Council

[resullivan]

My son qualified for council which is coming up in a couple of weeks. We are building a new car because council rules make the car used for district illegal. Council rules state all four wheels must touch with no canting. The previous car had canted rear axle holes as well as a raised wheel. We will be attempting a four wheel rail rider as well as fenders and monokote. Here is where we are so far:

[Noskills]

Looks really light. What COM are you going for? Will you be trying front and rear fenders? We just built our first 2 cars with fenders...hope to post photos soon.

Seth (Noskills)

[resullivan]

Yes we are planning on front and rear fenders, but we are weighting everything out and it is going to be really close. Here was the second practice attempt with the monokote. It would be smoother but the wood isn't smooth. Glad we practiced first because the first attempt was a mess.

[resullivan]

Ok, got quite a bit done tonight. All we pretty much have left is to finish, paint, and attach the fenders. I just hope the superglue adheres to the monokote. Oh, BTW monokote does not adhere to foil tape.

[sporty]

looks really nice, sweet !!!!


Sporty

[Scrollsawer]

Looks really nice! With 24 cubes, that still seems like a lot of wood left (at least in my limited experience). How's the weight?

Scrollsawer

[Scrollsawer]

Wait a minute...I just noticed the veneer top glued to the car frame. You definitely removed a lot of wood there!

Scrollsawer

[resullivan]

Yes, the top is 1/32 think balsa veneer and that wood next to the weights is also balsa. It is there to give the car more structure and hold the weight in place because I did not glue the weight in so I can use it again later.

[whodathunkit]

resullivan,
So thats how you do it..

It looks better then the one I've been working on.


Whoda.

[Noskills]

Let us know if the super glue sticks to the monokote. Superglue does glue the balsa to pine very quickly so be careful to place the fender very close to your exact spot as it might not slide much after 2 seconds.
Like the purple. Is that the iron on monokote or the sticky back?
Seth

[resullivan]

It is the iron on monokote.

[resullivan]

Here is an update. So I did finish the fenders and they looked really good, but when we got to check in something I was afraid was going to happen happened. The fenders were too wide. I know next time to make the fenders to be a little thinner than the wheels. It wasn't a big problem to just pull them off and add some tungsten. I am not sure how they would have held up anyway as the council track was a wood track with a not very good stop section.

As for the race I was disappointed that they did not enforce the rules. I can't say that I was supprised because they did not enforce them last year; however, they updated the rules this year to say "no exceptions." More specifically the rules state that all 4 wheels must touch and be flat, aka no 3 wheelers and no cant. We made a whole new car because of this then we get there and see cars with significant cant and which are clearly 3 wheelers. My son's car ended up getting 3rd in cubs and 3rd overall, and finished behind 2 cars which had the cant mentioned. The 1st car was so much faster than the rest that I wondered if oil may not have been used. Anyway, I am not here to complain, but to report the results.

[birddog]

At least you can take pride in knowing you followed your rules to the letter.

I like the idea of the foil tape and being able to recover the tungsten easier without having to clue it all in.

Can you tell me what is the brand name of that foil tape and where you can purchase it?

thanks,

birddog

[resullivan]

Not sure about brand, but I bought it from lowes. I believe it was with the air duct stuff.

[pgosselin]

The fact that you built a whole new car and even placed is impressive. Way to go. Sounds like you've got this down to a science.

Paul