by Retro Racer 44 » Fri Sep 12, 2014 12:05 am
A Honeycomb Dilemma - Solved
In one of the posts above I showed pictures of a chassis I am building for a Munter resin Alfa.
I thought I had measured the wheelbase correctly and for the regular body I had, but this one is having a flared body.
Oops! Somewhere in my exuberance to add nice flares to a now lowered Alfa, I must have slightly changed the wheelbase. When I tried to mount the body it became very obvious that my wheelbase was now too long. What to do? (Message to myself- flare the body first and then build to it.)
I knew I didn't want to redo the flares, as they had turned out quite well. The rear had a pod, so the only option was to re-solder the front axle tube. The tube was soldered at three points across the chassis, so I had to use a razor saw and cut the solder so I could remove the tube. When it was mostly all cut, I put an axle in it and used vise-grips to ease it off. The board was already set up one hole shorter, and it was easy to re-solder the tube. I rebuilt the car, ready for testing.
While it was going around the track it just didn't look right as the wheelbase was now too short. Now what will I do?
I determined that I needed a location in between the two rows of holes.
I have great admiration for the inventors of K&S brass tubing and the fact that you can telescope it. I left the pins behind the axle where they were, and then moved the front pins one spot forward, to where they had been originally. Now the axle was loose between the pins. I always keep short scraps of tubing so I determined that a piece of 1/8 with a piece of 5/32 around it would fill the gap and centre the axle.
Result - A perfect centering of the wheels in the wells, and a job well done.
I'm posting this for your info if you run into a similar situation where the desired location falls just between the pin holes.
Happy building,
Keith
Last edited by
Retro Racer 44 on Thu Oct 16, 2014 10:19 pm, edited 1 time in total.