[ovalallthetime]

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 [email protected] 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.

 

[DynoMoHum]

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

 

[ovalallthetime]

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.

 

[DynoMoHum]

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?

 

[mullins 75]

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

 

[Pro Parts]

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.

 

[burbs]

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:

 

[kgbracing]

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!!!

 

[kgbracing]

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

 

[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

 

[kgbracing]

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!

 

[jackhole]

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

 

[BHayes]

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.

 

[Bobby Flack]

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

Awesome car Brent..

 

[JPH Racing]

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 ....

 

[burbs]

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

 

[BHayes]

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.

 

[Pro Parts]

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........

 

[kgbracing]

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!!!!!

 

[Pro Parts]

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.