Subject:
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Silver Champion design comments
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.technic
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Date:
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Fri, 13 Oct 2000 16:10:07 GMT
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Viewed:
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648 times
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Hi everyone
To all other Silver Champion owners..... I've just finished my
McLaren... ...oops... Silver Champion, and have a few small complaints
about the original design.
1st, why are there so many 3-long friction connectors used at the outboard end
of the front suspension? This creates a tremendous amount of friction in the
suspension's movement. The result is that once you compress the front, and
then release it, the car returns only to about 1/2 the original ride height.
This phenomenon is not present in the rear suspension design (probably also
due to the 4-stud long yellow bellcrank, as opposed to the 3-stud one in the
front, which results in a stiffer rear suspension). I've adressed this by
swapping out the 3-long black friction connectors in the front with 4-long
axles, with 1/2 wide gray technic bushings at the ends. This almost
eliminates the friction in the front suspension, but does introduce
additionnal freeplay in the steering and suspension geometry.
2nd, the kingpin offset of the front suspension (distance on the ground
between the vertical steering axis and the center of the tire) is so large,
that steering the car on a high friction surface is incredibly difficult. It
puts the steering column and all steering components under a lot of stress.
This large kingpin offset is due to the large, and IMHO cumbersome, front
uprights. For comparison, the 8448 supercar has the front uprights almost
dead in the middle of the front tires (inside the wheel, unlike the 8458),
resulting in a very light steering effort. Anybody else found this a problem,
and perhaps have come up with a better front upright design for the Silver
Champion?
3rd, and last, the 6 dark gray 1 and 1/2 long connectors that are used to
connect the steering rack to the L-shaped liftarms also introduce a lot of
freeplay into the steering geometry. I swapped them out for 4 black 2-long
friction connectors, which significantly reduced the freeplay. They stick out
of the bottom of the rack, but that doesn't seem to be limiting the steering
angle.
Also, why no transmission?!?!?!?!?! There appears to be plenty of 4-stud wide
space underneath the engine and 'exhaust'. Anybody tried it yet? Have
anybody's yellow suspension bellcranks (the small ones used front and rear)
broken because of the stress? Mine haven't, but I'm a bit worried about them.
Sorry for the length of the post, but I had to get this off my chest. I found
these shortcomings while building it, and once it was finished, I changed the
front suspension immediately. But overall, I really like the car,
the size of it is truly impressive, and the new suspension arms and pushrods
are great (about time). And in case someody asks, YES, I am an engineer :)
keep building!!!
John
PS. is the Mika Hakkinen Special Edition version coming soon?
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Message has 2 Replies:
 | | Re: Silver Champion design comments
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| (...) I think the reasoning is that F1 style cars don't have a actual stick shift, they have buttons on the steering wheel. Technic transmisions have only so far come in stick shift style. Not having a stick shift trans makes the model as a model (...) (24 years ago, 13-Oct-00, to lugnet.technic)
| | | Re: Silver Champion design comments
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| (...) Hi John you missed the biggest mistake : the silver colour. A F1 should have been red, Ferrari Red to be more precise :) and specially this year :-) With some friend we are joining our pieces coming from three 8448 to make it the right colour, (...) (24 years ago, 13-Oct-00, to lugnet.technic, lugnet.loc.it)
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