S-Tuned R/C
Strengthening the RCBoyz M-03 Chassis Extender
I’ve found that the RCBoyz chassis extender isn’t quite up to the rigours of racing. When you take a hard hit, you can end up with a car that’s shaped like a banana, when one of the extenders fails where it is screwed to the front of the chassis. It’s forgiveable though because it’s not an original Tamiya part.
Here’s a couple of tip for toughening it up...
1. When I first installed the extender, hairline cracks developed when I screwed it in to the front of the chassis. I think the two tongues at the front of the extender have their holes moulded slightly too small. If you open the holes out a fraction with a small round file, you should be able to get the screws in without cracks developing.
2. The amount of plastic on those tongues is quite limited - whereas the Tamiya chassis screws in to about 8mm of plastic, the extender has only 2mm of plastic. What I’ve now done is to bolt the extender in.
The first note is that the mechanical speed controller mount on the rear half of the chassis blocks off putting a nut on the upper screw on the car’s right hand side. To get round this, you can either cut off the MSC mount, or use the standard tapping screw in that hole.
To fit the bolts, first I opened out the holes in the tongues enough for a 3mm machine screw (around 10mm long) to pass through. Since my extender was already damaged, I then used a little strong epoxy glue to bond a washer onto the inside of the tongue, for the screw to pass through. You may be able to get away without the epoxy, but I would definitely use the washer.
After the epoxy had set, I then fitted the chassis extender as normal, using M3 Nyloc nuts on the end of the machine screws. These are quite tricky to access, but long-nose pliers did the job of holding them in place as I tightened them up.
Hopefully this pic will help a little - it shows the nut on the end of one screw - it also shows how I now have no screw mounting near the MSC mount because the extender has disintegrated from 2 big impacts
