Wednesday, January 15, 2020

Simplicity in a chassis mounted wing

So in the last year a bunch of companies have come up with a way to directly mount the rear wing to the chassis.  This is something the paved oval racing crowd did like 20 years ago, although they mounted directly to the body.  The same effect was achieved.

Some cars, like the Tamiya TRF103, have not had a commercial solution for this style of wing mounting.  I have seen on RcTech a few people re purpose Xray mounts to the Tamiya car.

Last week, I had a sudden revelation while watching tv - why not mount the wing the way the oval guys did? Piano wire and some wing buttons had to be much lighter than the extra fasteners, carbon, and aluminum bits that made up the typical ready made setup.  Wire wire is also cheap and universal.

This was the first try:




So the wing mounted straight to the body, but that was less than solid. After a day or two of thinking and looking, it turned out I could use a wing mount post on the cross brace of the chassis.  There was already a hole there.  All I needed to do was grind a flat onto the wing post to fit into the area allowed by the hole placement.


The wing is mounted to the wire by wing buttons in the side of the wing.  It's very snug, but I may drill a small hole in the plane of the wing to allow the wire to just engage and ensure the wing alignment is good during crashes and other hijinx.

This style mount could be adapted to most cars if you can find a spot for the wing mounting posts.  The posts and buttons should be less than $20 at any hobby retailer who deals with the oval crowd, and .063" piano wire is like $1.50 for 3 feet.

Example of parts for around $12:
http://www.lefthander-rc.com/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=21&products_id=443

http://www.lefthander-rc.com/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=21&products_id=100

Good luck and happy wire bending.

EDIT:
Ran this yesterday at the track, and it worked without a problem.  A more refined solution to the mounting of the wing to the wire would be nice, but it does the job as is.


No comments:

Post a Comment