My team is hopefully going to do a custom drivetrain for the first time in recent memory this year, and I’ve been practicing CAD for it. Is there anything about this that could be improved, or that should be done differently?
Also, I haven’t yet put all of the fasteners into the bumper mounts (will be done soon)
Don’t forget the belly pan as that’s important. The rails on the outside are for bumpers right?
Looks real good. How far did you drop the center wheels? It looks like quite a lot.
Yep, the rails are for the bumpers. And I’m planning to add a belly pan, still need to decide what it’s gonna be made of.
It’s the built in drop in the VersaBlocks, so I think 1/8" in total
They look good, might just want to make it a bit lighter
Your drivetrain is currently geared for 24.77 ft/s. That’s very fast.
I think all of the tubes are 1/8" right now, I will probably make some or most of it 1/16" tubing later on, especially the bumper mounts
Also I would like to point out that the frame perimeter is exactly 117 inches (I am on team 117)
Yeah I didn’t really pay attention to the gears at all I just used whatever was in the CAD of the gearboxes that WCP provided, I’ll probably fix that at some point - but thanks for pointing it out
You don’t need the front and back bumper rails - just use the frame rails to support the bumpers there.
Take the “bottom left” corner for example:
Before the corner on the left, it’s supported by the bumper rail.
After the corner on the bottom, it’s supported by the bumper rail, then the angled 3x1, then the frame rail.
You don’t even need it to be supported by the angled 3x1, since the 1x1 bumper rail supports the bumper for more than 1/4" on the corner.
TLDR: Yes, it’s legal.
Looks really good! Some suggestions:
I hope you get to build this one day. There’s nothing more satisfying then seeing a design move from brain to reality IMO.
Makes sense, thank you!
That’s true. You could get rid of the front rail completely, depending on how your bumper attaches. The front bumper (or part of bumper) can attach directly to the front beam of the chassis.
Thank you for the advice, I appreciate it!
One thing I am concerned about is that the bumper rail itself is only strong in one direction if I do that, is that something I should be worried about or not?
If you’re worried about strength, think about what happens when you get hit:
When you get hit from the front, the impact will go through your bumpers and into your frame. The weakest link here is probably the bumpers themselves.
When you get hit from the side, the impact will go through your bumpers, through the bumper rail, though the bumper rail supports, and into your frame. In this case, the weakest link is probably the bumper rail supports.
Assuming you want to increase strength, you should focus on strengthening your bumper rail supports. In this case, what’s really weakening them is that angle cut. If you take away that cut, at least on the bottom, it’ll be a lot harder to bend it from an impact.
You can save some space by moving the bumper mounting rails above the wheel, that way it doesn’t increase your frame perimeter needlessly (meaning more build space on the drive train itself)
