Long-time friend of Prototyp and aerodynamicist Michael Fuller was recently sketching an evolved, custom-bodied 962 variation. This 962 would leverage late-era IMSA GTP aero approaches seen on the Nissan GTP ZX T, Dyson's DR2, and Joest's 'red baron' 962.
More »I needed a shell for the Traxxas to keep dirt/rocks/sticks out of the central chassis during off-road adventures. I figured I should make it cool, too...
More »Rough work on the core chassis and tricky front bodywork build. Intent here is to make sure the shaping is right and to find out what improvements need to be made so the surfaces build easily.
More »The cardboard stock I use is perfect for prototyping parts. It's very stiff and nearly the same thickness as 2mm Stratocore, and it's cheap (well, free with purchase of Bisquick from Costco).
More »This was a quick study for a sedan body design on the Traxxas 1/16 Rally chassis. This shell captures the legendary Audi 90 that utterly dominated the GTO class in the 1989 IMSA series.
More »First pass on modeling the GTR coupe design... The 1/16 scale Traxxas chassis has an extremely short wheelbase which does create some challenges in getting the proportions of the design to work.
More »Toward the end of the GTP and Group C era, the quest for downforce lead some teams to a double-wing setup. Jaguar, Toyota, Joest, Peugeot and many others ran short tails and double wings, usually with massive endplates. The large lower wing was just off the trailing edge of the deck and effectively functioned as an extension of the underbody diffuser tunnel system, while the upper wings tended to be more compact and run at shallower, less-drag-inducing angles.
More »The GTR Coupe is an aggressive dual-purpose drift and road-racing body-shell concept for the Traxxas chassis. The design makes use of the same aerodynamic downforce airflow treatments developed with the LMP body to cancel out lift and minimize drag at speed, yet remains stable and balanced even in low-speed maneuvers.
More »The most recent build of the LMP revealed more dimensional problems between the source CAD model and the physical chassis. Since several parts were going to need to be revised, I made the update an opportunity for further refinement of the design concept.
More »Most successful livery designs place at least a few colors together to form borders of larger color areas. This makes for more dynamic color transitions and keeps the design from looking like just a bunch of multi-colored panels.
The focus on these Decim8 cycles was to generate more layered and flowing treatments on the TRX LMP.
More »It make take a little squinting, but some of the Decim8 outputs conjure reinterpretations of classic prototype liveries: Tulius' Group 44, Leyton House, Silk Cut, even Joest's pink Italya-sponsored car.
More »Running more LMP renders through Decim8 . These revisited and refined the intricate color-blocking from the early experiments. Takes a little squinting and imagination to filter out the noise, but some really interesting patterns and textures emerge.
More »Rapid-prototype work for the Traxxas project is done with paper-modeling techniques. Paper is a relatively low-cost way to validate the LMP body design as well as the underlying chassis model and all its various hard-points and clearances. Getting the chassis model right is important as it will serve as the basis for additional design projects.
More »Quite happy with the Peugeot's proportions and shaping, so work turns to refinements to sub-assemblies - this is when all the dependencies between the parts begin to make adjustments more difficult.
More »It's taken a few rounds, but I think I've now resolved the last few trouble spots on the overall bodywork design. So let's call the design work for the TRX LMP done. (unless, as it turns out, a test build reveals there are still a few things to address)
More »The list of Peugeot to-dos is growing shorter... Got the body to about 90% sorted with lots of nudging and smoothing, and worked up the front tusks and snorkel intakes. Need to tackle the interior bits next, then I'll do some renders of the bare chassis. :)
More »The Traxxas LMP model got to see some simulated wind tunnel time. Autodesk Labs has a lightweight CFD simulator available for a limited time. It'll take a 3DS or STL model and run computations in a fixed-ground tunnel environment. The results are perhaps not absolutely precise but for my purposes insightful enough.
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