85 replies to this topic

[Duffy]

Not Watergate. That's PLUMBER construction. WAY different.

...'Course, if you pursue this, you could tie the whole thing up neat by naming the chassis "Gemstone"....okay, go Google now....

[68Caddy]

Brother Duffy you are a trip!
But think about what I try to do, please is it possibly?
Or should I hide my head some where else?


Nesta

[Duffy]

Per my Geeky Engineer's opinion above:

I think if it's possible at all, it's beyond the math of any of us; and certainly beyond the Fun Factor of our hobby, when there're simpler ways to do the same thing. See Pablo's post #7, and Tony's new chassis that went to someone-I'm-too-tired-to-think-of.

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz......................

[Duffy]

On a related note, different piano--

I popped down to the local track, a place I don't usually go, to pick up some more wire & some stuff. Got to talking with one guy about how much I'd gone through learning the feel of bend radii and stock loss. "That's what's wrong with it," he said. "You always make mistakes. It's a waste to build your own."

I mulled that over. "How much thought do you put into tying your shoes?"

"That's different, I've done that all my....oh. --Well, Harrumph."

Duffy

[Pablo]

Reminds me of George from Alabama.
He would show up at the raceway with a C11/Falcon 7 setup, no wheels, no body, and walk around, mumbling incoherently about "3 turns of coathanger...."
He would hardly ever race.
He claimed he had a way to balance sealed motors without breaking the seals, using a special computer program
When the raceway closed down, we never heard from him anymore.
3 turns of coathanger.......I'll bet there are only a small handful of people on this planet who know what that means........

Good ol George

Now we have Nesta with his tapered wire.
We all have one thing in common: we are slot freaks and proud of it

[Marty Stanley]

Nesta,

I am going to say that there probably is not such a thing as tapered piano wire.

My reasoning for this is that when wire is manufactured, it starts out as a much larger diameter piece of material and by pulling it through a series of sizing dies, the material is thinned down to the dimension that is desired. Since the wire is drawn through the die, I can not see that it would ever come in tapered form.

However, that does not mean you still can explore your theory. Simple make your own, or at least a reasonalbe facsimile.

Let's take 4 pieces of .039 piano wire and lay them out in parallel. Kind of like this:

________________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________
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I do think that would provide you with the type of action you are looking for. Would you agree?

[stoo23]

Tapered Piano Wire ???

Well,..Not exactly sure just where my good friend Kim Axton managed to find this, but here are some pics of a chassis Kim built a short while ago, that has both Curved AND Tapered Main Rails !!!

Unfortunately, I had not read this 'post' until today, as I could have asked him about it last night, as he was down from Queensland and had a race with us.

I Will ask him about this and get back to you if you wish.

Cheers,
Stewart

Enjoy !!,...

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[68Caddy]

Yes Stewart, love to hear it. Thanks for posting those pics, how did it run?


Nesta

[stoo23]

Well,..the car was built as a bit of an experiment by Kim, from a JK Kit and was for running on some of the smaller tighter tracks they have in Qld' and was rather soft (read Flexible).

I had a drive of it at HSC last year when he came down to race with us and I'd have to say it's performance,..was Interesting, to say the least !!

It was perhaps a bit Too Soft for ultra competitive performance around the HSC track, as it stood, but could have benefitted from some weight 'tuning', as it was certainly NOT 'Out of the Ball Park', (I have driven Worse cars !!,..lol).

Kim was Always a Very 'Original' builder and thinker and it Did apparently work Very well around the track he designed it for!

Either way,..it is Certainly an Interesting and 'Kool' looking car though !!,..
As I said, I will endeavour to find out where he got the Wire,..(I seem to recall it was removed from an 'Object' he had found at a Hardware store).

Cheers.

[Pablo]

Interesting chassis.

I see the obvious curve to the rails, but I don't see tapered rails.
Maybe if you measured the OD of the wire at both ends for us ?

[stoo23]

Hmmm,..Not so easy to do Pablo, as the car is in Queensland, about 4 or 500 kilometres from myself !
I May be wrong,..but it certainly Looked tapered when eyeballing it in your hand

As I mentioned to Nesta, I will attempt to contact Kim when he returns to Qld' to ask about the wires source and confirm whether it Was in fact tapered or Not.

I mean it's Not as if it Isn't possible,..there have been a number of Very Fancy competition cars that utilised Tapered Wire Coil springs,..a Porsche seems to come to mind,..

[Duffy]

It's fun to speculate. It's fun to toss something up in your mind and turn it this way and that, think of how to make it and what the thing might do--

--But I'll hammer my point once again: it's a matter of convenience and practicality.

Sure, there're tapered coils and torsion units on big cars. The state of engineering has been elevated in these cases to where the manufacturer can spec precisely what he wants based on development and testing and experience, invest in the part's manufacture, and then use the part to make his best approach to current state of the art.

We're different. We're hobbyists, and our investment is our recreation time.

We're working with brass and wire to make toy cars. Our wind tunnel is a shim plate, a scale, and a hair dryer, and we are nowhere near "state of the art" nor can we afford to get there. It ain't practical. The resource investment would break any individual, and our hobby can't be so expensive without becoming NOT a hobby. So, for convenience, we have fun with the materials we have, and make guesses.

That's recreation.

Nesta, do you understand all you know about straight wires? Do you have a "baseline" chassis with everything locked down, against which you can compare one element at a time and see what that change does? Have you tried stiffening, limiting, and damping torsion in the ways Pablo and Marty have shown here? --Have you done the same with hinged movements, to see what the different applications give you?

Because, until you have that body of knowledge, how would you determine the usefulness of tapered wire structures? How would you predict the amount of taper for a given wire? And what would you compare your results to?

And, where's that spot on the graph of your life where the investment in manufacturing intersects with your available free time and energy?

Have I broken the record for Most Questions in One Post yet? --How 'bout now?

Look: it's a whole lot of fun to think of these things, and we on this thread're all brainstorming it now because it's fun for us too. By tossing my salad of questions here, I'm not shooting down the concept: I'm putting it in a framework. Because, there'll be a point for each individual when he goes "Hm, well that was fun" and goes and builds something. You guys may see another question following that statement, but--waste not, want not.

Duffy

[Marty Stanley]

{snip}
Hmmm,..Not so easy to do Pablo, as the car is in Queensland, about 4 or 500 kilometres from myself !
I May be wrong,..but it certainly Looked tapered when eyeballing it in your hand
{/snip}

Stoo,

I totally agree with you on the tapering on the front end of the outside wire. However I would also say that is something that your mate performed during the construction of the chassis as it does look much more asthetically corrent.

From my vantage point, I would say that the wires main wires are 'stressed members' and as such really don't react well to outside influences. Just my opinion of course.

Where possible, I have adopted a new style on main chassis rails. Rather then 'one wire, one bend' I have been trying no bends allowed in the main rails. It is actually working out very nicely. Try it, you might like it.

Just my opinion of course!

[Marty Stanley]

Look Duffy, no questions!

[Duffy]

Look Duffy, no questions!

My record is safe for another day.

[Duffy]

But you double-posted!

[stoo23]

However I would also say that is something that your mate performed during the construction of the chassis as it does look much more asthetically corrent.

Hey Marty,..You may in fact be totally correct,..

Like yourself, I have Long been a Fan and supporter of the "Never shall there be More than One Bend in a Piece of Piano Wire" theory !!,..
In fact my more recent cars have main rails with Only 1 of them with 1 x bend and like yourself, the other rail with No bends !!,..

Sure makes life a Lot easier that way,..lol,..I was always Lousy at Complex/compound bends anyway,..

[Pablo]

Curved rails are, of course, nothing new.
This one I built for Tom Scott was reported to be an excellent handler:

[Duffy]

Okay, cool, let's talk. I'll be the "plant" and ask the next question: what's the curve seem to do for the chassis and how it handles, Pablo?

[Pablo]

The body had curved sides so I did it to form-fit the body like a glove.

As far as it influencing handling, I didn't intend for it to. All I know is, Tom told me it was the best handling vintage F1 he had ever driven. Take it for what it's worth.

[Prof. Fate]

Hi

Curved rods are fun. If you "wall" it, it can be a neat challenge to figure out how to get the original bend back as opposed to a "new improved in the wrong place" bend.

Fate

[havlicek]

[Duffy]

Okay, well, some of us tend to wonder the "how & why" of these things. That way, if we get some intuition on how a structure works, we can start trying to develop that idea and improve on it, incorporate it deliberately. It's less a shot in the dark, less "Well, that worked, looking back on it"--and what's next?

Can we talk? The discussion may be useful, and sometimes it's just fun.

---Oh. Then there's Fate, taking the fun away with bedamned pragmatism. Buzzkill.

Duffy

[Pablo]

There you go, Nesta.

Now let's see a build using it.

[Marty Stanley]

Pablo,

Ony one question - "Would you put the big end in front or rear?"