[Tamar]

Posted 11 August 2019 - 11:47 AM

The Road to Le Mans 1/32: 240 days and counting
Hello Guys, its been more than 4 months since my last post on the Ford GTE, in that time we've been on the Road to Rockingham and are now preparing for the Road to Barcelona.
(well actualy Igualada but nobody has heard of that place) So...time for an update. To be honest the Ford had been negelected a bit during those months.
After the intensity with which I had been building slot cars from January till April, I needed a break... and when I did get back into the groove, some new projects required my attention. 
So I just reread my last post LM post to see where I had left this topic and which topics I did get to post: " ...We lost a mirror, one wiper and a sideskirt..." 
Funny how one tends to remember good things and bad things immediately shift to the background. Cause in all honesty we lost a bit more than that 


Best laid plans...
Here's one of the things I did not get to post during our road to Le Mans: Obviously the achilles heel of the Ford GTE was going to be that big rear wing sticking out the back.
So one of the first things I did during the build was to add small blocks of foam rubber in the rear of the body to create a flexible structure to mount the rear wing supports.
I simply cut a slit in the top of the foam so the wing supports would slide in. Over time however the wing supports started to cut through the foam (see picture left).
So I reinforced the bottom of the foam with some thin sheet plastic (see centre pictures).
This set up worked very well during all our test runs, the foam was tight enough to keep the rear wing fin place while driving, allowed for some flexibility during crashes...
...and should the wing come off..it was very easy to slide it back in...or replace it with one of the spares we got from Scalextric. Or so at least that was the plan.



..and then just winging it
Well the plan did not work entirely to our satisfaction. During the first hour of practice a Marshall that wasn't paying attention to oncoming traffic, ripped the first wing off as he lowered a car on the track...right on top of ours.
Unfortunately this would happen many more times during the weekend. Sometimes the wing would come clean off and then it was a simple remount.
Sometimes the top wing would be ripped from the supports and in a few cases the wing supports themselves would break.
Even with what I thought would be an ample supply of spare rear wings, Wayne and Stephen spend quite some time repairing wings during the 24hr event.
 
 
Rock Bull Rubber
So while giving the Ford some much needed TLC in preparation for the Rockingham WEC event, finding a better solution to prevent the wing being ripped off was high on the priority list.
I gave casting the wing supports in rubber a try, but could not get the thick rubber mix to flow into the mould cavities so in the end I used the same solution as on the GT3 Bentley.
Drawing a template of the wing supports, printed them on label sticker paper, stuck the label on some NBR 1mm thick rubber and cut the rubber with a sharp X-acto knive.


Filed two slots in the bottom of the rear wing and used a drop of Zapp medium thick superglue to secure the supports to the wing and a small drop at the base of the support where the enter the body.
The result, a fully flexible mounted wing. As a added security I put some shoe goo (neoprene glue) over the top connection so that even if the superglue would fail..the more flexible shoe goo would keep the wing in place.
 
 
Worked like a dream, did the whole Saturday practice and 6hrs Sunday race with the same wing. And although the car came of several times..the wing did not  
For those that would like to modify their Scalex rear wings in a similar way. Attached to this post is a PDF with some wing support  templates.
For the 1mm NBR rubber try you local industrial rubber supplier. A few quid will get you more rubber then you'll need for a lifetime.

 
With kind regards
Tamar

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