Hello to everyone in this ZXR oople club.The ZXR was the car I admired when I got my first real rc car, a Lazer Alpha in 1993.That Alpha was gradually updated with ZXR parts and homemade parts and it still holds a special place in my mind.My friend James (thank you for your kind words and hospitality) and his real support for the Lazer line all the way back to the radiocontrolzone forums in the past decade were the ones that pushed be back to spending time and countless hours on drawings of alternative designs with the Lazer.
Ok enough with history and into the now.I decided to run my project ZXR in this years Petit race.I thought that on carpet the car will be pretty good.My car ,photos of which you can see here:
http://www.oople.com/rc/photos/Petit2010/) has newly designed alloy bulkheads ,front shock tower,chassis with built in 10 degree kick-up ,new front upper deck and camber link mount and alloy center top deck/motor mount. Separate sidepods bolted on the main chassis carry the battery on the right (which I used in one sided NiMH config at Petit) and the electronics on the left.
The car turned in greatly as i was trying to remove steering sensitivity throughout the event but needed some more work in the front end to make it perfect.Simon kindly offered some alternative steering blocks but didnt have the time to try them and though I could remove some rows of pins on the front tires I was looking for clues on design changes/tuning options I could incorporate in the future without masking any handling deficiencies. The car changed direction rapidly (and to my view faster than rear sadle pack current cars) as expected with that layout but was harder to get back to shape if you broke the rear end loose (e.g. in the small straight leading into the hairpin in front of the rostrum ).I smashed the car sometimes and at one point I thought that it was quite serious coming down from the rostrum in one of the qualifiers.The front wishbones moved enough for the hingepins to come out but I just put everything back together and continued.The only thing that broke was the steering bellcrank that connects to the servo but luckily James had the optional Kyosho blue one that is a definite improvement in flex and strength terms over the standard black one.
If anyone needs parts made for the car identical to what I used or based on other ideas,feel free to pm me.The front ZXS bulkheads made for James came out more expensive due to the need to fit the standard ZXS shock tower and chassis.I can do something similar to what I did with my ZXR for the ZXS more affordably, if you are willing to use a newly designed chassis and shock tower (which I anyway think that would benefit from being reworked)