[Origineelreclamebord]

Originally Posted by Rebelrc

Have you thought about turning the front wishbones around so that the car has less front overhang and will move the motor closer to the axle centre? Then shorten the rear wheel base accordingly to keep the same wheelbase as you originally planed?
Nice project though
Nice drawings

Thanks You're right about the front arms, they are altogether quite a crucial thing on the car. There are several problems using the stock TRF arms (TRF201 or TRF511):

1. The width of the car becomes too great (+/- 260mm, 250mm is often the legal max?)
2. The driveshafts become too short (by about 5-7mm each side - what a coincidence )
3. There's not enough space for the steering to move on the arms (when not using TRF511 front arms)
4. There's not a lot of space for the dampers.

I thought about this issue before and back then it resulted in me postponing the project: My conclusion was I needed too complicated a construction to make for myself: Things like inboard suspension (and using cantilevers, as the rods take in no space at all), lengthening the driveshafts or making custom shorter arms.

Things have changed though, I have access to many cool tools and awesome machines at school, making things possible that I could only ever dream of before

I thought about it a bit and by far the easiest way to solve things right now would be making custom front arms. It has one major drawback, namely that there will be custom parts used in a place that are normally the parts you most likely carry as spares. The arms need to be tough, so two materials came to mind for me: Polycarbonate and Delrin. I hope I can make the arms in the laser cutter or can machine them, though if it needs be there are plenty of tools to make them by hand. Anyway, here is the revised design:



It's got the shorter front arms, which will get the dampers fitted at the front of the suspension arm - at least, that's the plan. There's little room to mount them diagonally, but I'll have to accept that for now with all the other existing parts I'm using. If it's too tight I might still switch to a system with cantilevers - I really like the idea and looks of it, but I want to get this beast built asap so I have a car to test - not to mention that if it's as conventional as possible existing setup knowledge can be applied to the car

Originally Posted by Chalkie

Some thoughts for you, a TLR 22 steering rack will be ideal, they're very durable and compact.
Second I would use saddle packs side by side behind the steering servo to get the weight foward, seeing as i think getting traction will be the biggest issue.
Third, how about cutting the 'rear' suspension block in half and turning the halves 90deg to give trailing arm rear suspension, it's seems to be the most popular layout so why not copy it?
Finally why not use the durango 210 gearbox so you can try both 3 and 4 gear layouts to see which gives the better traction?

Thanks for the info, I guess it's a TLR22 steering rack then that I'll order this weekend for it! The 210 gearbox and saddle pack would be nice, but money is the issue here: I can't start two spares bulks, one for my TRF201 and one for an FWD car that shares no parts with it at all Same goes for the saddle pack: If I'd use a saddle pack in my TRF201, then so I could on this chassis. With the knowledge I hope to gather from driving this car (and perhaps letting experienced drivers try it too) the aim is to build an FWD buggy as radical as the DEX210 is amongst the RWD buggies.

I really love the look and 'radicalness' of the trailing arms on the FWD buggies, but the same problems occur here as I wrote down above. However, your mention on just splitting the suspension block is a really nice idea, it could solve that problem. I'll definetely have a look into it Last spring I did a study on the geometry of the Yokomo YR-F2's suspension system if it were to be made for a buggy:



I was surprised by it's capabilities to create a negative camber on the outside wheel with chassis roll. It's really cool to see how the roll of the car influences the camber whereas an equal compression on both corners does not change the camber at all.