Lessen's R&D stock car

[Lessen]

Well, I attempted to remove the tabs but I'm afraid my soldering iron just isn't gonna cut the mustard here. I've been having a bear of a time with it the last few times I've used it. I think it's going caput so this will have to wait until I can get a new one.

[Lessen]

Today I've decided it's about time to do some wheel/tire gluing. I've never done 1:10 touring tires before so it tooka couple attempts to find the right technique. First I need to put them together...

As you can see there tires do have a belt molded into them. Very cool if you're new to TC's.



Fold the foam into the tire and assemble.







My first pair of tires glued didn't go half bad but I knew I could do a little better. I'm used to doing truck tires in which I usually fold the entire bead back onto itelf, put glue into the groove then unfold the tire bead back into the wheel groove. That's basically impossible here. I've come to the conclusion that the easiest way (and once you get the knack of it, it really is EASY) is to simply use your thumb to pull back a section of the bead just enough to expose the outer edge of it. Allow one drop of THIN CA to fall onto the bead and let it run down the bead. One drop will make it completely around the bead. You just want to work it a little by rolling the tire within your hand. If you keep th tire upright all of the glue will drain to the bottom-most section of the bead and you won't get much adhesion at the top, so make sure you work it a little and let it rest face up. After a couple minutes I go back and tug around and add another drop where necessary. You end up with a VERY clean glue job.

Here's a shot of a well glued tire.

[Lessen]

OK, so it's not really alive, but it is standings in it's own shoes now

Just a couple shots of my wire routing. The Servo wire comes from behind the servo and coils up to the receiver. I added a little tab of servo tape to keep it from moving around too much. Of the 4 possible configurations to install this particular battery pack this is the best fit. It works out rather well.

[Lessen]

So I have A LOT of option springs. I think I have every option spring for both the JRX-S and Type-R versions. They come as soft as 10.5 lb. and as heavy as 70 lb I think.. maybe just 60. Anyways... They are ALL black. Fortunately, Losi provides these little tab things to wrap around the coil so you know what is what. Unfortunately, they don't seem to stick very well. You can see in the first picture it is nearly completely unattached. Straight off the backing they would come unattached. I tried putting a piece of double sided tape on them and that didn't help. However, when I removed the double sided tape and just went tab to tab again it seemed to help a lot. Obviously some of the sticky residue from the tape was left on the tab and helped with adhesion. Still, I'm somewhat not set on this method of tracking. So I got out my box of model paints (enamel) and started my own coding. No, not colors. When you have 7 or 8 different rates that becomes just as confusing. I'm going with dots. It's simple to do and I don't need a conversion chart to figure out what is what. I'm very happy with this and enamal paint should prove plenty durable to handling. I used the tip of an .050" hex driver to apply the marks.

[neobart]

Good idea, it's like an old time abacus.

[Lessen]

Originally Posted by neobart

Good idea, it's like an old time abacus.

Thanks! Yeah, same theory I guess. I wanted to be able to "read" what they were without a cheat sheet. I went ahead and did the rest of my springs this morning as well as all my sways.

Springs:

10.5, 12.5, 15, 17.5, 25, 30, 35, 42.5, 50, 60, 70 (both 20s are on the car)

Sways:

.030, .040, .050, .060

[Lessen]

Again I'm taking a stab at setup so I'm just going to go with the lightest bar for both front and rear. Feeling the torsion on these bars is kinda making me second guess a couple of my spring choices, moreso the front rates. Anyways, here we go...

First off I'll assemble the links. Nothin out of the ordinary here. I assembled all four links to have a total length of 0.35".








There are two mounts available for use. One is for the .030 and .050, the other is for the .040 and .060. Obviously I'll be going with the one that is suited for the .030 bar. Additionally I've decided to mount it such that the .030 groove is oriented downward. When the car is at rest, the sway bar is significantly more level.





Although the swaybar mount screws do tap into the carbon fiber tower, the kit still came with a washer and screws for assembly. I decided to go ahead and use them.



Finished assembly.