RC10Talk - The Net's Largest Vintage R/C Community

This is an experiment of wood based composites. This is inspired by Morgan sports cars, which have a chassis that is still largely made of ash wood. I think a piece of plywood, laminated on each side with fiberglass could have a bit more flex than carbon fiber, while still being quite springy, more so than aluminum, but not as violently as carbon fiber due to wood dampening the entire structure.
So I gave it a shot.
I bough a piece of 1/8" birch plywood and cut out a chassis shape:

And I put a layer of fiberglass in each side. I sandwiched it all in plastic wrap and two pieces of rigid wood and the entire thing is under a very heavy slab of granite.

I'll post back in a few hours once it cures.

DA graphite used a (balsa?) wood core with carbon fiber top and bottom back in the day

Yup, I read about that the other day. Someone had a losi chassis made by DA like that.

Dragonplate sells balsa and birch core carbon fiber plates.

I totally forgot about it for the past couple days! At least I know it has had time to cure. I got out out and cut off the extra cloth and sanded it smooth and here is the result:

The ceran wrap laft some wave textures in some areas, but I don't care about looks at this point, I care about the feel, and it feels quite flexy. But it is very springy, so I'm not worried about it breaking in half. Just very very flexy. I'll have to find a way to post a picture of just how much flex there is. I don't know how it will effect grip, but driving it might be interestingly fun

Neat project. Once you get everything together on it I'd love to see some video of it in action.

Very cool + innovative project! Interested to see how that would hold up running

You gotta do a 2 piece wheel with wood spoke centers! Timbercraft wheels

j-sou wrote:You gotta do a 2 piece wheel with wood spoke centers! Timbercraft wheels

I betcha it wouldn't be too hard to spin up some one piece wheels on my lathe!