project ratrod pro-stock (unnoficial entry)

[rockrawler]

Do you think you'll have it painted by the weekend? I'll be doin some test''n tune saturday in chilliwack with a radar gun and gps. Maybe we can see how fast your ride is.......

[Sharkey]

im certainly going to try and have it ready for sunday, weather is supposed to be nice. just depends on how well the airbrushing goes

[Sharkey]

bodies painted





this is my first attempt at airbrushing, it went well. nothing was done freehand, i have a long way to go before i have enough control to do freehand. only real issue i had was the colors turned out darker than i expected. the bottom is faspearl charcoal mixed with a bit of faspearl silver, the top is fasburgendy mixed about 10:1 with faspearl charcoal, and the stripe is straight faspearl silver. this body (as you may already have seen from stang killa ss's thread) doesnt come with any decals, so i dug through my old decal sheets and drew some headlights on some white vinal and the grill is from a 1/18 scale 350z body. im going to build some spill plates and a lip for a wing, but before i put them on i want to see how stable it is. im sure this body will help with stability compared to the 29 roadster body i originally was going to run.

[vonclod]

looks good man..hopefully it dries out for a day or two and we canuks can get a few runs in

[Sharkey]

the weather held off long enough today for me to get some test runs in. i had a 5' wide dry strip on my road, however due to the recent windstorm the road was covered in crap. i had moved the batteries forward as recomended, and it did help a bit with stability, however not much. i took the car back to the bench and rechecked the tow, i had it set at 0.5 degree tow in (with the top alcohol dragster i work on we run 1/8" tow in), i decided to forget what i knew and tried 0.5 degrees tow out and it helped big time. at speed the car is now somewhat predictable.

i do have to say that this is the fastest rc i have ever owned, im confident i hit 65+mph before i ran out of room, and it was still pulling. im running 87/16 gearing (5.44:1 ratio) and a 3.2" tall tire, calculating the top speed using 60,000rpm as peak rpm (couldnt find the spec for my motor, however i found some 10 turns are around 38000rpm at 7.2 volts, i have an 8t on 14.4 so im using conservative numbers) top speed should be 105mph not taking drag into effect. i would be very happy if i could hit 80mph.

one thing i do need to work on is only doing a few pulls then letting the batteries cool. i did 15-18 passes before the batteries dumped, when i pulled the body off the packs were around 180 degrees. i think i could help that out a bit by pulling the packs apart and resoldering them with proper battery bars and better wire, but im not sure if ill bother. if i limit myself to 5 pulls im sure the packs will be much cooler. i was happy with the motor temp, a cool 85 degrees. ive never had a motor run that cool, ever

[Sharkey]

not much to update. i did a couple of runs yesterday, car worked wel. was planning to get some runs with the gps and video today, however it was raining all day. now they are forcasting 200mm of rain (about 8") in the next 24 hours, and by tuesday evening we should be totaling 300mm. supposed to rain all week and start snowing early saturday morning.

so, that being said, i guess im out as i wont have a chance to get my speed runs in before the deadline next sunday.

[Sharkey]

i was bored the other day (had all my other cars ready to go) so i pulled this out again. i moved the battery packs forward and built a funny car style wing. i had almost no steering as always so i decided to try the original tires, that seemed to help a ton (i expected it would). still having issues with launching it, it tends to want to go more in a circle than straight. once i get it going it tends to be very twitchy. im waiting for a friend to get his milling machine going and ill mill some caster blocks for it. now that i have a lot more steering i think ill move the weight farther back again and see how it works.

ultimatly i think the microswitches are going to get replaced for this to succeed. i just dont think i will get a good launch and keep the car straight by blipping on and off the throttle, it upsets the car too much. microswtiches may work when on a prepped track, but not anywhere i run my car. however im limited to a few speed controllers that can handle 12s nimh and an 8t motor, and none are in the budget. i do have a spare castle sidewinder. it claims 12s nimh with the 4600kv motor, im wondering if it would handle a brushed motor on high power mode.

[Sharkey]

not that there is much point in posting as this comp is dead, but i figured id give the final update on this project. the project is over, decided to sell it as i wanted to buy a 1/5 scale nitro bike, however the money i got from this got dumped into repairs for my 1/5 scale touring car.