Back to Improvements                                                                                         Qualifying day 2002

The latest rules from Mentorn stated that, for safety reasons, only three types of CO2 bottle
would be acceptable as part of a pneumatic system in 2002.

Unfortunately for us, none of the three specified bottles could possibly fit within our chassis.

Gee, thanks!

So an alternative (and rapid) redesign was required in the remaining weeks before qualifying.

We fitted a pair of 12v electric window lifters to the chassis.

This system provided nothing like the power which a pneumatic system would have furnished,
but in the time given, and with virtually zero budget, we had few alternatives.

Note the lack of drive and weapon motors here. They had been removed, dismantled and fitted
with supression capacitors to reduce the risk of radio interference to the radio controller.

Maximus was stripped to a near-bare chassis and rebuilt within a day or two of the qualifying rounds.



The wiring was strapped up - and removable links (specified by the rules)
were fitted to isolate power from the drive, flywheel and lifter systems.

Everybody was busy on the eve of the trip to Newark
(or at least they looked to be for the camera!)



(This is the first ever picture of me to be seen on this site
- too busy to take the pictures myself this time!)

A (long awaited) nose cone containing a captive bearing was fabricated and fitted.

Karls' dad, Mike Warren, ensured that the electric window motors had a solid connection
to the flipper (note the eight screws and the steel bars running frrom the motors to the flipper).

A hundred and one other details were attended to (safety bar, removable links,
battery tray, securing of wiring and so on and so on...).

At 2:30 am on Wednesday 2nd July 2002, we tried to get some sleep before the big day.

Here endeth this page