Well Ed, Full scale torsion bars are not light, I can tell you this from experience. Nor are they soft, they are in fact spring steel. When they fail, they tend to either sheer clean, or shatter. I suspect that 1/6th scale torsion bars would be best made from the same sort of material.
As for threading the live end, I doubt that you will be able to, spring steel is pretty hard. Full scale torsion bars are keyed or splined on the ends. If you can start with a softer steel and harden it after threading, you'll be able to thread the ends. Getting several torsion bars the same spring rate would take practice, I would imagine. You may want to put left-handed threads on one side, so that gravity will help keep them tight. As an alternative, I've seen pics of simulated torsion bars made with torsion coil springs. I'll see if I can find them later. For now, I've attached a pic of a full scale Tiger I's torsion bar arrangement. The odd roadwheel alignment is a feature of torsion bar suspensions. It seems pretty strange at first and you would think it would cause all kinds of problems. It doesn't. An M-88 (the one I'm most familiar with) has a couple more track sections on one side. Think of the track as part of the ground. Maybe a better example would be a road. A road that the vehicle lays in front of itself, then recovers. Forward speed (or reverse) is not affected at all. Speed vs. input RPM is determined by the diameter of the drive sprocket, rather than the track length. You may find that it is easier to turn one direction over another due to friction, but I doubt it. Paul H. ----- Original Message ----- From: "?" <edco...@live.ca> To: "R/C Tank Combat" <rctankcombat@googlegroups.com> Sent: Thursday, October 29, 2009 3:04 PM Subject: [TANKS] Re: Torque rod suspension? > > I was am concerned about that too. Im worried that any rod light > enough to twist under load would bend with a good smack from the side. > I thought about threading the rods right into the swing arm so the arm > sits right up against the hull, that might help... or have the torsion > bar inside another axle. right now i'm experimenting with 5/8 tubing > axles, filled with grease, with hacksaw blade torsion bars inside...I > have another question though too. On the full scale Chaffee (and a lot > of tanks I think) the starboard road wheels sit farther forward than > the port ones, to allow the torsion bars to span the full with of the > hull. Would this cause any problems with steering/approach angle? > > Thanks, > Ed > > On Oct 29, 6:40 am, Steve Tyng <steve...@gmail.com> wrote: >> I'd be interested to see how these bent rod suspensions hold their >> wheel alignments after a few hard days battling. >> >> Steve Tyng > > > > --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You are currently subscribed to the "R/C Tank Combat" group. To post a message, send email to rctankcombat@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe, send email to rctankcombat-unsubscr...@googlegroups.com Visit the group at http://groups.google.com/group/rctankcombat -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
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