[zinthorne]

I love the design and the ideas in it. Why not go with somewhat of a WCD style drive if you are not using sprockets for a final gear ratio? You could just gear directly to the center wheel and save yourself some weight. Also on the gear boxes I would definitely have multiple replacements. This last season we had one of our vex gearboxes crack and the motor almost fall all the way out of the transmission in finals of a competition. We also had the output shafts fall out several times during matches. (This could be fixed by glueing the shaft back in, but it was a huge pain)

Dropping the belly pan is an interesting idea, but I would be very cautious in doing that. First if you lost air pressure and put it down, you would be unable to lift it again leaving you useless for the rest of the match. Second if you get in a pushing match and drop it, you will be putting your robots weight and all the force of the other robot on 4 pistons. If you were rammed at a high speed while you had it dropped, I think its possible you could break the pistons or the supports. Third I do like the idea of dropping a separate piece down to act as a brake though.