Project: Drag Car

I built this because there is a local group that has a timing light setup and are running sanctioned drag events. Not being one to spend a lot bucks to find out I don't like something, I made this thing since I had the parts on hand. I had two unused Losi XX chassis laying around in my parts drawer and pondered what crazy things I could do with them. A buddy of mine suggested cutting them in two pieces to make one that is extra long and one that is extra short. After some laughing and thinking, I got started. This took about 2 hours to do properly. When I was done, I put truck arms, etc on the short chassis and the buggy arms, etc on the long one. This was a great laugh. I even took them to the track to experiment. I can just fit 10 cells in the long chassis, and this made for some serious speed down the back stretch.

All the excitement did not last long and I grew bored with them. The chassis just sat there for another year until ... I had this idea. The problem with attempting to use this for drag racing was it is heavy, didn't have enough forward traction, and had way too much steering. To try and fix the traction problem I put some low profile truck street tires on it. The Pro-Line Speed Hawgs I put on made things better, but now it was ridiculously wide. On went some old RC10 arms on the front and rear. These had to be custom fitted. To help with weight, I  drug out every aluminum screw I could find, every trick lightweight part, and an old set of hard front tires. Because the rear arms were now way shorter I had to custom make some swing shafts (see photo 5). I put super heavy shock fluid in, stiff springs, and some radical shock geometry (see photo 4) to keep the bouncing down. The body posed a serious problem. The solution? Tape two bodies together! And then paint the outside. Hey, it works. The final touches were a low turn Reedy Sonic motor geared tall with the slipper almost locked. I later found more luck with milder (a few turns higher) motors for some reason.

On the track it was not that good. However, I did beat most other gearbox cars. There was n HPI RS4 that was extremely fast, and he was beating some real drag cars. But most of the purpose built drag cars would get down the track faster. A few times I pulled 40 MPH (in 132 feet, a 1/10 scale quarter mile), but I was inconsistently averaging high 30's. For impressing the neighbors this car rules, but for hard core drag racing it is kind of lame. I built it mostly as an experiment anyway.

Update: 01/26/07

This, like many of the pages on my site, were originally written in the late 90's.

I still have this car and it has been through so many versions it would be impossible to document them all...
I bought a Losi Rally Weapon on eBay for dirt cheap. It is based on the XX4. I made use of the kits shocks and arms. I also significantly lowered the CG by raising the inner rear arm mounts and further tinkering with the front geometry. I am still using low turn brushed motors when I run this thing, about once a year or something. The ESC is currently a Tekin 411-G2c, which still kicks ass even after all these years. I briefly tried an HPI two-speed on this thing, but it didn't seem to make much difference... but it sure sounded cool when it shifted. I may try it again some day. My next idea is to use LiPoly power. So far I am super impressed with LiPoly technology.