24 replies to this topic

[Rick]

I have built two of these now and so impressed with their performance, I thought I would share the build with you. Believe me when I can run about a tenth behind the fast guys at the race, the car is good. LOL Chris raced my build and Josh ran his own version of the build and they finished 1-2 at the R4 within 18 inches on one another.

This is the basic kit I started with, one of my Victory 050 F1's.


First step is to seperate the parts from the main plate. I cut the pans 7/16" back from the nose piece and cut the "samson rattler" where the laser cuts are at.



The next step I put the upright wires in for the front axle carrier. There are 6 holes for the .078 wire uprights, but I have only used 4 to date and that seems to be plenty strong. Included in the kit are brass eyelets for a solid re-inforced base. You can use this system or the old "L" upright holders, whichever you prefer.
Sorry for the fuzzy picture here, obviously I have one of thsoe shakey cameras. LOL



I then loaded the nose piece on the jig, making sure it is centered and clamped it in place with axle to be able to set the wheelbase. Another terrible picture, but you will get the drift.


I then found the set of pins or a 4" wheelbase and set the motor box into position. I cut the main rail loop to length and soldered it to the nose and motor box. Make sure the main "U" loop is flat and tweaked to be flat on the block and lay against the nose piece without any preloading of the wire. I prefer to use to single pieces of wire but the industry has dictated "U" bends so that is what the kit has. Pick which method you like better and go with it. You can always add a gear guard at the end of the build.

At this point, lay your side pans into position, after bending up the pin tube holders and clamp down into position for adding the plumber feature. (no exact picture)and then I added my first cross piece, pan to pan. That is a piece of .062 and it is captured in two pieces of square tubing, the square tube is just added to keep the cross wire from jammin the main rails. I got a little ahead of my self here as you will see later.
In this next step I used a standard piece of .093 brass tube from the K&S rack for the front plumber hinge. I don't know how to build a plumber, so I was just winging it from here.
I then added two "L" pieces from the tube to the pans. Chris chassis at the R4 had .062 wire in the tube, for this build I tried .055 wire for a little more movement. I did not bend any angle into the wire, I just soldered it in place as it layed on the pans. The pros would have probably made a very small angle bend to keep it all very flat, but the small amount of rise to the wire appears to not harm anything and the solder fills up the gap easily.


From here on out, I got into the build and forgot to take a few pictures along the way but will explain with the complete chassis what I had done. You will be able to fill in the blanks and build to look similar.
I added a piece of .062 across the rear of the pans to connect them into a unit.
The cross bar or upstop in incororated into the motor box, I made some special brackets with a hole drilled across them to allow a piece of .062 to be solder in and provide up stop. I then had to remove the first cross bar, that I told you I got ahead of myself, and added in the rattler, with two pieces of wire and tubings as you saw in the previous picture. The rattler is pretty tight with just a little movement, about .020. The next step is that I added a bite bar(.062) from each pan to the main rails, 5/8" in front of the rear axle. I drilled out the pin tube holes to .093 and added shakers to both front and rear pin tubes.

I do not use an axle tube, but put the bearings/bushings directly the the bracket, that is my preference but most will ream out the motor box and add the tube. Your choice.

Finally I cleaned up my sloppy soldering the best I could and tumbled if for a couple of hours. The car was great at Route 93, last Saturday, I have never had an F1 car that would go so deep and do the donut so fast! Ask Frank, LOL. The Victory F1 is .050 thick plate by design and for my reasons and seems to be the right choice, complete RTR with rattle pan the car weighs in at 109 grams.

OOps forgot to mention, this has the adjustable screw on guide tongue and I had it set at 1" guide lead.

I think you will be able to view all th parts in the complete chassis.



That's all I can upload on this post. If you want any other angles, please ask and I will try to get the less shakey camera. LOL This is pretty easy build.......enjoy.

[One_Track_Mind]

Nice job, Rick

I need to take you up on one of these providing my new F-1 build doesn't work. My F-1 program is really behind in terms of handling. Always looking for an improvement.

[Rick]

SO you can see which does what, maybe this picture is better?

[Richie]

Thanks for posting this Rick!!! After the Scale Nationals, i'm building a new batch of retros for me to race, this is going to be the first project!!!!

-Richie

[The Bugman]

sure wish there was an easy way to make one 1 3/8"-D3 wide instead of 1 5/8,they look like a great chassis

[Larry Mattingly]

The thing drives like a Can-Am car...

LM

[DirtyHairy]

awesome build Mr.Bennardo.....u know its good when Cableguy can drive it......maybe next time you can loan me a car and i can show you what its actually capable of.....awesome build,,,got to get me one

[Rick]

sure wish there was an easy way to make one 1 3/8"-D3 wide instead of 1 5/8,they look like a great chassis

Should be easy to covert to a D3 F1 car. You would need to shave the pans down, is all.

[Mopower71]

At this point, lay your side pans into position, after bending up the pin tube holders and clamp down into position for adding the plumber feature. (no exact picture)and then I added my first cross piece, pan to pan. That is a piece of .062 and it is captured in two pieces of square tubing, the square tube is just added to keep the cross wire from jammin the main rails. I got a little ahead of my self here as you will see later.

Does the body hold the .062 wire in the square tube, or are they soldered in somewhere?

[Rick]

Does the body hold the .062 wire in the square tube, or are they soldered in somewhere?

Those square tubes are soldered solid to the cross wire on the pans, the other square tubes are soldered to the rattle pan and the clearance between the cross wire and square tube allow for a little shake.

[Slotgeezer]

Great design & build, Rick!

Jeff Easterly

[gjc2]

I do not use an axle tube, but put the bearings/bushings directly the the bracket, that is my preference but most will ream out the motor box and add the tube.

Why did you use those collars up against the bearings instead of spacers? Don’t the collars add a bit of rotating mass? Was it to add strength to the axle?

I will be setting up a chassis without the axle tube also.

[John Streisguth]

George, those collars have set-screws, so the gear mesh can be maintained if you can change out the tires.

[gjc2]

George, those collars have set-screws, so the gear mesh can be maintained if you can change out the tires.

Doesn’t the additional mass hurt performance? Isn’t reducing rotating mass the reason for using 3/32 axles?

[John Streisguth]

At the axle diameter, I doubt there is much effect on rotating mass. With 1/8" axles, the ball bearings have larger OD's, and the tubing they go into has to be larger in turn, so the CG is lower with 3/32 axles.
Plastic wheels versus aluminum might have a bigger effect.

[Steve Deiters]

One of the driving forces, if not the main one, for the 3/32"axle over the 1/8" was way back when was that you could get a shallower angle on an anglewinder chassis back in the motor box area with teh smaller axle. It was not unusual to see, at least in the midwest,as this trend was developing cars with 1/8' fronts and 3/32" in the back until the transition was complete to 3/32". There were still guys that ran 1/8" rear axles on tracks that were viewed as bumpy but that's another story.

[Prof. Fate]

Hi

In local flexi racing, I have done a few successful cars with going back to 1/8th axles! Pretty simple really, racing on the kingleman in a program that runs novices with experts, lots of crashing. I went through a period of bent 3/32 axles, but replacing them with 1/8th has let to the local hot shoe winning more.

Fate

[tonyp]

Jerry Brady and Bob Emott came up with the 3/32 axles as a way to reduce the center of gravity of their cars. It was part of the quest to get everything as low as possible. They found some steel surgical tubing that fit tight over the axle and into the gear and wheels to make the reducers to use the current 1/8th stuff with a smaller axle. The shallower angle on the motor mounting was a by product.

[Rick]

Hershman has raced 1/8" and 3/32" axles, at Columbus, and won with both of them and says he can't feel any difference? Although I am sure there is a nano second in there some place.

[GearBear]

My Eurosports run even smaller 2mm axles. The real benefit to me, is that you can get a near sidewinder configuration with the small strap motors making gear/axle changes during the race a fairly simple operation. This is really important as Eurosport racing is as much about endurance as it is about speed. Often the field will be narrowed by 1,2 or more racers due to carnage, breakage during the race.

And yes, the extra weight on the axle will affect the handling. On my Eurosport yesterday, I ran a bigger motor (it weighed about 1.5 grams more than my normal motor) and it drastically effected the handling of the car. Normally, my car handles well enough to punch the lead-on. But with the extra mass of the motor, I was not able to do that. It actually cost me first place in the race as I never knew how hard I could push the lead on until the car was already out of the track and sliding down the straight on its back in harms way. It's all good, I got 2nd place 6 laps down from the leader as she blew past all of us AGAIN.

[Richard Matthews]

My Eurosports run even smaller 2mm axles. The real benefit to me, is that you can get a near sidewinder configuration with the small strap motors making gear/axle changes during the race a fairly simple operation. This is really important as Eurosport racing is as much about endurance as it is about speed. Often the field will be narrowed by 1,2 or more racers due to carnage, breakage during the race.

And yes, the extra weight on the axle will affect the handling. On my Eurosport yesterday, I ran a bigger motor (it weighed about 1.5 grams more than my normal motor) and it drastically effected the handling of the car. Normally, my car handles well enough to punch the lead-on. But with the extra mass of the motor, I was not able to do that. It actually cost me first place in the race as I never knew how hard I could push the lead on until the car was already out of the track and sliding down the straight on its back in harms way. It's all good, I got 2nd place 6 laps down from the leader as she blew past all of us AGAIN.

Are these Victory F1 kits commercially available and where do I find them?
Richard

[Rickard Five]

Hershman has raced 1/8" and 3/32" axles, at Columbus, and won with both of them and says he can't feel any difference? Although I am sure there is a nano second in there some place.

Depends on the Racer. Like me Personally I'm such a bad Road Racer You could put The hottest G7 Vintage Pro Car or a Womp Womp, I'm still coming in Last by 75 laps and building a new car for next week ! but then there was this Kid that use to race with us that was so in touch with the car He could feel the difference! then there is the Guy that will do better because the 3/32 sounds more gooder, so he drives better because he feels better about the car. and lastly there's the guy that can drive A Junkly Parma Flexi so well, that axle / Chassis don't make much difference, so any car is a winner!

[John McMillan]

Richard,
You can contact Rick at scrgeo@comcast.net let him know what you are interested in and he will get back to you.
John

[Rick]

Have an update for this build to report. Yesterday I finally built and tried a variation of this build, that I have wanted to test for months and months. I built the car as a plumber as per the thread and added a brass 1/6" rail inside the 1/16" wire main rail. I bent it up on the face of the motor bracket and soldered to the front rail where they meet at the nose piece. I also built it a little longer than 4" going on to stretch it to 4 1/4" WB. The car was fantastic! I cannot drive at the pace of the front runner A Main guys but could kept up with them very well when I pushed out of my comfort zone. The car could have won the race with a top driver, it was that good. I will get a picture of the car ASAP. I think anyone that hs built one per this tutorial can upgrade to the brass rail, pretty easily. With the addition of the brass damper rail the motor fits in perfectly with a few thou clearacne on each side.

More to come on this report..................