Richie: The £50, 3 week Featherweight

**Gaseraki** · 26th May 2014, 08:26

I would get those wheels but then screw bike tyre into them.

**Rapidrory** · 26th May 2014, 09:03

Well I've got several of those white nylon wheels at home (or at least used to) so that may not be a bad shout... They seem a little brittle from what I remember though; I'd have thought they might crack if you put screws in them...

Now there's the problem that I don't know if I still already have a set of white nylon wheels, and I wouldn't have time to buy them if I get home and not. Plus, though they're only 80p each, they have £5 shipping on them, so I don't want to buy a pair to find I have loads at home... I'll have to give my dad another thing to search for!

**Gabe01** · 26th May 2014, 18:27

I have those grey wheels from eBay, with bike tyre screwed into them they grip nicely. I originally used knobbly bike tyre, but hardly got any grip, so I've just changed to motorbike racing slicks, lovely soft rubber.

**mrsam** · 26th May 2014, 20:31

@Gabe01 i was worried about the hubs on those wheels not been up to it, do they feel solid enough to you?

**Gabe01** · 27th May 2014, 06:17

They're a nice wheel and they feel pretty solid, not battle tested of course. I choose them because they are cheap which means you can have lots of them. When you hold them in your hand they are a nice wheel and certainly not brittle. I used the 'melt-in' method in my drill press and the shafts dropped in easily without compromising the hub strength.

**Ellis** · 28th May 2014, 00:55

We used very knobbly tyre for T2's wheels and whilst grip isn't "bad" it isn't massive. I made Rango's wheels with a softer compound fine-pattern knobby bike tyre (local bike/car spares) and the grip the stuff gets with wide wheels is nuts. Harry used the same stuff on Massacre and also found it just stuck to the ground. Perhaps you can find something similar:

It buries a small buttonhead style screw in the pattern nicely.

**Rapidrory** · 28th May 2014, 07:20

well I've got loads of old tires and bits of rubber lying around at home... hopefully should be able to find something half decent in there. Though as long as they're better than what I've currently got (which is not hard) for the next event then I'm not too worried; just need to be able to throw it all together in two or three days..

How much does that size of HDPE wheels weigh? Gives me an idea...

**Rapidrory** · 17th June 2014, 23:04

Well, once again I had almost no time to do do a ton of work on Richie: this time I had a day and a half to fit new wheels, new motor mounts, a Lipo, and self righting in time for Guildford... I got 3 hours sleep before the event...

The new wheels worked great, all for the cost of £0.00.

All I did was replaced the rubber sheets that made up my wheels with a thick piece of plywood which I lathed round, and then screwed bike tread into. Had no problems with them at Guildford and they had plenty of grip. Also mean I now have about 2cm of ground clearance which is a great improvement, and very much appreciated at Guildford!

The new motor mounts I made worked well too; They were just some blocks of HDPE and wood machined to fit the motor and house a support bearing. I also shifted the motors forward about an inch for better balance. Unfortunately the new wider wheels meant that the back of the motors were less than 1mm away from the linear actuator slider, which meant that when Major Damage decided to hammer me whilst I was on my side, my motors were shifted in and caught on the actuator, which tore out one of the screws holding the motor to the gearbox, leaving me with a very bent drive motor. Marco kindly lent me a hammer to beat it straight again, and I made it through the last two fights fine, but I plan to entirely replace the gearbox housing with metal, and add a rear motor support. They'll basically end up looking a bit like the motors that Gimson sells if all goes to plan.

The Lipo conversion caused an interesting problem; as I no longer had a 2.5Kg SLA in the back of my robot, every time I tried to lift someone I would just tip forward instead. This means I'll have to spend most of my spare weight adding big armour plates or something to the back. I also intend to move my motors to the back when I have time for the 4wd upgrade, which should help a bit.

I fitted a wing type schrimech to Richie before the event, but didn't have time to try and get it working until the break between shows. I quickly found it was much more effective just to have them stuck out permanently, so I plan to replace them with just a bit of stiff plastic pipe. Not pretty, but effective!

Still, all problems aside, I still drove into every fight, and even drove out of a few! Was a lot of fun, and am planning to do a lot of upgrades when I get more than a day or two to work on it!

Oh and on a side note, if anyone here does antweights and is looking for an ESC, I've finally started taking orders on my home made antweight speed controllers. See http://robotwars101.org/forum/viewto...=2128&start=75 for more details.