lowen93 Posted June 17, 2014 Share Posted June 17, 2014 As my Tourer is currently in pieces and going to be for quite some time due to finding the weakpoint in everything, I still need a 1/10 car to take to my local club meets for some 1/10 fun. I've always liked Mardaves for their simplicity and durability and now have a nice supply of cars floating around my house. With my new cnc router and having made some GT10 parts for a friend I've decided to convert one of my V12's into a GT10 and maybe try to get some of the locals to run a similar car instead of the abundance of GT12's! My goal is to make it possible to use a few parts to quickly swap between the two sizes. First was measuring up the standard chassis to get a starting point. The wheelbase was 203mm, the rear wheels were 155mm at their widest and the front wheels were 160mm at their widest. I want to make the chassis 257mm wheelbase to match my 1/10 shells and 195mm wide so it fits in GT10 rules. This means the front chassis plate needs to extend the wheelbase by 54mm and widen the suspension by 35mm at the front and 40mm at the back, Here's the new front chassis plate as cut by my router. I forgot to add two holes for the body posts so will need to go back and add them later. This one piece does most of the converting and is easily swapped back to V12 size. Next was to tackle the rear wheels. I did this using whatever I found lying around before I went and bought any plastic incase it didn't work out. Take 2 Mardave rims, some aluminium mesh I scrounged ages ago and some super glue. One rim I left untouched as this is what will bolt onto the rear axle, the other I milled the rim from 25mm to 20mm to give a total of a 45mm rim width and my 195mm width. I found out that the aluminium mesh didn't want to adhere very well plus had sharp edges so would have been a potential hazard. Luckily I bought a roll of 1mm Lexan last year so cut some 40mm wide strips to wrap around the two rims and with the help of some jubilee clamps I gradually glued the Lexam to the rims to create 45mm rims. After most of the glue escaped onto my fingers it looked something like this, The tyres are only ~50mm diameter so need to be a bit bigger to look right on a 1/10 car but they will get me going. Got the front extension plate and rear wheels bolted on which measured up all good. The electrics were stolen from my Tourer so will be powered by a 13.5t Muchmore and 2S Vapextech Lipo so should be fun to drive on carpet and no diff! As the electrics were transferred and may not stay for long I've just attached everything where it happily fitted. If it works alright then the battery will be moved inline with the chassis and everything shuffled about slightly to tune the handling. I had a play around over lunchtime with some bumper designs and came up with this. Unfortunately I tried to be clever by using a used sheet of fibreglass and didn't fully check if it was going to clear the previous cuts. But hopefully I won't be seeing the underside very often! When I got to work and mentioned this a large bar of 51mm diameter Nylon was dumped in front of me as it had been sat in the corner for a few years unused, This should do nicely as a first go at making some 50mm rims for when the tyres turn up. I've got some small jobs to finish off such as the body mounts, rear bumper and steering rods but should be good to try out this week. So far it has been a fun little project and a well spent Sunday afternoon. I could have made a whole new chassis but that would take much longer to switch between the two sizes and I didn't have a big enough piece of material sat around. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
qatmix Posted June 18, 2014 Share Posted June 18, 2014 Cool stuff!! I have a mardave V10 its basically similar to what you have built Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lowen93 Posted July 4, 2014 Author Share Posted July 4, 2014 (edited) There have been two on ebay in the last month but I couldn't justify buying them when It's a set of wheels and front chassis plate that is needed to make one when I can make the parts needed. Swapping between both sizes has been quite handy so far, I've used it as a GT10 a few times at my local club now and has been just as fun as a normal GT12 but with the ease of the extra weight and 2S grunt to make it easier to drive. A diff has been fitted as it was undriveable around corners but now handles quite nicely considering it has temporary wheels and tyres on it. The gearing is a big issue though, with standard Mardave tyres, a 54 tooth spur and 12 tooth pinion it is just about tolerable for accelerating on a medium carpet track however a small track and it barely has any pace due to being geared wrong, as 54 is the biggest spur I'm going to have to make some spur gears and also elongate the holes in the motor mount to provide the extra adjustment. 60tooth is going to be my starting point. It's gotten quite a bit of attention at my local clubs too as it's a bit different and rather noticeable with them silly wheels on it! Updated view of the car assembled how it has been raced This is the start of the 1/10 Mardave wheels. It seemed a good idea to make the wheels from solid plastic but they're just too heavy for racing. It would be much easier to just make some sleeves that fit over a standard Mardave wheel Edited July 4, 2014 by lowen93 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lowen93 Posted July 4, 2014 Author Share Posted July 4, 2014 (edited) To make my Mardave stuff different from everyone else's I've started making polycarbonate parts. Here is the first attempt at a set of wishbones from 10mm polycarbonate. Close up the finish could be better so I am having to re assess the process to make them. The new way of making Mardave suspension arms is by machining out the overall size and drilling the holes to use for location, then bolting them into a vice to make sure that what I am cutting is held securely. As most racing cars are covered in stickers and sponsors I bought some clear vinyl you can print onto from a normal printer so that I could make my own stickers and make my cars look more realistic. Started off by printing on normal paper to guage the size I wanted then messing around with shading to make the clear vinyl printing visible as it kept coming out almost fully transparent where ink was printed. At Edited July 4, 2014 by lowen93 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Glenn Atterton Posted August 17, 2014 Share Posted August 17, 2014 (edited) Nice effort. Have you seen the new Mardave BB WGT10? You need a facebook account to view link https://scontent-a-lhr.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xfa1/t1.0-9/10547509_708111872559819_8792783902520437812_n.jpg Edited August 17, 2014 by Glenn Atterton Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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