Scale Car Garage - Parcel in the Post Unboxing

[Kitmen]

Please join me as I open a most welcomed package I received from a viewer/subscriber!

Any and all comments are more than welcomed!

Thanks
😀
John

[dw5555]

Always nice to get an unexpected gift.
Dave

[Kitmen]

Dave, I couldn't agree with you more!

Thanks so much for watching!
😀
John

[KK Racing]

Nice haul John!
I have been using Pete's Better Chassis for all sorts of projects along with some of the pods he sent you and even his wheel inserts. All of his 3D printed parts and light kits are top notch. The Better Chassis is in fact our club spec chassis that we use under the Nascar Trucks. I look forward to seeing what you come up with assembling these and when I find some time I will post some photo's of the builds I did with these chassis' including full chassis pans that give these a real nice finished look from the bottom side.

Cheers
KK

[Kitmen]

KK, yes, the parts are incredibly well designed and made!

I've spent some time with them and have an idea of how to use them, I would love to see some examples of how you use them!

Thanks
😀
John

[PetesLightKits]

John,
Many thanks for doing the video. The multicoloured parts are 4 pieces that make up a motor test mount - you skipped over that section in the instruction sheet, no worries.

Peter

[KK Racing]

Here are two of the Nascar Truck chassis' I did using Pete's Better Chassis and a Firebird Trans Am chassis built from a model kit I purchased from WER some time ago. I trace the body outline on a styrene sheet, locate the center line front to back as well as the axle center lines then drop the chassis on my pattern, trace the chassis and cut the chassis pans to resemble a typical RTR chassis. You have to reduce the pans by the thickness of the body when doing this and once you have the pieces close to what you want simply crazy glue them to the chassis.
I have painted the Trans Am Chassis flat black but left the Ford chassis blue with white pans and the Chevy truck chassis black with white pans. These were all taken at different stages of the builds and are in no perticular order. This is just to show the versatility of the chassis, more often than not I just leave the chassis as Pete supplies it. The last photo shows the body mounts and the front pan reinforcing I did to keep that front piece secure. I think I have a drawing or photo of a work in progress template and I will post that if I find it.

[KK Racing]

Here's a snapshot of the original template I made to put ideas together on how to do this. I copied and pasted Pete's chassis drawing onto a blank page and drew what I thought the pans would sort of look like. The part missing to this would be the outline of the body you are fitting the chassis to and the center line front to back and the axel or wheel well centers. The trucks are made using 4 pieces 1 - 4 cut out of .030 styrene sheet and piece #5 is .060 thick. After tracing and getting my patterns drawn I simply cut them out with tin snips and trim and file them to the correct size before gluing them to the chassis. If you make a little mistake it's no big deal. The materials required cost about $2.00. If you start out with all of the pieces a bit large it's simple to trim them down. It's not allot different than making a say a Slot.It chassis fit under a Fly body or other model body. On the Trans Am chassis piece #4 was made using a section of the gas tank that came attached to the chassis in the model kit.

[chappyman66]

Nice design. Looks like a pod/carrier and a front piece joined by a dovetail. Similar to the PCS but SW.
Looks useful.

[PetesLightKits]

One of the two main goals during the design was to have the Better Chassis front sections maintain 100% compatibility with the PCS32 rear section, which has been achieved, including the mounting hole. The Better Chassis rear sidewinder configuration section is compatible with existing PCS32 front sections, but the mounting holes on the Better Chassis rear section are placed in a different location than on the PCS32 rear section. On the Better Chassis rear section the mount holes are farther forward, allowing one to tuck the chassis into bodies with small rear ends more easily.

Thank you for the kind words.

Peter

[Kitmen]

KK, what a great chassis!
I love your idea of adding pans to the outside of Peter's chassis!

Did you think about allowing some movement between Peter's centre chassis and your pans? - Just a thought.

Wonderful work and thanks for illustrating the potential of Peter's chassis! - I've got some work to do!

chappyman66, yes, as KK illustrated there is quite a lot you can do with these components!

Thanks so much for watching and for the wonderful posts!
😀
John

[PetesLightKits]

The Better Chassis was not designed to be competitive with anything on par with Slot.it, NSR or other podded-style chassis, however, Kevin has said that his Better Chassis equipped NASTruck has approached Slot.it Group C / IMSA times on his routed track. Granted, a great degree of that success must lie on Kevin's superior (to me) slot car preparatory skills. And I have been told that I prep a car pretty well for a guy with no practise track!

Peter

[KK Racing]

Hi John

I originally started out in that direction, kind of like treating the entire chassis as a pod, but I believe I found it awkward cutting out such an intricate hole or holes in the center of the styrene sheet and if I remember correctly the tounge and rear mounting offsets may have become problematic somewhere around this point as well trying to mount the chassis to the one single pan I was cutting out. Something during this process made me change directions and go to the route of 4 pans as an alternate, I don't remember exactly what it was as it was some time ago now. It may also have been the opening around the guide pin that was really hard to do nicely as a single piece but it's a breeze the way it's drawn above. The rear tail mounting section is also elevated quite a bit more than the tounge and these were probably all factors in my design change.

At the point of cutting the one large hole I realized just by disecting my piece or cutting 4 simple pieces or patterns to get the shape I wanted would be far easier. Then I came up with piece #5 to fill in that tounge gap and secure parts 2 and 3 to it as well. If you've got the time by all means give the single pan thing a try, styrene sheets are pretty cheap. If you run into trouble like I did, just cut it into the 4 main pieces as detailed above.

My main objectives were to make the chassis a little heavier given the Nascar Truck bodies weigh about 30 grams painted and detailed with the interior installed and keeping some airflow out of the body to eliminate lift or it acting as a parachute. The pan/s would allow for mounting options as well as added surface area to add weight if needed and give it a nice finished look from the bottom. I'm not sure things like uplift and drag even apply much at the speeds we are running but those were my intial thoughts and objectives when I started out.

Good questions though, it will be interesting to see what you and others come up with.

I can tell you one thing for certain, I built the first one in about the same amount of time it took me to type this. LOL

Cheers
KK

[PetesLightKits]

Many thanks for all the kind words guys. I sincerely appreciate it.

Peter

[KK Racing]

Keep up the good work Pete. I've thoroughly enjoyed working with your Better chassis', 3D printed parts and light kits as well as some of the other small projects we've worked on together recently.

I can confirm both of the 90 gram plus Nascar Trucks with 21.5k Piranha motors geared 11:36 still run pretty close to stock Slot.It Group C times around here. If the truck bodies were 10 grams lighter they would actually give the best stock Group C cars a real good scare.

A better comparison would actually be the Trans Am cars as they are all sidewinders. The one I built to our club specs in the photos above using your chassis with added pans puts a whooping on all of the Scalextic Trans Am sidewinder models I've ever built. All of them being the same weight with the same 18k mabuchi motors, gears, bushings, wheels, tires and guide. So Kudos to you sir! You obviously got the geometry right, especially where it counts as I dont' recall doing any considerable alignment work. It shouId be mentioned that Pete's chassis takes single flange bushings/bearings so there's not allot you can do about moving them significantly without doing some really fancy work. I'm pretty sure I just popped the bushings in to check them, they were perfectly aligned and I just set them with crazy glue and my pin guide. I was also carefull not to give this Firebird build any height or clearence advantages over the Scalextric models and the Firebird has the same full interior and a custom roll cage similar to the Scaley models. The only advantages it has would be in the stiffness of the chassis, the adjustable front axle height and the fact....................Pontiac Builds Excitement! hah, hah

Cheers
KK