The body is one of the important parts of an automobile. It provides an aesthetic feature for it. Any automobile is not complete without a good design of the body. By giving a proper aerodynamic shape to it, we can reduce air friction and increase efficiency. In this topic I will not explain much about body fabrication and gives you some clues about proper material selection. In most cases it is not more than an extra weight for your car. But some organizers even give special prizes for body design too.
Material selection for outer body:
You must provide a proper provision for body removal in any case with ease. Because during races you will have to perform lot of actions for that you will have to remove its body, and selected material must show following properties. Generally I prefer to use industrial glues such as araldite to build body.
- Must be a lighter material.
- Must be very thin; can be cut by scissors.
For making skeleton of body choose such a materials that can provide proper stability with lesser weight burden. I suggest to use bicycle wheel spokes, bamboo sticks, or a material that is used in making windows (these are square shaped plastic pipes). As shown below and these are easy to handle.
First make a detailed lay out of body on a paper, and as per your design make its skeleton and attach it’s our material to give it a proper shape. And for giving aero dynamic shape you can use wax. Finally put a paint coat of your choice and body is ready. Below I showed some photographs of our car and these can give you proper idea. You can use your own car body (the one, you get when you bought new car) as a reference.
Here I used a steel wax to give an aerodynamic shape.
There is one more thing you have to create with body is Servo mount. You can do it by taking reference of your own car servo mount by just copying it. We did not copied it from our car but we used plastic pipes to do it. As shown below in photograph. Also you can use thin aluminium sheet or a composite materials to make and keep in mind that servo mount must be easily removable from car if needed else it will create an extra work as well as a burden for your car. There are lot of benefits are there in making so.
This is last topic of tutorial. I think I explained sufficient to begin a proper design procedure in order to build an RC car. It is up to you how you take this information, process it and gives out put in form of your own design. And finally best of luck for your races. If you have any suggestions about information in whole tutorials just mail me at bpr890@gmail.com.
Thanks and Regards