A piece ‘a Me

Well I had a fun week last week, I built some meaty bash plates for the axles. I know, they’ll catch on stuff all over but they look as mean as hell IMHO
It was a bit of a trial an error job. I pretty much got the plates worked out right the first time, but the 3-screw mounting to the back of the axle was giving me that ‘please don’t put that kind strain on me’ puppy-eyes look, so I had to add a brace at the top.
Dad (bless him, I’d have never gotten anywhere with all this metal working without his tuition!) had the idea of bracing the plate again the top link mount, so impact stress was directed into the triangle of the top links and spread out between the top links, the mount and the chassis. It was a solution, and a good one, so i went with it. The first version used 10mm wide 1/16th plate strips with a bend at each end to screw against the bash plate and the top mount. This seemed to work well when I built it but…
While testing the truck for the first time with the plates on, it took a nose dive off a log and landed on it’s face. The bash plate worked great, nothing but the tyres and the plate hit the ground. The only problem was the bracing strip snapped clean off. after a bit of muttering expletives, I went back to the drawing board. I came up with the idea of using tie-rods anchored to the battery plate at the front and a small lump of 1/8th plate at the back. These weren’t 100% straightforward to do, however as I had to drill the tie-rod holes at a slope through the plates on the axles to get the angle to the bash plate right. I used M3 all-thread and 4mm allu tubing to make the rods and place a nyloc at each end and would em up. They seem to be a lot tougher and have stood up to me carrying the truck about by them. The combination of the rod and the sleeve tightened up against each other makes a very strong tension/compression system that makes them very stiff and resilient.

All-in-all they look nice and work well. I dunno how much use they will be for crawling though, as they could well get hung up easily. Oh well they make for nice eye candy at the very least

I attended my first event at the weekend (only as a spectator, sadly) and where better to start than the UK Nationals! Getting there involved getting up at 5 am and a couple of hours in the car to get to the place (miraculously we DIDN’T get lost either!!).

The Nationals were held at Bracken Rocks in Derbyshire, which is a private competition site usually used for motorcycle and mountain bike trials. It’s a perfect spot, with camping on site and lots of ROCKS.

The event was very well organised, with 2.2 and Super Class competitions taking place over the day on two courses each. Usual rules applied (5 min limit, points accrued for reverses, roll overs and repositions, points take off for each gate passed). We stood at the bottom 2.2 course for the morning session and were hooked from the start. Loads of people I’ve told about it said it sounded a bit dull, but it damned well isn’t! It’s pretty intense watching them crawl, scramble and twist across the rocks. I enjoyed it a ton!

The competition was certainly stiff in the 2.2 class, with many experienced operators with some really sweet rigs.

We also wandered up to one of the Super Class courses to watch the supers tough it out. The course looked nigh-on impossible from where I was standing! It soon proved difficult, but by no means impossible, as we realised why they call it Super class. Insane rigs with everything going to make them crawl rocks. The feats they pulled off were immense, climbing almost vertical faces, twisting in all sorts of mad directions. Great stuff.

I had a great day and so did the guys I was with, and I’d just like to take the opportunity to thank the organisers, competitors and all the people involved for making it a really fantastic even. The sun even shined all day, a total miracle on the UK!! :hehe:

So now I’m going all out to build a comp rig of my own. It’s gonna be a blast, I know it is
Photos from the event are posted here:

http://flickr.com/photos/pixel_mason/sets/72157606149671185/