled the swing arms, steering knuckles, etc. As the pic hopefully shows, they are actually quite beefy, and supposedly made from some pretty tough molded nylon. Regardless, take a look and tell me what you think. Here's the overall picture: I still need to drill holes and notch the base aluminum plate for the mounting blocks. That's an 18in ruler next to it, for scale (not sure if you can see the numbers in the pic or not...) http://i246.photobucket.com/albums/gg111/me1yoyo/IMG_6382.jpg Here's a closeup of what the swing arms themselves look like. There's also a black “X” shaped cross piece that goes in between the top of the two gray mounting blocks/bulkheads, but I haven't screwed those in yet, as I still need to get the diff's in. http://i246.photobucket.com/albums/gg111/me1yoyo/IMG_6383.jpg As you can see from here, they have a good range of up-down motion. Up... http://i246.photobucket.com/albums/gg111/me1yoyo/IMG_6385.jpg And down... http://i246.photobucket.com/albums/gg111/me1yoyo/IMG_6384.jpg Mmmm Beefy...! (Even if it is made from the same stuff as panty hose...) http://i246.photobucket.com/albums/gg111/me1yoyo/IMG_6386.jpg Here's a closeup of the steering knuckle. As you can see, it's pretty good sized, with a mounted bearing for a ¼ inch driveshaft. The ball-headed bolt that provides the range of motion is sealed inside a rubber boot: inside and out. http://i246.photobucket.com/albums/gg111/me1yoyo/IMG_6387.jpg This is the inside bearing, the knuckle boot, and the steering arm for where the turn-wheel-thingy bit goes. http://i246.photobucket.com/albums/gg111/me1yoyo/IMG_6388.jpg The top arm is mounted to the outside of the gray plate you can see there, so no problem with motion, however, the lower arm is set inside the gray plate, so I'm going to have to notch my base plate to allow it down-motion. Now, the swing arms themselves and the bulkhead are made from nylon (as mentioned), however, the hinge pin itself is supposedly some titanium/steel mixture. By weight, I'd just guess it to be steel. Meh, I can't bend one... Top swing arm hinge: http://i246.photobucket.com/albums/gg111/me1yoyo/IMG_6389.jpg Bottom swing arm hinge: http://i246.photobucket.com/albums/gg111/me1yoyo/IMG_6390.jpg Cheers! James "I-hope-I get-this-done-before-I'm-50" Whitney _________________________________________________________________ Hotmail has tools for the New Busy. Search, chat and e-mail from your inbox. http://www.windowslive.com/campaign/thenewbusy?ocid=PID27925::T:WLMTAGL:ON:WL:en-US:WM_HMP:032010_1 -- You are currently subscribed to the "R/C Tank Combat" group. To post a message, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe, send email to [email protected] Visit the group at http://groups.google.com/group/rctankcombat To unsubscribe from this group, send email to rctankcombat+unsubscribegooglegroups.com or reply to this email with the words "REMOVE ME" as the subject.
