Chassis

[mostly broken]

I am a do it yourselfer and I am thinking of building a chassis from graphite. I wanted to know if anyone has tips for working graphite, what specs I should be looking for and where to buy it.
thanks in advance for any help.

[Big-Kid]

Good luck :D Origanality and creativity helps drive our hobby to always be on the cutting edge. Kudos

I don't have much expeirence working with CF, but I do know that I like CF chassis's and parts:p

I have heard it's bad for you to inhale it when you cut it, so i'd take the normal precautions. I've run across Art's that sells CF sheets http://www.arts-hobby.com/store/

They sell a number of products for the surface and air R/C'er's. Their F chassis for the monster trucks are nice. I almost bought one of their set's for my LST before my other half cut my R/C spending $ down:( . They will also occasional post some decent sales:)

Are you thinking about enlarging your CF chassis any? Or do you like the stock dimmensions?

Good luck and keep us updated:cool:

[mostly broken]

Thanks big.
I think I want to keep the new chassis at stock demensions but I would like to come up with a way to use a single servo I think a hitech mg 85 will be enough. also I want to keep electronics clean so not as many holes, since I mounted my receiver on the deck. If I can get it down to one servo I might move the receiver forward and the speed control down to lower the center of gravity more. I am sure I will be asking for more advice.
thanks again.

[Big-Kid]

Np, feel free to ask away. I known there will be many questions I can't answer, but thats where the other guys will step in.

I am in the process of finishing up my CAW extended chassis. It was made to accept 2 Hitec 81 sized servo's. Long story short, I ended up with 2 Hitec 85MG's. I mounted a pair of Kimbrough savers, with the stock bar linking the 2 servo's together.

I love this chassis, but I wonder what the benifits of CF would have given it? If I can find the CF upper plates at a good $, i'll look at picking those up later on.:cool:

[blunt]

Yeah man I'm doing the same thing. I'm having a hard time trying to decide if I want to go with cf or aluminum. CF is nice but the sheets of aluminum are much cheaper.

I want to run a 225mg mounted in the front and with the amount of material missing from the front of the chassis for the stock servos it makes it hard to do. I did manage to run my truck with the 225 but wasn't happy with the install.

The stock chassis is 1/16" thick or about 1.5 mm. Doing some research I found that the cf chassi on the market are about the same thickness as stock so I figure a sheet in the range of 0.0625" would be good.

When cutting it be sure to wear goggles & a mask. You may also want to use masking tape to tape off the edges you will cut so the you don't get alot of scartches when cutting.

I wanted to do my own extended chassis but I don't want to be bothered with fabbing side rails and finding longer drive shaft bones. Plus those blue aluminum gpm side rails look like they have me name on them. So I just have to wait until taxes are done to order my sheet.

Keep us posted on your project!

[mostly broken]

I don't want to do side rails either and I know there will be some cool bodies coming out so I don't know how they would fit with the extended chassis.
The main reason I want to go with one servo is the allignment issue. I cant get the thing to go in a straight line! I figure one servo will simplify and hopefully get rid of the problem.

[quietfly]

If you can't align with two, one is not going to solve your issue.

My suggestion is get the Airtronics mini t servo saver kit and just use the SPRINGS. They are much heavier and i find they have helped people a lot with alginment issues. I'm working on a bell crank system so that one servo would be possible, but its on the back burner as the heavier springs have made it a sort of non critical issue.

Regarding CF or Aluminum:

IF your running stock and Racing, then CF is the way to go, it has some great wieght savings, however cf chassis are not nearly as resilient. It tends to splinter, crack and shatter. I know aluminum will bend, however, if it is done right and used on a mod motor truck I think it will be the better setup.

Just my opinion YMMV

[mostly broken]

I am running a mamba 6800 in my truck now. The reason I wanted to do cf is I have tools to cut it and its lighter. I don't know what I would need to do aluminum. But I might be able to get the aluminum local instead of ordering it. As far as allignment I was thinking if the two servos don't work exactly the same it would cause an issue. The steering slop is a good portion of that I'm sure but dont know what to do about it yet.
As of now my truck wont steer at all. One of the wheels wont move, the other will only go one way. Not sure what caused that.

[blunt]

One servo solves alot because it doesn't have to be fight another servo. One 225 with a fabbed bellcrank tracked way better then the stock servos but still had some slop. Eventually I will get an integy bellcrank from the mq which should net way better results then the hackjob b-crank I made, lol.

Way I would like to setup the chassis would be to flip it so that the battery area would be in the front. That'd give me room to run the electronics on the chassis but still leaving the tranny hole in the same position. Just flipping the bones around. Plus I plan on running 6 cells under the chassis and 4 up top so I won't really need to much room for batts up top. And I plan on sticking with aluminum skid plates if I do go with the upper plate in cf.

Speaking of tracking straight some guys use a bar to connect the two savers. It seems best to place it below the center shaft offsetting with some type of spacer. Supposedly it is a decent improvment over the thin stock bar that connects the saver ears.

[mostly broken]

I would like to know what bar they are using to connect the servos. I am really having a hard time getting it to run straight.
I have been running 8 cells in my truck and its difficult to keep control, I cant imagine running it on 10 or 12 cells. I would like to see pictures of your set up when its done. I think I will stick with alluminum on the lower chassis as well. I want to switch to alluminum bumpers as well, since I broke the plastic one up front.

[blunt]

3Racing will be coming out with this (http://www.3racing.com.hk/x_descriptions_pop.jsp?x_products_key=1752) but I don't know when. Some guys over at one18th have come up with some different ideas. Here's one.

By felisfelis
...I used two short ball cups from graupner (anything similar from other manufacturers will work) and tied them toghether with treaded rod,then I forced two very small ball bearings (they're front mini-z bearings) into the ball's holes and mounted the assembly on two brass standoffs so it sits above the dogbone...
http://img406.imageshack.us/img406/4213/steer18uf.th.jpg (http://img406.imageshack.us/my.php?image=steer18uf.jpg) http://img406.imageshack.us/img406/8120/steer28rt.th.jpg (http://img406.imageshack.us/my.php?image=steer28rt.jpg)

Right now I'm back to running the stock servo setup. I have a modded chassis and a normal one. Here are some pics from when I ran the 225.

http://img91.imageshack.us/img91/9220/servosetup21sp.th.jpg (http://img91.imageshack.us/my.php?image=servosetup21sp.jpg) http://img125.imageshack.us/img125/2525/jan220232he.th.jpg (http://img125.imageshack.us/my.php?image=jan220232he.jpg)

[mostly broken]

Hey, thanks for the tips and the pictures that helps alot. My chassis plans just got pushed back until I get some more money. I had to buy a new servo last week. I just got a stock replacement for now. But I think I can make a stiffer link with spare parts after seeing the pics.

[mostly broken]

Here is the steering setup I just finished. It really helps with the seering slop but I cant tell if it helps with the allignment because I have a bent axle at the moment.

[mostly broken]

next pic

[mostly broken]

try again

[Nitrolio]

looks good. i took the easy way out and bought the solid gpm steering kit. works really well. here is a very, very poor picture. lol