The MiX, Past Concepts...
I've always wanted to make an RC chassis to fit under 1:24 scale model bodies, until that idea became obsolete when I discovered the Mini-Z online one day. Then at least 7 years ago I was again motivated to make a chassis, to design a better Mini-Z. This is back when we only had the original MR01 chassis to tinker with, before the overland and F1 chassis, even before the X-mod. I wanted to make mine 4WD and get rid of the nit picky things the MR01 had; ground clearance, no servo saver, the motor being part of the rear suspension, bias differential, ability to tighten wheel nuts with out keeping the wheel from turning, less slop between parts, and lots of other nit picky issues I thought I could fix. I experimented with different ways to fit the parts under a Mini-Z body, this resulted in some very strange looking concept drawings.
These concepts proved I was not going to get the settings I wanted and the motor and batteries on the bottom which would have yielded the lowest center of gravity possible, since the batteries weigh more the motor wound up above the batteries in most of my “working” concepts.
Since I was slow working on my concepts, it was bound to happen an AWD chassis was announced, radio shack had released their X-mod chassis. At first I was disappointed and felt the X-mod would take away any need for an AWD Mini-Z so progress on my chassis slowed down even more, until I bought an X-mod and realized it was no threat due to its apparent slapped together rushed design resulting in a car with so many bad points that it was not race worthy. By this time the F1 and Overland were also out, the overland motivated me to design my chassis so it could support the truck bodies and higher ride height, thus seeding the desire to make my chassis an adaptable chassis. The Mini-Z Monster was released, and I discovered a simple conversion kit would allow use of the monster tires.
The release of the MR02 and wider bodies just added to the chassis settings my universally compatible chassis would require. Then came the Kyosho AWD Mini-Z, far better then the X-mod and equally as much of a buzz kill against progress of my chassis, however the cross compatibility of my chassis kept me motivated to continue its design… so I am still working on it, and the current version is actually very different then the last version above, in fact I went back to using a belt drive, but I will save that for the next blog post.
These concepts proved I was not going to get the settings I wanted and the motor and batteries on the bottom which would have yielded the lowest center of gravity possible, since the batteries weigh more the motor wound up above the batteries in most of my “working” concepts.
Since I was slow working on my concepts, it was bound to happen an AWD chassis was announced, radio shack had released their X-mod chassis. At first I was disappointed and felt the X-mod would take away any need for an AWD Mini-Z so progress on my chassis slowed down even more, until I bought an X-mod and realized it was no threat due to its apparent slapped together rushed design resulting in a car with so many bad points that it was not race worthy. By this time the F1 and Overland were also out, the overland motivated me to design my chassis so it could support the truck bodies and higher ride height, thus seeding the desire to make my chassis an adaptable chassis. The Mini-Z Monster was released, and I discovered a simple conversion kit would allow use of the monster tires.
The release of the MR02 and wider bodies just added to the chassis settings my universally compatible chassis would require. Then came the Kyosho AWD Mini-Z, far better then the X-mod and equally as much of a buzz kill against progress of my chassis, however the cross compatibility of my chassis kept me motivated to continue its design… so I am still working on it, and the current version is actually very different then the last version above, in fact I went back to using a belt drive, but I will save that for the next blog post.
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