Darin's TFL HOBBY 34" Carbon Cheetah Build

[Darin Jordan]

Whenever I tell my wife I'm going out to work in the garage, so gets a smirk and says "Oh, so your going 'gluing' again?"....

Well... Yes, as a matter of fact I am...

Trimmed up the stuffing tubes and have the motor mounts setting up. Once these are cured, I'll laminate them in with some Carbon.

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[montymike]

.Huuuuummmm, that slot system motor mount looks like one I have seen before like in my mystic 29. Guess I know who thought of that....wt

[Brushless55]

Very cool looking build !

[Darin Jordan]

No new progress last night, but got the motors out and will hopefully laminate over the motor mount bases tonight... More "gluing" to come...

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[Darin Jordan]

Had an extra hour this weekend (amazing...) to tinker a bit.

Finished up the motor mounting. Stuck some 1oz Veil Cloth to some 5.5oz Carbon weave using some Super 77, but a couple of squares of it, Super 77'd it over the motor mount base, and laminated it to the hull. The Super 77 sticks it down OK during the laminating process, but Carbon doesn't like to "bend", well, so once it's soaked, it tends to lift up off any surfaces it's asked to conform around. SO, to keep it down, I used some peel ply and a piece of bagging film, and used wood blocks and clamps to hold it down. Should do the trick.

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[Darin Jordan]

While the laminate was setting up, I started mocking up the interior a bit. Turns out that a pair of Dynamite 120A ESCs fit PERFECTLY across the tray, and the outer holes line up exactly on the installed mounting posts. So I think this is how I'm going to mount the ESCs. I'll make some spacer blocks for the outside, and then some additional mounting posts on the inside for the other mounting tabs on the ESCs.

I'm trying to get as much weight back as possible to leave me lots of battery options and CG adjustment.

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Running 120A ESC on each side of a 4S system like this should be plenty of ESC for a P-setup, BUT... I still have the issue of the hull being too long for the P-class. I measured things to figure out just HOW much too long, to see if I was going to be willing to mod the hull enough to get it to fit. After measuring, the answer is going to be HELL YES! That's a quick tweak!

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[ray schrauwen]

Nice choice for escs. They almost look like a Seaking 180 but with a nicer cooling plate. Whoever told them to put that heat sink on in that configuration was a smart guy.

Your last attachments either haven't loaded or the links are broken??

My Fg version only needs 1\8" shaved off the tips.

[Darin Jordan]

Your last attachments either haven't loaded or the links are broken??

Dang... See if that's better... I reloaded the pics...

[ray schrauwen]

Perfect!

[f.a.r.m.e.r]

Very nice build Darin thanks for sharing this :)

[Darin Jordan]

Made a bit more progress in the few moments of free time I could muster this holiday weekend.

Created some carbon mounting blocks for the ESCs... The outer ones are pass-through holes that pickup the hull standoffs for the electronics tray. The inner ones are actually threaded. Pretty basic. Laminated carbon fiber, trimmed and drilled accordingly. Turned out pretty clean.

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[Darin Jordan]

To add dual water pickups, I wanted to try to keep the "stuff" hanging off the back of the hull to a minimum. Less to get damaged during a "race incident", etc.

Went to OSE.com and ordered a couple of the "thru-hull" ride-pad style pickups from Steven (Top-Notch service, as is the norm here!).

Room is tight at the back of the ride pad due to the stuffing tube location, but I think I've found a suitable spot. Located the opening, then drilled the corners and cut-out with a Dremel tool and cut-off wheel. Cleaned up with a file. Misdrilled one hole, as you can see... See... it's not that "I'm good"... it's that I'm good at covering up my mistakes! I'll fill that in later.

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Once the holes were located, I found that the depth of the cut on the pickups was about .040" shy of allowing them to be flush with the hull. The ride-pads on this TFL Cheetah are about 0.100" thick, which is great.

Having the benefit of owning a small Mill, I milled the step down another 0.040" and they are now just SLIGHTLY extended past the ride-surface. This is perfect and I will then block sand them down flush when I give the ride pads their initial truing, which appears to be only minimally required at this point.

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With the fitting done, I then used a generous amount of JB-Weld and put them in place. You can see the TIGHT fit here, but I think these should work out well where they are located. I guess we'll find out.

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[kfxguy]

Looking good. I wonder where those escs came from....

[Darin Jordan]

Looking good. I wonder where those escs came from....

Thanks... Those are factory Pro Boat BJ29 V3 ESCs...

http://www.proboatmodels.com/Products/Default.aspx?ProdID=DYNM3875

[T.S.Davis]

Pretty sure Dynamite is buying from Hobbywing. Why not? They're pretty good units. The dynamite cooling block is better than the Seaking block IMO.