Hey guys, I was just talking to Brent at Pro Parts and he forwarded me a picture of there new oval car. I wanted to post the picture but I don't want to get in trouble. E-mail Brent at bredlin@att.net and ask him to send you a picture of it via e-mail. The car is really cool and very different. It uses most of the 10L components which is good, but the chassis and the way the shocks and batteries are mounted are really different. After you get the picture post your comments back here.

Post a photo... or a link to the photo. I don't beleive there are any problems with doing that.

I tried to post the picture but it was to big. Brent said it would be posted on there web site soon. Check out the picture, I think the web site is propartsrc and then the dot com thing.

That is a interesting looking car...

I assume when you speak of their 'new' oval car, you mean this one here...

http://www.propartsrc.com/images/newcar.jpg

Nice drawing... since I didn't see any actual photos of that perticular car on the web site, should I assume that a production version of that car is not yet available?

I think the cars are being made now! :thumbsup:

As DynoMoHum said in an earlier post, the picture of the new car is on our web site. If you have any questions on the car let me know and I will answer them for you. The car is still in prototype stage and we should be done with all the last minute mods in a few weeks. We have not set a price yet but it will be competively priced with the competition.

Let me know if you have any questions on the car.

Brent Redlin
Pro Parts, LLC.

First off very cool looking car. i do have a few questions though.

are the batteries locked in that position? or is there some movement for them.

and secnond. with the shocks mounted like thats can u still run the sofeter sprinds like we do or does it require a stiffer setup to remain the same consistency. thanks alot :thumbsup:

nice idea, but as long as everyone (adx, proparts, everyone else) are still using the t-plate its all the same. you have a lever arm that the side shocks work against the same suspension, just mounted in a diff spot.

so to me unless its lowering the cg its not an improvement :(

still tho it definately looks trick!!!

y0 y0 i forgot,....sweet shortening the body posts!

kgbracing, Well I think that by the looks of it if you wanted to try too lower the center of gravity you could do so by putting a small ball cup closer to the body ( of the shock ) and a longer one at the other end ( like a long losi one ) and mount it upside down that would make the majority of the weight lower than any other car. Oh and at least its not like EVERY OTHER CAR and just a knock off of the L3O. Thanks, JACKHOLE

kgbracing, Well I think that by the looks of it if you wanted to try too lower the center of gravity you could do so by putting a small ball cup closer to the body ( of the shock ) and a longer one at the other end ( like a long losi one ) and mount it upside down that would make the majority of the weight lower than any other car. Oh and at least its not like EVERY OTHER CAR and just a knock off of the L3O. Thanks, JACKHOLE

only the half of the shock that is attached to the chassi counts as sprung weight, ie counts towards cg. if you mount the body of the shock to the suspension side it now counts as unsprung weight (ie ads to the weight of the pod), which DOES lower the cg because most of the shock weight is now on the pod.

but that is counteracted by the graphite up top i think.

my point is that even tho its not a knockoff of the l30 its still the same suspension design, just with modified shock locations. kinda like mounting your shocks to the upper arm on a sedan...same thing, just different mounting.

like i said it has its advantages and disadvantages just like any other design....the good thing tho at this point is that all cars stil have similar rear suspension! the things that work now will work on this, on adx, on conventional cars!

that said i like this design better than the adx design!

Well i am not talking about sprung and unsprung weight because its not a floating suspension. and i am not disputeing the suspension disign because i agree its practically the same thing with the t plate, but what i was saying that i think you might be able to lower the cg by doing that and i think that the carbon fiber shock mount would be pretty light and might not counter act that. Also what i am saying about the how all the other cars are basically a L3O is that they all pretty much do the same thing they all have the 3 shocks in about the same spot just a different way of mounting them like the ksg car the shocks are about in the same spot but they just do it a different way. i also know the other cars have many more adjustments but you dont always need them. lol and if you do you can always use a drill to fix that. Thanks, JACKHOLE

KGB,

Unsprung weight counts towards the CG as well.

The Pro Parts shock mounting does improve one thing over the general Associated layout that the rest of us use. By mounting in this manner, the side shocks are completely isolated so that they only effect roll. In straight bump travel, the side shocks do not move at all. The tradeoff is that battery locaton is limited, and the CG might be a little higher.

Brent, the car looks good.

Atleast we don't have to worry about people saying how it looks like any other car out there!

Awesome car Brent..

First off, I think the car looks great. Nice work Brent! I look forward to seeing you guys at the Snowbirds race (please don't get sick!)

BHayes: Wouldn't that depend on how the side shocks are mounted to the t-plate? Or how the t-plate is mounted to the pod?

We had a design very similar to this one several years back (prototype only, never production) but used a pivot pod to further isolate the side shocks. I can't tell from the pic how these shocks are mounted ....

See i guess the way i am looking at it it to me is more like a dillon tweak system, just on a diff scale. see the dillon used the dampner tube, and with the shock it will use oil. but in theory it should work the same.

also a big concern i see is lack of battery movement. battery placement is a huge part of setup, especially from track to track. i move my pack around every week depending how the track is.


I just dont think that mounting the shocks in that way is enough of an advantage, to be able to delete the battery movement. i think battery placement as far as set up goes is a much more needed tool..


i mean the car looks sweat , i guess pro parts can explain the reasons for it better. thanks

JPH,

Yes it depends on where the side shocks are mounted to the pod/t-bar. From the pic, it looks to me like the bottom end of the side shocks are mounted to the pod so that it is in line with the rear t-bar pivot ball. That would make the most sense from an engineering perspective. In pure bump travel (both rear wheels go up the same amount), the pod generally rotates about the rear pivot ball. So this rotation would cause no movement of the lower end of the side shocks. That is the advantage to mounting the side shocks in this manner. But as I said, and as burbs said also, having the shocks in this location significantly limits battery location. So that is the trade off. Chassis design is one big compromise, when you gain an advantage in one area, you usually give something up in another area.

Maybe I should have let Brent explain all of that???

Brent, please step in here if I have misinterpreted anything from your picture.

Thanks for all the compliments guys, I really appreciate all the comments. I will try to answer everybody's questions but if I am not clear enough or forget something please let me know.

Burbs - The batteries are adjustable front to rear. They are not adjustable side to side as you can see from the picture of the car.
As for the spring rates, they should be really close to the current set-up, but I will have to get back to on this with more info after running the car more.

kgbracing - You are right, it's still a tee-bar, but there are advantages to the shocks being located the way they are. I will explain more later when I have more time.

Brad - You are absolutly correct with the isolation of the side shocks. The lower ball location on the shocks are in line with the pivot ball and on the same plane which will do exactly what you expained when the suspension goes thru bump travel. The CG of the car on the CAD system on this car is about .005 higher then our old car which is pretty close to other cars, but the left side weight was way better.

Bobby - My thoughts exactly. How are you and your dad doing?

JPH - I am really going to try to make it this year but we just had our first kid and momma might have a little something to say about it but we will just have to see how things go, our team guys will be there for sure if I am not.

See more in the next post........

Thanks for all the compliments guys, I really appreciate all the comments. I will try to answer everybody's questions but if I am not clear enough or forget something please let me know.

Burbs - The batteries are adjustable front to rear. They are not adjustable side to side as you can see from the picture of the car.
As for the spring rates, they should be really close to the current set-up, but I will have to get back to on this with more info after running the car more.

kgbracing - You are right, it's still a tee-bar, but there are advantages to the shocks being located the way they are. I will explain more later when I have more time.

Brad - You are absolutly correct with the isolation of the side shocks. The lower ball location on the shocks are in line with the pivot ball and on the same plane which will do exactly what you expained when the suspension goes thru bump travel. The CG of the car on the CAD system on this car is about .005 higher then our old car which is pretty close to other cars, but the left side weight was way better.

Bobby - My thoughts exactly. How are you and your dad doing?

JPH - I am really going to try to make it this year but we just had our first kid and momma might have a little something to say about it but we will just have to see how things go, our team guys will be there for sure if I am not.

See more in the next post........

.005 NICE sounds good to me, like i said shortening the body posts is probably worth it!

thx for expalining things!!!!!

Now for the battery location question:

I have been getting a ton of questions on the battery location thing. To explain this further, we did it so all those on-road guys would not have any more excusues to come run oval with us, you like those sadlle packs, well here you go, lol, just kidding. The location of the batteries on this car came from a lot of days at the shop and at the track with full sized cars. If you look at a Winston Cup car for instance, they have a series of rails down the left side of the car where the teams add weight to balanace out the car the way they want and everybody runs all there weight at each end of the rails. They do this to keep the weight concentrated more toward the tire where it needs to be. This also allows them to move the weight in small increments to get the result they are looking for. After looking at this and comparing it to our little cars, we found that the cars are liking more and more left rear weight, especailly when running mod, but when doing this in our cars you move all the weight to the left rear and loose everything on the left front and that really hurts the turn in. With the batteries split like this you can get all your left rear weight but still have the ability to get more weight to the left front if needed. To give you an idea how important it is on big cars, guys have actually been filling the spindles with weight just to keep that left front on the ground becasuse they can't get enough weight in the rails, sounds stupid but they are doing it and as bad as I hate it becasue of unsrung weight, it does work, if you can get it thru tech with it, lol. As for moving the batteries side to side, how many times do you actually move the batteries in toward the center of the car. If you are doing this your car is not working right. Let's look at one of the fastest cars out there, supermodifieds. They have a ton of left side weight and if they could get more they would. In all my time with big cars I have never run a car with less left side weight then allowed, never, and if your little cars suspension is working right the more left side weight the better. I'm sure I will get some arguments on this but just think about it a bit and if it still does not make sense I will go into more detail.

Well time to stop rambling, let me know if anything does not make sense and I will try to explain further.

Thanks again for all the comments, keep them coming , good and bad, I love em.

Brent Redlin
Pro Parts, LLC.

kgb - Ya those short rear posts are great, it's since to not have those smoke stack body posts anymore, lol.

I am wondering if you tried running the shocks upside down when you looked at the center of gravity like i said in an earlier reply with a short ball cup on the body and a lont ball cup at the other end. just a question? and also wondering when they are going to be available? Thanks, JACKHOLE

Brent, 2 things: what is the wheelbase on that car, it sems short in the pic, but maybe that's just because it's in the back mounting position for the front suspension, and the angle of the pic. @nd, when you speak of max left side weight all the time in real race cars, are you including higher banked tracks, like daytona? My personal findings on toy car have been that on a flat track, you are 100% correct on the weight bias, but on a banked track, it does not require as much, and actually starts to get quirkey if there is too much, curious on your thoughts there.

Jason Lambert

jackhole - I have not tried the shocks upside down yet. I really don't like doing that becasuse of the un-sprung weight thing. On big cars we only typically do this if we want more unsprung weight on that tire. I have done it on big cars when the track is very slick and it is hard to get forward bite up off the corner but there are some drawbacks when entering the corner, it effect weight transfer in a big way and causes a weird feeling in the middle of the transition from brake to throttle. The shock also seem to react much different in the upside down position as well, it's hard to expalin, it's really a feel thing for a driver. You can alter the compression and rebound to make it better but since we don't have that kind of shock for our little cars yet I try not to run the shock upside down. Hope this helps, let me know.

Lamballs - The wheel base where the car is set in the picture is 9-1/2" and can be moved back to 9-1/4" and extended to around 10". I have experienced the same thing on large tracks but with the tires getting better and better and the suspension getting more and more refined it does not seem to be as big of an issue. The cars do get a little weird feeling on the larger banked tracks with a ton of left side, but on the shorter banked tracks more left side is still favorable. On the shorter banked tracks the cars slam the right side so hard into the track that having more left side actually helps the car stay planted in the middle of the corner when the car really cuts. On larger tracks you don't see this as much since the corners have such a large radius and even though the cars still plants the right side hard it's not as drastic since the car does not cut as hard as on shorter banked track thus the left side thing is not as crutial. If we only had adjustable rebound shocks the left side weight thing would not be as big of an issue. My view on it is since we can't use the shocks to hold down the left side of the car we have to get as much weight over there to hold it down. I have worked on making the adjustable rebound shocks but everything is so small, that parts are hard to make and with the piston holes so small the oil just foams up. Everybody has there own opinions on the left side weight thing and I think that is great becuase that really gets both sides thinking about it.

Thanks again for the questions, keep them coming.

Brent Redlin
Pro Parts, LLC.

When will the car be available and what all will it include? The car looks sweeeeeeet!!!!!

I like the new car a lot. I still have great luck with the production model out now. Sweet ride!
Dave

Brent, You can get RPm pistons, they are available for regular size associated/losi shocks, and I can think of a couple tracks that I have used them in the center shock to get the car smoothened out over bumps and get a little more foreward bite....just a thought. ( and a half, now that's short! Isn't that almost 1/12th scale? Also, yor comments on left side weight and loading spindles, I understand that on a real car, and balancing the front/rear, but with toy car and the fact that we are runnign near top fuel/funney car size slicks in the rear of a nascar, that allows for so much more rear bite that I'm not exactly sure if the same weight rules apply.....I have been finding that the weight farther back (flat tracks) seems to make the car steer more when lifting due to there being more weight to be transferred to the front. Balancing the car liek you said is true when staying wide open, that I agree, but when lifting........

Easy solution Lambert...Don't lift!!


Cool looking ride Brent, Good luck with it. When is the debut at Westminster?


Eric Dimmick
Darkside Motorsports

Xpressman - We are shooting for late December or early January. Price is not set yet but should be done soon.

speedfreak - Glad to her the current car is working well and thanks for the compliment on the new car.

Lamballs - I'v tried those pistons but not a lot. I am not to concerned with the center shock but more concerned with adjusting compression and rebound on the side shocks to control roll. I would love to try more rebound on the left side shock. If you can hold the left side down I think there would be more freedom with moving the weight around. Ya, it is short, very short but it can be stretched if needed. Very true, the tires are much bigger and the there is more traction but I think that is one reason for trying to get more weight to the left front. Depending on the rear of the car to turn the car in the corner is very touchy and hard to drive in traffic. If you move off that perfect line the car just sucks. I do see your point on the weight transfer and many people have talked to me about that and I think it really depends on the entire set-up of the car. I have found with the weight spread out to the left front and the left rear like this car you can have the best of both worlds, lots of left rear but still a lot of left front if needed and it really seems to make the car smooth but very aggresive at the same time. Tires are a huge part of the equation, I see so many people just throw tires at there car to make it work and I think that is ok if your cars works to begin with. A good working car and the right tires are key. I beleive the tires are there now we just need to work on the chassis a bit to catch up with the tire technology. Hey, one question for you, YOU LIFT, you are one of the best oval wheels out there and I can't beleive you LIFT, lol, just kidding, you can definetly wheel a car and it's great talking shop with you. How's racing been in there?

Brent Redlin
Pro Parts, LLC.

Darkside - I will have the prototype car back in my hands in a few weeks, hopefully. It's out on a little nationwide tesing tour at the moment. If I don't have that car back by then I will have another car ready to run in three weeks, so probably then if all goes well.

Yeah Brent, I lift, but you try running on a 275 foot drive line flat track with a hot 7 turn in the car, let me know how you get that around the corner without lifting, and how to get the car to finish on a banked track without lifting.....that's a trick that i haven't figured out in the last fifteen years. Racing out here has been good, but the one thing that I can't understand is that now with the whole 19 turn thing, everyone playign with a "mod" motor, why we can't seem to get enough guys to run real mod on a weekly basis...I mean we have about 6 guys that will, if they all show on the same day, but noone is taking the step. Before with the 6 cell stock/mod, I could see it a bit more, batteries and all, but now with the way the 3300's are, I just don't get it.

Lamballs - Man, I'm disapointed. I could see if you ran a 5 turn and had to lift but a weak old 7 turn, COM-ON, stand on it, give it another year, and I think you will have it figured out then, lol, just kiddin. YA it gets a little hairy with a 7 turn on 275', heck it gets a hairy with a 7 turn no matter what size track with todays power. Ya, that doesn't make sense with the 19t/mod thing to me either. I think people get a little freaked with the full mod thing becasue of the speed thing. I think people have lost touch with really working on the car to make it right. When 6 cell kind of went away and 4 cell started taking over, I think the cars slowed down enough that people really stopped working on the cars because they do not have the car perfect to be fast, they could be close and still be in there. I love mod with today's power, it is such a rush when you pull that trigger and launch down the straight-away, dam that's fun. You going to the Bird's this year?

Brent- I'll be in Florida this year, with Trinity's new ride....... take my word on it, it's gonna be the best oval car that they have ever produced, and I plan on proving it. Myself and the rest of our team did ALOT of testing on stuff, and I'm positive that we are going to have a winner. 5 turn....is it not bad enough that I keep the 7 turn in the car with 6 cells....now that's fast....car comes out of the hole a hell of alot faster than my 01 ws-6 transam will ......which tells me that I need to do more wrenching on the big car this summer and put the little car down for a couple months.

Ya, I've hear there new car is going to be good and I'm sure you will wheel it. Com-on, I know there is 5 turn in Dieter's inventory he is just itching to run when the time is right. You are right, 7 turn with 6 cells gets a persons attention, especially when it Trinity power. How are the new 4 magnet motors working? I need to call and get some stuff for the winter season and practice for the Birds. Drop me an e-mail at bredlin@att.net and let me know what motor set-up works the best for mod with 4 cell. I am running Trinity power again so I can call and get what I need. Let me know if you don't mind. Talk to you later.

Any updates?? When will it be released??

Can you still get parts for the old cars?

I would like to get one of these when they go on sale.
I also want to purchase a Sprint Car Conversion. Can't wait.

did this car ever work out?

did this car ever work out?

No it never made production.. i dont know if pro parts is even around anymore.. i know the guy who owns it can be contacted.

I talked to Brent a few weeks ago at Omaha, Ne and he said that he is not ready to put the car on the market just yet. He wanted to do some more testing with the car to make sure it would be user friendly when it comes out.

Jason

How much testing do you need? I mean it's been like two-three years?

any pictures of what he is working on?. I can hardly remember what the cad drawing looked like.
Thanks

I will have to look I don't know if I took any pics. of the car. I think what concerns Brent is the fact the side shocks are mounted vertically from a brace on the car to the bottom of the pod. You have to tune the car in totally different way then the cars we have on the market right now. He told me that he wanted to make sure the car would work on any surface that you put it on.

From what I have seen the car works great. I guess we will all have to wait and see if he puts the car out on the market Only time will tell.