TT-02 Type-S Rear Brace v7.2

thingiverse

One of the bits missing from the TT02 Type-S that you'd find on a typical racing chassis is droop adjustment. I'd never really found droop a major change to handling characteristics but as another racer at the track suffered from a rapid unscheduled disassembly of the rear of his TT02 Type-S I wanted to make a part that could strengthen the rear toe plate as well as give some droop adjustment. This v1 of the part worked well but had too much flex where the droop screws sat. Screws are M3x10 grub screws. I tried a couple of iterations of the design which worked ok, but I spotted this article from "thercracer" and he covered a part made by Fiber-Lyte (who I was familiar with from my old racing days and even have a giant Fiber-Lyte sticker on my tool box!). I bought the part but still needed a way to retain the hinge pins, so made a simpler brace on the 3D printer. This worked well for a few weeks but I wanted to decrease rear toe from the kit 3 degrees down to 2 or 2.5 degrees. I bought Tamiya part 54967 but discovered this doesn't quite fit nicely with the droop plate as there's a small bit of additional material that pushes into the plate. Also, despite keeping the 3 degrees of toe with the new plate for initial testing I'd somehow introduced some serious handling issues with the rear end wanting to swap with the front when off power - akin to running a one-way diff. And with the repeated screwing and unscrewing of the toe plate screws I'd managed to foul up the threads quite a bit. With a lower confidence in the rear end integrity during a crash, and wanting to avoid the results of a crash a fellow racer encountered I created a new bracing that I thought would hold together in a crash. It didn't. This worked well for a few weeks but I wanted to decrease rear toe from the kit 3 degrees down to 2 or 2.5 degrees. I bought Tamiya part 54967 but discovered this doesn't quite fit nicely with the droop plate as there's a small bit of additional material that pushes into the plate. Also, despite keeping the 3 degrees of toe with the new plate for initial testing I'd somehow introduced some serious handling issues with the rear end wanting to swap with the front when off power - akin to running a one-way diff. And with the repeated screwing and unscrewing of the toe plate screws I'd managed to foul up the threads quite a bit. With a lower confidence in the rear end integrity during a crash, and wanting to avoid the results of a crash a fellow racer encountered I created a new bracing that I thought would hold together in a crash. It didn't. This saw a quick swap back to a spare tub (thankfully Tamiya spare parts are quite reasonably priced...unlike the hop-ups) which had in-tact threads. I think the downfall was my use of Loctite when the threads began to show issues, which didn't react well with the ABS plastic. As a test to cover future issues I've bought some brass inserts, heated them and then melted back into the correct positions on the damaged tub although I've not yet had chance to test how well this'll work. So far with the replacement tub (which is the stiffer version) I've not had further issues with the threads.