Building the new V12 Ce

Well as you all know I have been a Mardave nutter right back to the days of first having one when I was a Young lad in my teen age years.

So as Mardave was then owned by Wes Raynor and based in Leicester which was about 4 miles from where I lived this was great as we could pop over to the Mardave Factory and buy the bits of Wes there and then but it was a 1/8th I.C car back in them days then I think in 1976 the great electric car explosion took off and the car to have was in fact the Mardave ( now know to many Ardent Mardave racers as THE DAVE. . )

We still run them to this day in the hands of Chris Wilkinson so all tho it has changed hands a few times with Lee Bishop and now with Chris at the helm it was a real surprise to see this great little car starting to flow with the times and to my surprise it now comes with a GRP (Glass Reinforced Plastic ) chassis YESS. . .

Don't get me wrong the ally chassis is ok but for ardent racers it needed to be Carbon or back in the old days when we made them out of GRP this now means that in a heavy crash the alloy twists and your now stuck with a bad handling car so to move with the times its nice to finally see the New Shape Chassis . . oh yes its shaped as well you guys. . .



Now as you know I have never held back on what Mardave bring out and if it was wrong you know I would say it on almost every Forum going that its totally wrong and it needs this or that so Chris was probably shocked when I rang and the Conversation went some thing like this . . .

Ring . Ring .Ring . Ring .

Hi Chris I have to praise you on the new car. . . . in fact I could have sworn I heard a thud when I said its Gazza and I want that new car like Yesterday hello . . hello you still there hello

Oh hi Gazza fancy you ringing what have I done wrong Now

Nothing mate its Mega just what the Dave drivers want cant believe you finally moved with the times Send me one out A.S.A.P I will even pay for next day delivery ( I can only imagine the look on Chris's face with others with smelling salts etc )

Err yea OK as soon as I have made up a few more kits Ill send you one out in a few Days . . No I want it now got to get it ready for the week end and the first Nats at Ardent . . Ok ill do my best to get it to you . . ok thanks . . bye . . Click

So with the minutes now feeling like hours and hours feeling like days . . . OK you get the picture

Well Thursday morning came to around 10:30am and a Knock at the door its the Royal Mail . . sigh here please . . Sure thing mate thanks bye

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Wow I think I know what this is OK runs off into the workshop clears the bench and its rip open the package like a kid on Christmas morning

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Oh yes look what I have a V12 Circuit Edition

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And a Jiffy bag . . . yea its the GT2 shell


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WOW. . . right make a coffee and we are off

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Just look at that Chassis DroooooL. . . LOL also it comes with the Ball raced front wheels I think this is now standard I'm not sure Chris to Comment on that

Ok before the Build starts I will be using a Diff and standard none ball raced front end and wheels every thing else is going to be a Standard kit build I'm doing no modifications to the car what so ever then I will race it this week end to see how I get on with it

Right so first off lets get the Front chassis bolts in and build up the front end and to my surprise gone are the self tapping screws and in with counter Sunk 2mm M3 bolts ( Chris this is a Nice touch well done )

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Next up is the front wish bone and plate assembly ALL NOTE we now upturn the wish bone as they are further away from the chassis therefore the ride height will be less as in picture below and these are screwed into place with self tapping pozzi screws as it now incorporates narrow track along with wider wheel base so no counter sunk as the holes are quite close to each other ( Chris another pat on the back nice touch . . LOVE IT )

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Here you can see how to make the front end narrow / wide as well as long / short

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The complete unit ready to be fitted

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Next up is the steering linkage and these are a nice turn buckle with plastic cups

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Here you can see the 1mm castor adjustment

Ok next up is now going to be the Servo saver and for me I just like to run a 2.5mm drill through the plastic so as not to weaken it

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The rear end is just as per Normal Mardave pod settings

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and then comes the finished product

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Happy Days . . . . love it

but mine weighed oh so light and I think this will be discussed at the AGM but here is the way I did it . . .with some builders Lead cut to fit around the inside and trimmed to suit I then cut a strip the width of the rear pod and rolled it to fit into the opposite hole

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So you end up looking like this below

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Then I scored the lead through the hole take it all out place on the bench and Soldered it to the other piece and let the solder flow from the top to bottom ( use some good flux I just used my normal iron that I used for doing NiMh Cells with

Now with talk of its got to much flex and it will give grip roll . . . that's the idea guys if you were going through front tyres like no tomorrow then all you now need do is to go up by say 2 or 4 tyre ratings so if you run your standard Dave on 44 fronts then fit 46 or 48's its that simple I normally run 46's and went for 50's and it was just right I could have tried 48's to give a bit more grip on the front but other than that and I kept them on all week end so that's 8 races on the same front tyre's how's that for consistency

So all in all I very nice Little car to play with and strong .. . . LOL did I mention strong well Just wait till you read up about the First meeting and the end of the Ardent Straight we had cars hitting the safety wall but that's another story but just to say that the Dave is stronger than a 1/12th car is an under statement

Ok Now the Bit That Chris is dreading likes & Dislikes

Dislikes

Just the one

Wish it came with the cobra battery holder as I don't like the Velcro and Lexan tray But as the Chassis is already Drilled to take the Tray fitting the Cobra one in the same place is deffo a no no as the holes are to near to the existing ones IDEA. . leave the chassis with no holes for the battery mounting. And have in the box a paper / sticky template so you can drill & fit either one or you have two chassis a Lexan mount one or Cobra mount one or a blank one you drill your self may sound daft but I bet you drill the servo holes to mount which ever servo you have ?

Likes

Every Thing the chassis is a little thicker than the ally one the 2mm M3 bolts are brilliant and the counter sunk chassis is done just right the new look of the chassis is good as well as its a little wider towards the rear which makes fitting the cobra battery holder a lot better as there is plenty of material to cater for it the New Gray Plastic rear pod is NOT like the first V12 VRX that came out and broke as you just looked at it but some thing else and yes its strong and it can take the knocks as you will see in my next write up about the very First Mardave circuit National stay tuned

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Totally brill write up as per normal

Great Write up

How and what have you used to mount the bumper?

Not bad at all itching to get mine

I'll agree with Gary here - these kits are a real breath of fresh air for Mardave racing. They look grand, very professional indeed and have certainly turned heads at the 8 or so meetings I have taken mine to so far!

A few things I have done with my build though. By the way, pics to follow if I can work out how to do it...!

1 - Mounting the wishbones to the front plate. Those 4 holes for each screw to go through are MIGHTY close to each other! To be on the safe side I added a large diameter washer between the head of the screw and the underside of the plate to help spread any impact forces a bit. I also used a longer (14mm?) M3 machine screw rather than the pozi self tapper, again just to be on the safe side.

2 - Castor. The kit suggests just one 1mm washer under the front of the front plate. I have added 2.5mm of washers in total to get a bit more castor. This also has the benefit of lifting the front of the front plate higher to allow clearance for the bumper plate to fit under it...

3 - Front Bumper. Mine is 3mm nylon sheet. I cut a rectangular shape (about 35x130mm) and rounded off the corners a bit. I mounted this to the holes intended for the front body posts to go through with some M3 machine screws, nylock nuts and a washer. I then re-drilled some more holes in the bumper plate to mount the front body posts. Doing it this way gave a few advantages - the bumper was held more firmly with the machine screws and nuts than if I screwed directly into the body posts instead, and I can place my body posts a little further forward and wider apart to better support the front of the shell (especially important for 'long-nosed' shells with fiddly moulding contours like the GT2!). I then cut my foam bumper from 18mm PVC foam sheet, drilled a couple of holes for the body posts to go through and mounted that. I also cut a rectangular hole in the back of the foam bumper so I could add balance weights up front if needed.

4 - Batteries. I did use Cobra battery mountings for my cells. My 1s LiPo packs are each one half of a saddle pair (some old ones from Demon). Since these are significantly shorter than the 4-cell sized 1s packs I was able to mount my Cobra carriers far enough away from the existing battery holes for it not to be a problem. I used the 'swing-arm' part of 2 pairs of Cobra fixings so I could get the pack in and out more easilly.

5 - Servo. I am using a Savox 1251MG. I have mounted mine on the left of the chassis (when looked at from the back of the car) and as far forward as I can. This is to give better weight balance.

Some further mods I am considering... Side cell positioning (as Chris ran at the National at Ardent) and adding a spacer behind the rear damper ball stud where it screws into the motor pod (to bring the damper tube more perpendicular to the chassis centre line). And a few others... ;-)

James

James stick some pictures up Mate