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Old 2002.08.18, 05:03 PM   #1
West.F1
San Marino GP- 4/25/04
 
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review: findings on front bumper clearance

alright. yet another review from your friendly neighborhood Analyzer Man. Despite being an avid mclaren fan, i had purchased a williams body since the BMW squad are my second favorite F1 team. Anyway, it seems having low front bumper clearance was a problem for some in the past. Well, after switching over the body sets on my F1, i had immediately noticed something very interesting. The front bumper clearance with the williams was now slightly MORE elevated compared to when i had the mclaren body set. naturally this captured my interest so i was compelled to do some further investigation to explain this difference in ground clearance. now before i continue, i unfortunately do not have any pics so you'll have to bear with me on my attempts to describe things in detail.



first the obvious.

VISUAL DIFFERENCES. when looking at the finer details of the williams and mclaren nose cones, it became really clear how much kyosho took strides to mimick the real life counterparts in making the miniF1s different.

like all F1 cars, both cones have a gradual downward slope to their upper surfaces. the mclaren has a slightly steeper angle however though not by much. looking at them from the side, the cut outs to the back opening both make a 90 degree angle to my desk surface and both wing attachents do not angle more than the other. i had thought any off angulation to the rear cut outs or wing angles would contribute to differences in bumper heights but this was not the case.

looking further i found the most notable differences were in the overall length and heights of these nose cones. without actually measuring, one can see the tip of the mclaren's nose is lower set when compared to the williams and also the length is slightly shorter. This brings us to the next phase of this review. measurements.


MEASUREMENT RESULTS- due to the scale of these models i felt it best to make all measurements in millimeters. With both mclaren and williams nose cones detached, i measured both their heights (from the tip of nose cone to the desk surface) and their lengths (measuring from the tip of the cone to the rear opening using a ruler to mark exactly the two points that make up their length on a piece of paper). here's what i found:

height

mclaren- 12mm
williams- 14mm

length

mclaren- 29mm
williams- 31mm

as you can see nose of the williams is 2mm taller and 2mm longer than the mclarens. i then proceeded to install the mclaren body and nose cone to my F1 chassis. With the bumper attachment also installed i re- measured the height of the cone in similar fashion as above and also the ground clearance of the bumper attachment. Afterwards, i repeated this procedure with the williams body set for further comparison:


McLaren.

nose height- 15mm
bumper clearance- 2mm


williams:

nose height- 17mm
bumper clearance- 3mm



F1 chassis ground clearance is 3.5 mm


as we can see, the mclaren's nose when measured from it's tip, sets lower to the ground than the williams by 2mm when both are unmounted. naturally this trend follows after they are attached to the chassis. despite their difference in heights, i feel perhaps the mclaren nose having a shorter overall length of 2mm would help to explain why the front bumper clearance is lower by 1mm compared to the williams. Being that the front bumper attachment stays the same length, i'm guessing more tension is applied with the shorter mclaren nose resulting in some slight downward bending of the bumper due to flex.


anyway, just thought i'd share this finding with you all. i'm an avid mclaren fan so any fellow mclarenites please don't take this in any way other than some key observations with some measurements to back it up. 1 mm difference in ground clearance isn't much but it's certainly there based on my findings and only using the williams body set for comparison. how you wish to deal with this difference to the front bumper ride height is left to you.

i welcome any comments, critiques, suggestions and additions to my review. thank you for your time.


cheers.


West.F1
Independent Analyzer

Last edited by West.F1; 2002.08.18 at 06:57 PM.
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Old 2002.08.18, 05:53 PM   #2
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Right on, good find.

I have the Mclaren and I find that it is pretty low. I wonder how the ferrari body might be different?

Perhaps someone will chime in with more info about other bodies. Its interesting and thanks for the info !
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Old 2002.08.19, 02:36 AM   #3
gargoyle7642
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front bumper ground clearance

My Ferrari has 2mm of clearance, Jordan about 1.5 mm and McLaren has 1mm.
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Old 2002.08.19, 11:44 AM   #4
West.F1
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thanks for the measurements gargoyle.


i should mention there are some things that will affect bumper clearance such as wire congestion under the body ie from having a turbo. this can cause the mid chassis to bow upward a bit causing the front end to sligthly lower. there's also the possibility the two mounting screws to the nose aren't all the way snug. and of course this goes true for the screws to the bumper plate.

i welcome any other causes/remedies to having too low a bumper clearance. it should be close to the clearance of the rest of the chassis which , as i've measured, is about 3.5mm
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Old 2002.08.20, 01:04 PM   #5
mini-z
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Wow, cool finding! Anyone know the measurements on the 1:1 for each?
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Old 2002.08.20, 04:58 PM   #6
avitt
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I noticed that the bumper on my McLaren was actually dragging at times, so I remedied the situation thusly:

-Removed the plastic bumper.
-Held it over a steaming teakettle until the plastic was slightly pliable.
-Slightly bent the forward part ot the bumper upwards.
-Replaced the bumper.

Voila...Increased clearance.
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Old 2002.08.22, 07:45 PM   #7
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I noticed that my McLaren was really low the other day, and discovered that it had popped off of the two little prongs that hold the center in place. Not sure how long I'd been driving around like that! On a related note, my fiance drove it into and out of a 1/2" deep puddle the other day and everything was fine!
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