X6 wing mounts
 

I have problems smashing wing mounts. Does anybody have any upgrade tips or advice....????????????

dont land on them, lol
try using losi xx4 ones, cant use std wing though,matty still preferes the x factory ones,ashe thinks the wing is better.

Please tell us you don't hit them with a hammer. LOL

In fact, our wing mounts are rather robust compared to, say, those on a B4.

There has been much "discussion" within the company about wing mounts. Because of their shape, it was a very expensive mold to make and it's an extremely expensive mold to run, requiring constant attention and work from the press operator.

But we want the wing stable, not flopping around, so that all the downforce is transmitted to the car. We want to use the largest legal wing to generate maximum effect, believing there is no such thing as too much traction. (Remember that astro and grass tracks are the exception, not the rule.)

Therefore the wing should be stable, and that means a stiff mount with a wide stance. Any mount like that will be a bit brittle. You can't have a plastic part that refuses to bend yet is not brittle unless you spend a ton of money on exotic materials which are usually full of expensive carbon fiber.

I believe the AE mounts mentioned above are made of nylon, one of the cheapest and easiest to work with materials available. Ours are made of polyeurethane containing 40% (!) fiberglass -- far stiffer and stronger, but more brittle. We could save a lot of money with the cheaper material, but tests show this makes the car perform better.

Racing is all about making choices. The best illustration is an automobile tire. If I make a really soft sticky tire I"ll get a fabulously safe tire with tons of grip, but it will wear out in just a few miles. If I use a compound that's hard as a rock it will last 100,000 miles but when my wife slams on the brakes it won't stop. So, in the tire business a designer must look at where the tire will be used and design a compromise that works in that setting.

X Factory is a pure racing company -- we assume that nobody ever runs one of our cars in the back yard. So we make decisions rather like an F1 tire designer. Our wing mounts are a bit more brittle than AE's, but the car is faster.

Another advantage of X Factory wing mounts: The mounting point, with nipple and body clip, is tucked in behind the shock tower where the air flow is already turbulent. This gives clean air in the center of the wing = more effective.

Are you breaking the whole wing mount or just the body clip mount bits?

I was going to suggest if you are just breaking the nipple off the top to drill it and fix it with a screw and a wheel spacer from a b4.

I dont think i have ever broken a wing mount but i have snapped a nipple off. Once they are drilled though they do seem really tough :thumbsup:

Took the words out of my mouth mike :lol:
If you are only breaking the nipple :o off try this.
http://www.ymr.no/x6wingmount.htm :thumbsup:

:D I broke a few nipples too :lol: as lee said if thats the case then dremel the rest of the nipple off and drill a hole there and use a big wheel axle spacer and countersunk screws to keep the wing on.

Never snapped a nipple but the mount splits along where the screw goes in. Then the mount comes away from the shock tower, still attached to the wing but now the wing flops about.

Im not even talking about big crashes landing on the wing. It has happened when grip rolling before. I have had huge crashes with other cars B4's, xx4, BJ4 and 501x and have never snapped a wing mount until recently...

Im using the correct screws and i have tried thread locking them in from new to see if that makes a difference but it still happens.

I would say this is a common problem as i know other people who its happened to.

are you your screws are not too long or too short and tight (not stripped) I never broke a wing mount on mine in well over a year of racing it

have to admit Matty has never broke a wing there, we do as lee said grind the nipple of use b4 wheel spacers and drill and thread it, it may be the case your over tightening the screws were they go through the shock tower,just gently nip them up and cut some gurney flap of your wing,if your landing on them allot cutting some gurney of may help you land flatter.

You can get much longer screws into those than the equivilent std screw. Measure how much depth there is in each hole with a pinion driver, add on the width of the shock tower and use the longest screw you can

wing mounts
 

get a pair of losi xxx cr wing mounts, they go straight on and all you need to do is replace the wing.

hope this helps

Done another wing mount last night. Its always the same side and the same place. It cracks where the screws go in and then falls off the shock tower.

Switched to an associated wing and mounts now and this seems to be working fine.

XXX mounts are the way forward, straight fit :D

This one is more for Chazz I expect...

I'm intrigued...a 40% glass filled moulding will be much stiffer, and also much more brittle, just as you've said. I'm a consultant design engineer by trade and have been designing plastic mouldings (amongst other things) for sometime, so understand the issues you have as well :).

I'm interested to hear that on the car you can feel the difference on a wing mounted on a glass filled part and a non filled part? I'd never have thought it would be a noticeable difference!!!

I say this not because i don't beleive you...but because I'm surprised, so I'm not questioning it. My driving is nowhere near yours or your testers standards I guess so maybe this doesn't surprise me totally...and here's my thought...

The mounts look really solid in shape, and I like them for all the reasons you mention, so I wouldn't be keen to use any others. Since those of us who won't notice the difference between a 40% and non filled part are probably those of use who are breaking them more often...could it be viable to run some from lesser filled or non filled material as another option? Like the AE filled/non filled option parts.

I understand the tool/parts will behave a little differently, but if people are really finding an issue maybe it could be an economical option if the current tooling will do it? Your mould tools will love you for longer if you ran less glass fill through them too :wub

I know from my bit of rc experience (which unfortunately is far less than my plastics/design experience...but I am working on it), I broke many B4 wing mounts early on, and have not managed to break an x6 one yet, but I suspect it'll just be a matter of time...I've not had the X6 very long!

Absolutely love the car by the way, so keep up the good work...probably only posted this because too much of me wishes I was designing for X-factory :thumbsup:

Despite the B4 wing mounts being quite flexible in comparison, they are a weaker design.

I doubt you will break a wing mount, maybe pull a nipple off but it really would take a big crash to snap one from my experience.

I think the X6 ones need to be stiffer because if you look at the design they are much longer and are only fixed at one point (albeit by 2 screws) but if you look at the b4 ones they are fixed at 2 points allowing them to use inferior plastics. :lol: I think if XF had their style mounts moulded from the same plastic as the b4 ones they would flex a lot and reduce the amount of tuning options we get from cutting/moving the wing.:thumbsup:

Your right about the B4 mounts...they are weak!!! And I was very much a newbie at that time so it was easy for me to break them, I was going through wings and mounts like crazy! :woot:

I reckon they keep the filled ones too, I like them so far and as you say they are part of the tuning options, for many people they work fine.

My thought was you could maybe have 2 materials available, like AE do for a number of their parts....if you have mould tool that could do it and enough demand, why not use it? It's another tuning option then :D

Some people have been on here saying they do break them, some saying they keep breaking them, thankfully I haven't so far...but cars do break sometimes...and it could maybe be a solution for those who are talking about it?

Ive never broken a b4 wing mount before. or an associated one...

But you are going much faster with xfactory :thumbsup:

and ive just ordered more wing mounts...

Not sure if the 1740g optimum weight works best. I found 1600g works better indoors. But i will be trying the 1740 on sat at south shields...

It may work better (lighter) indoors, there are less bumps etc, i know i always ran my 4gear car with no weight and 3200 lipo at worksop

I tend to run mine a little lighter on high grip tight indoor tracks, 1620 is the lightest I have gone, normally run 1650, but always go for 65/35 weight balance

Try and get the longest screws you can in those new bad boys then ;)

If people are running big Lipo (5000mah) and want to get the same weight balance as Ellis, Phil and the rest of us it's pretty hard to acheive it without getting the total weight over 1700g. If you're running say the TP3200 which is as light as a feather then to get the same balance it can be acheived with much less overall weight, it's then up to you if you want to add weight at front and rear to try same balance but different total weight.

I'd like to add, i am also using a big lipo and not the 3200 that i used for the worksop series :thumbsup:

I'm gonna add my 2p....

I saw someone replace a wing mount on Sunday and just the act of installing the screw cracked the mount. It seems to me that the hole might be a bit too small on some? That combined with the tough material causes them to crack on install maybe? :confused:

G

oh you didnt say that did you

Maybe G, i am not aware of this, it might be worthwhile running one of the losi silver tapping screws through them first :confused:

PM sent

Blue, thanks for the intelligent, well-thought-out posts. We always appreciate solid suggestions from the Family, and often incorporate them into our cars/designs.

We may try to run the wing mounts from a material with a lighter load, perhaps 20%, if we can get it. One of the problems is that wing mounts don't take a lot of plastic. The shop buys material in 2,000 lb lots, and there's no way we can pay for 2,000 lbs of expensive plastic when we're only going to use about 75 lbs, so we have to use something they normally stock.

Another concern is that it takes about an hour for two men and a forklift to put any mold in the press, then almost as long to take it out. All shops charge $125 - $200 to "hang" the mold. (Cheap, when you think about it.) So, if we hang the tool to run 1,000 pr of wing mounts, that's 12 - 20 cents per part just to hang the mold.

Making a short run of 50 sets so the Team can test a new material is absurdly expensive. So here's the way it happens: The next time we need to make wing mounts, we'll make the usual production run with the normal material. At the end of that, we'll have them make 50 sets or so from a new material that they normally stock and we think might work. The Boyz will get them for testing in practice and we'll see if they work. If so, then the next production run after that can be the new material.

This is a far more complicated business than I imagined at the start. If I had known what we were getting into, X Factory probably would not exist. Hidden expenses are everywhere, and problems constantly crop up that have nothing to do with designing or racing an R/C car. A very small company as we are must be extra vigilant on costs, and that alone is a full time job.

Unfortunately, I must constantly reject great ideas because of cost concerns or lack of money.

I really think that a flexible wing mount would be really interesting, because you don´t want that much downforce on straights, so less Wing is better to go faster and not do a wheelie. Also on slower parts of the track you´ll get all the downforce back, so maybe a balance it´s what should be. Just to clarify, a 1:1 scale racing example, Ferrari was forced to get a less flexible front wing because more flexibility on straight make the car faster without losing downforce on corners, wich was against the FIA rules.

I dont think our cars go fast enough to deform wings and mounts at speed.

I remember a test being done on TC bodies and all the aero properties went out of the window above 12mph and the body just filled with air. I think we have very little aero efficiency, it's all about drag with us.

Good point made buy G, i do tap mine before i use them,

:wtf::wtf: i will leave that one there :wtf::wtf:

broke 2 more wing mounts this weekend and then the wing gave way and snapped clean off in the final....


A Big problem i would say with the mounts is the holes are not drilled in the center. It looks like a clear manufacturing error because i have now bought 5 sets in the last 3 weeks and they are all the same.

once you put a screw in them you get a rippled effect on the outside. This is the threads of the screw showing because the wall thinkness is so thin on one side.

Another thing is i think the mounts dont need to be so rigid as ive now seen several people running their x6's with no shims or spacers under the wing causing the wing to flop about.

The car itself is mint and 1740 grams with a 65-35% split works a treat outdoors... Just dissapointing i cant keep me wing on.... :mad:

Just a thought, are you using the right screws to hold your mounts on? Maybe you're using too big a diameter of screw and over stressing them?

Sounds odd that you can see a ripple on the outside from the screws, and that it keeps happening...

Since the mounts are moulded the mounting holes aren't drilled, and presumably there is only 1 mould tool, so the all the mounts you've have should be near as dammit identical to all the mounts that everyone else uses as well. I'm going to check on my mounts later and see if I have the same ripple effect going on?

I've never seen a 'ripple effect' on any of my X6 wing mounts, not even the early ones 3 years ago. Unless a defective batch has appeared (which I doubt) in the last few weeks then the only way I can see this happening is if you are using M3 or 5-40 screws in place of the correct 4-40 screws (which are to fat for the holes). If this is the case it could also be contributing to the mounts snapping as it will be putting stress on the plastic before you even race.

If you leave out the spacers and have a floppy wing then there isn't much point having a wing on at all, as it wont be doing very much.

Sometimes the best solution is not always the strongest, we could have made the wing mounts out of something softer so they don't break, but then they wouldn't work so well. If you aren't bothered about having ultimate setup then maybe you could go for a set of Losi wing mounts (which are much softer and more flexible) and something like a J Concepts 7" V-wing which will give similar performance to the stock wing. It's not going to work aswell as the stock parts but it will be less likely to break.

I did break a mount in the first race this year (at the treads).

IMHO they are too stiff, a slightly softer material would have been better.

The wing also takes a massive beating when you roof as there's no flex elsewhere.

N7, as I was reading your last post, with your description of "ripples" I came to the same conclusion as Craig. Please check to be certain you are using 4-40 fasteners and that they are the correct length. The bottom and top screws are different. Remember that, when measuring the length of a cap head screw, you do not include the cap.

Please believe me when I say you are the only person we know of reporting this problem. I don't mean there isn't the odd breakage here and there -- everybody has that -- but you are the only person we know who breaks them in the quantity you do. Something on your car is wrong, something has been overlooked.

I make this sort of mistake constantly -- we all do from time to time -- so please take a second careful look.

I am using the correct 4-40 screws which are the correct lengh. First set of mounts i broke where the screws go in. The second ones broke when the nipple snapped so i cut them off and drilled them so i could hold the wing on with screws. This worked fine for the last 2 rounds and the car was great but i rolled it once in the final and the wing split at one side and was hanging off...

Can anybody tell me if they have wing mounts that have the holes in the center. All mine are off center and im convinced this is the problem.

sorry to say that i have broken quite a few sets of wing mounts too - stripping the (correctly sized) screws out of the mounts. in my humble opinion, there is not enough material around the mounting screw holes and the little diagonal brace between the two open ends is not sufficiently strong enough to stop the ends of the wing mounts twisting when tightening the mounting screws. looking at the HB D4 mounts that were fitted following a lot of frustration with the std mounts, there is far more material in this critical area. funnily enough i've had no problems with them at all..... :lol:....they also hold the wing square which every std x6 mount i've ever bought has failed to do.

just my 2p's worth....