The Wide front end project

F1 is getting popular outside of Tamiya series racing, and that means the opportunity to be a bit more creative with option parts and cars.  The local series will be running F1, and 200mm wide cars will be legal (F103, F109, F104W, etc.).  Usually this means you stick a standard F103 or a 3Racing front end on your car with some F103 foams and you are ready to rock.  While the F103 front end is rock solid, it's also not adjustable.  The 3 Racing setup is not bad, but the plastic is only ok, and it's kinda sloppy.

So this is my amalgamation of parts to make a caster/camber adjustable front end that at least sort of looks like it might belong on a modern car.  It's not a final design, but maybe it will inspire some of you guys to try some new stuff.

I cut an old upper arm from a 104 down, and drilled and tapped it so a short turnbuckle could run from the arm to a 104 camber plate mounted on a Tamiya F103 Link type lower arm.  You can substitute a 3Racing lower arm as well.  Another turnbuckle runs from the chassis where the rear ball mount goes to the top of the upper arm.  I had to remove almost all of the rear strut of the upper arm.  The turnbuckle is mounted to the arm with a Losi open ballcup fitted with a "top hat" sleeve from a sedan caster block.  This is to let the rear turnbuckle only have circular movement vs. a typical ball end.  I though everything would be too floppy with a regular ball stud on there, but I may try it out later.  The upper arm was drilled and tapped to mount the turnbuckle

So now the camber and caster can be adjusted infinitely, as well as the camber gain at the inner link.  The setup is a bit more complicated, as both links work together, so changing camber will change caster a bit and vice versa.  It's just something you have to be aware of.

I did want to incorporate more of the upper arm's rear strut, but I didn't have another short turnbuckle around to make that work.  There would be no advantage except that it would look a bit more scale.

One other idea would be to make a similar front end, but with both links coming off of the camber plate.  This wouldn't look as close to the modern cars, but it might have a bit more adjustment capability in terms of ball stud heights