Anyone designed a touring car?

[scoyle]

Has anyone built up a competitive touring car - either from scratch with your own chassis etc. or as a mashup of other car parts?

I have always thought that I would like to put together my own touring car and would like to talk to others about tools that they have used for cutting carbon fibre, milling bulkheads etc.

[MHeadling]

This is the only guy on oople who has done any TC mods, link here:

http://www.oople.com/forums/showthread.php?t=34837

Maybe worth asking on Rc tec or rcracechat, they love a bit a of touring cars!

[Fabs]

WRONG!

I built 2 back in the days

[dale]

I've cut plenty of carbon fibre. The process is

- Draw it on a CAD package (I use the free version of DraftIT).
- Print it out and stick it to the carbon using Prit Stick.
- Centre punch the holes using an optical centre punch
- Centre-drill the holes using a centre drill
- Drill the holes using a nice sharp drill. Use a slow feed to avoid tearing the carbon.
- Cut the edges using a dremel and normal cutting disks. You can do very good straight edges and curves if you take your time.

Bulkheads are more difficult; you'll need a mill and a lot of skill I reckon!

The main reason you don't see many scratch built TCs these days is that there's no way you'll make one better than the manufacturers can, with all of their facilities and top drivers giving input. The layouts and components on all the cars have evolved to an 'optimal' layout after 15 years of running.

For the project to be worth it you'd have to do something like a FWD or RWD, then you might be able to make something better than what you could buy.

[MHeadling]

Sorry Fabs! Lets see then then!

[dodgydiy]

i recently made a carbon tub chassis for my fk05 that moves things about slightly. motor is more central and lipo further out to balance chassis without weights. much stiffer in the vertical plane too, but softer when twisted. chassis has a thicker centre spine and thinner wings. battery location is also moulded into the chassis so the strap can be run looser so as to not affect the flex. handling is very similar to the standard fk05, at moment its a little more snappy on the rear and has more steering but i have not messed with the setup yet, in fact it needs decent diffs and new belts really before i start messing with setup as they are really ropey.

[bodgit]

Not really designed but basically my lads car was hopped up to death with optional parts from various companies. Its never been raced.
3 racing silver chassis and braces
Blue anodised gear boxes front and rear
Blue threaded shocks
upgraded rear diff
blue drive shafts
factory battery strap

[Garry]

I've seen a few over the years, but they haven't really improved over what was already on the market.

Heres all the ones I saved to my HDD but there's other non-traditional cars on the market (mainly Japan), but check out the Tigermoth V10 from America...

Some of these are drift cars, but still worth a look.

[Garry]

More:





















I added in that buggy in the last post, its based on a Tamiya TA04.

[jimmy]

I've seen Fabs cars, they rocked!

[mro_racing aka Doorbell]

ive made 2 touring cars , 1 2wd buggy , a very good micro and a very over engineered mardave v12 also i have designed 1 4wd buggy plus shock towers for the pred but as i race 4 durango think they will say as a design

[scoyle]

I really am very impressed with what people have done... thanks for sharing.

On the practical side aside from CAD for design there are two things that I would need to be able to do in some form;

Cut carbon fibre (for the chassis)
And milling for bulkheads etc.

Taking each of these; is it possible to cut and drill carbon fibre using a dremel with cutting parts and drilling with a normal drill (obviously using a face mask etc. For safety)

Is it possible to mill parts in a home workshop - what tools or machinery would I need to look at - is it madly expensive?

Thanks for the info and ideas so far!

[Garry]

I forgot I made this too, its a Pro 4 cut down and flipped to make a FWD Mini, then rebuild with spares from my Cyclone pitbox. It was still 190mm but had a wheelbase of 210mm, so looked a bit Mad Max, but handled really well. All done with a Dremel and careful measuring. The chassis was chopped and reused as the servo mount.











Got told off for running it against Tamiya Minis at my local club though....

[EDS]

I have designed and built off-road r/c cars and have looked seriously into designing a on-road touring car.

Even though my designs are "out-of-the-box" I have yet been able to come up with a design that would be different AND better then the current designs available on the market. That's the problem... 1/10th touring car is a very mature racing class with many years of R&D put into it. Like Dale said.. They have pretty much optimized the performance of these cars except for a few small changes. I don't think it gets much better then the Team Magic E4.

[BagofSkill]

I've made my own cars in the past. Made a Nitro TC back in the late 90's, Which won races and was better (I felt) than anything you coluld buy until the mini 1/8th cars started coming out. I've got pictures somewhere.....

I also made a TC a couple of years agao, based on a Schumacher Mi3.5, but a lot lighter with lower center og gravity and different flex charicteristics. Getting the bulkheads made in alloy was a bit hard though. Sometimes think of doing another one simlar (not a schumaher though!). There are lots of great cars out there, but none I've bought so far have been perfect!

Mine went through a few stages and picked up good idea from other cars as I went...

[scoyle]

Chris, very impressive - this is the sort of thing that I was thinking of... couple of questions;

What did you use for the drawings?
How did you make the bulkheads?
What tools did you use for the bulkheads and cutting the carbon fibre?

[BagofSkill]

For the drawings I used Catia V5 CAD package.

For manufacturing, I'm lucky that I have a lot of equimpent available to me at work. I used Rapid prototyping (SLA and SLS) to 'grow' the bulkheads, it's like a 3D printer that can do plastics and metals. There are companies that will do this for you but I'm not sure about the costs. I don't think it's cheap!

The carbon was cut/drilled with a CNC mill, which is a something you can get done at fibrelite for not bad money.

[scoyle]

Chris,

Setting aside how jealous I am that you have access to the professional tools would you have any thoughts or pointers on how someone could go about doing this without work access to tools etc.

By that I mean CAD packages and milling tools etc. that would allow someone to design and make one-off type bulkheads and carbon fibre parts? I have got stuff from fibrelite before but did not realise that they would do one-off parts for people - will check their site for formats that they take for designs.

[colmo]

Originally Posted by scoyle

Chris,

Setting aside how jealous I am that you have access to the professional tools would you have any thoughts or pointers on how someone could go about doing this without work access to tools etc.

By that I mean CAD packages and milling tools etc. that would allow someone to design and make one-off type bulkheads and carbon fibre parts? I have got stuff from fibrelite before but did not realise that they would do one-off parts for people - will check their site for formats that they take for designs.

Hello Stephen, I see this idea is still spinning away in your head!

I have a friend who signed up for a night class for pretty much unlimited access to a CNC mill. Check out the FE colleges for similar courses.

I will say from my own recent experiences of kit-bashing a custom 2wd buggy, is to have a central idea to build the the project around - mine was/is that modern lipos are lighter than NiMh cells and could thus be offset almost entirely by the weight of the motor. Trying to emulate what others have already done is likely to just result in an inferior copy.

I think layout ideas for TCs using stick packs have been exhausted - Perhaps saddles would be the way to go - say, sat one in front of the other right in the middle of the chassis, with the motor placed centrally behind and other electrics in front, and belt routed like an E4?

Another idea might be shocks - I recall seeing a TA05 on eBay where the springs had been replaced with a torsion bar. The shocks were still there, sans springs.

[scoyle]

My idea is to centralise all the weight, not original I am sure you will agree, and I liked the Team Magic for that - to be honest I am very pleased with my Mi4LP (and soon to be CX) but it is something that I have always wanted to do from the days of a TC3 converted to a 4wd off road car.