Crash's PWD 2012

[Crash Enburn]

Just couldn't wait to post a pic.

My son's is in the center. He designed it, cut it out, and painted. I've been busy trying new things...

Race is on Saturday. /images/boards/smilies/smile.gif

 

[MWDracing]

Looks great...

 

[Quicktimederby]

Great looking cars, I really like the water effect!

 

[Kinser Racing]

Looking good! /images/boards/smilies/thumb.gif

 

[rookie]

They are cool. How do you get the paint effect? So I noticed the left front on one car is slightly narrow. Is that for the DFW?

 

[Obsession Racing]

They are cool. How do you get the paint effect? So I noticed the left front on one car is slightly narrow. Is that for the DFW?

Here's a link that explains the process:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbnTpJQPOTs

Seems fairly simple to do, and it's a great looking effect.

As to your question on the narrowed side....yes, that's for the DFW, which should come in about 1/16".

Good luck!

O.R.

 

[Crash Enburn]

Thanks, guys!

These cars represent a bunch of firsts for us -- on this, our fifth year of AGP and PWD racing.

• First time using lacquer paint. OMG! Why have I been messing w/ enamel for all these years?!
• First time trying the 'water droplet' paint effect. More difficult than the video made it look. First try I used water droplets that were too small and far apart, and the paint just looked dirty. Second try was better, but I'm still not totally happy w/ it. I think that my paint was too cold.
• First cars < 1/2" thick. The blue car is 3/8" thick, the fendered one was 1/4" thick. After routing out pockets for and then pouring the lead, I added a 1/32" sheet of balsa over the top to cover it -- the car is now 5/32" thick. A little too thin for using lead, I think; as the area needed for such little depth is pretty big.
• First time routing out pockets for the lead instead of drilling. That was fun. /images/boards/smilies/smile.gif I did a *lot* of calculations to figure out how much lead I'd need and how big the pockets to hold them had to be.
• First time using/making fenders. It was pretty easy, and going well right up to the point where I was trying to glue them to the body. The fenders kept moving as gravity and the Earth's rotation affected them, so I ended up w/ the fenders being farther away from the wheels than I'd wanted/planned. Sigh.
• First time using the color change paint. Fendered car has Duplicolor Mirage Red-Blue paint. It's a beautiful blue, a royal purple, and even a neat gold. But not red. I fear that the red front wheels are going to clash some.

The inset you see on the blue car is matched on its flip-side. In fact, all three cars have matching wheelbases. In our district, we have to have all four wheels touching and flat. I set the track for the front wheels so they are at the minimum allowed 1 3/4" from tread to tread. The rears are bumped out so that they are at the max allowed width of 2 3/4". My thinking is that with this setup, if the car starts to bounce side to side, only the front wheels will ever hit the center rail, cutting that bit of friction by half (iow, the rears don't hit w/ each bounce too). I do leave in some steer to allow it to run the rail and avoid the bounce. I don't have the ability to do a lot of testing, so I haven't been able to test for the effect of different amounts of steering. But it's worked for us so far -- we've won all of our dens, sibling, and dad races for all of the last four years but last, when my son melted one of the wheels w/ the Dremel right before check-in. (I'm bringing extra wheels and axles this year)

The actual inset/offset measurements are subtracting 1/16" from both sides in front (1 5/8"), and adding 1/16" to the rears (using popsicle sticks -- 1 7/8").

- Eric

 

[rookie]

Cool, thanks! Post some pics of the race on Saturday. Be interested to hear how the wide rear WB and the narrower front worked out.