TOPIC:

Hello!
During one of the last year vintage events, one guy looked at my cars and he was clearly impressed by the work on the Spirit FF... We had lot of discussions since as he was in one of the clubs I was going for running my cars... One day, he told me : "Marc I have some rare cars you may model at some point". It materialised at some point with boxes with all the parts of a Mugen Mercury. As it is not build, there won't be any picture of a built car in this thread...

Instead, pictures of parts and pictures of the modeled parts... And I won't build the car, as it will go back to the owner once I have finished the model...

I had a look at the parts, and it is clearly part of the complex ones . And that is good, because I love the difficult things...

But I decided to start simple...



Or not so simple in fact, as for the rim, I did 3 bodies, made cuts in 2 of them separately before assembling the whole stuff..


After the rim, I did the tire...


And here we have the complete wheel...


And another project is starting...

Also sold by academy. Very nice and interesting chassis.

Time to deal with the motor plate...

Here is the motor plate. I don't even know how it was mounted, as the car is in parts...



Once done, I launched a quick print to check for accuracy (things I was not doing in the past as it was the best way to stop working and focus on fixing the printer   )...



One advise for those doing like this : having plates onto each other is not enough to check measurements are right...
The real test is the screw test : if they are not parallel, there is something wrong...
3 measure out of place of a quarter of millimeter...


Corrected now. we can move to next part...

After the motor plate, I decided to tackle the arms...


Front first (right one)...


Firstly, it is not easy to measure. As ususal, I start by an observation round to check if what I see parallel is actually parallel. Then, I set the plan. 

There is a part which is simple (with the triangles)...


Then some suppressions to make the attachements on both ends


After this two bodies and holes to add and finally a removal to give room to the transmission...


I will do the rear one tomorrow, but the design of those parts already appears complex...

Rear right arm is done following the same principle as front arm, but measurements are even harder...




And we have our suspension arms, now (left side will be mrrored).

Next is about front spindle, front and rear carriers


Had a quick look at the manual to check. The car has 2 left spindles. The owner knows it and highlighted it to me. I decided to make the left and get it mirrored for the right...


The spindle is composed of 2 bodies with an angle of 10 degrees between them...




Once assemble only to do the two bottom holes and we are there... That is almost easy   

Then we just have to create a joint to position the part...


Next is the front carrirer... The part is easier to do, there is not a single subtility about it... That's no fun




And a joint...


Next is the rear carrier... A bit more complex than the front carrier. I did use 3 bodies to build it (forgot to takes screenshots, I let you guess :-D)


And here is the part in place...



I'm not sure what I do next... I may take benefit of the sun outside to do a bit of paint...
 

Mountain, rc and sun. All I need.

WHile awaiting the part for other projects, I restarted to work on this Mugen Mercury...


The chassis is quite complex to measure for multiple reasons : it has everything to make it difficult :
- plans are not parallel
- length is too long for my caliper
- and each curve in the plan is not clear, as it is a fillet

In other words, business as usual... I started to establish the base profile and the full length, and tried to reproduce the slopes...


Once this was done, I started to make some extrusions, and next I put the motor plate in position (not on the right side of chassis because I started by the right side) to establish the position of some of the holes...


One of the reason I procrastinated a lot was that I did not thought the plan. It's the case now, so I should be able to move forward...
 

An opportunity for a cheap chassis last week I discuss myself about taking it or not for a few day, and finally decided to get it... It was not really expensive anyway, and althought there is some damage on it, I know that I can find what is required to make this a great car at the end, and further, I already know that I should be able to do all the missing parts (as I still have the Mercury of my friend Pascal in parts until I finish the CAD model).



The format of this chassis is even more impressive in hand. It's weird, it has very wide track (I don't think it was the norm when it was out on the market), and the suspension travels are huge... And the bumper is positionned in a way that whatever angle the car would arrive from a jump, wheels would be first on the ground... This is slightly too modern car for my taste, but I will have to get it ran at some point, just for the sake of knowing how it works...

Very interesting concept