1969 was the year of the 4 wheel drives in F1. Established teams including Lotus, Mclaren and Matra all spent a lot of resources trying to make it work only to find as soon as they hit the track that on road tracks with lots of differing corners there was no advantage to be gained. This particularly because the driver needed to 'feel' and balance the front steering with the rear tyres. As soon as the front wheels were driven the steering was far too heavy and the driver could no longer feel the balance.
Although the technology was reasonably advanced by then, Ferguson having pointed the way with three limited slip differentials nearly a decade earlier, only some considerable time later did AWD come of age in motorsport although once again being particularly useful in low grip conditions such as rally and rallycross.
Into this arena, fresh off the huge success of the DFV which was just beginning its long and amazing career, swept Cosworth who decided to design their own F1 car. Being engineers of some repute they decided that it had to be 4WD as that was what looked like the next best thing. Robin Herd designed the car. Duckworth designed the engineering around a magnesium DFV and Costin tested it extensively.
So was born the 1969 Cosworth F1. Interesting for its total lack of any kind of designation or project number, something by then very fashionable in F1! As if it was destined always to be a unique car from the outset.....
Except of course that they made two and they were different from one another! The largest difference was the shape of the pannier tanks. They seem to have originated with the same narrow nose sides and only one was then modified to have the wider side pods. Other changes were the rear tea tray wing was replaced by the wing and the front brake feeding Naca duct was given a long scoop.
I will build the wide nose and rear wing version as it seems to be the 'final' evolution of the design prior to the project being abandoned.
In slot car racing I have not done a careful study of 4WD but it would appear that the early race pioneers, desperate for any kind of advantage and keen to try out new things had tried many options and set ups by the end of the 1960's and completely ruled it out of hand.
This is hardly a surprise given that perceived wisdom demonstrates that the guide and not the front tyres should touch the track. Plus with a guide no under or over steer is really possible. (?) As an aside this last seems interesting to me as the real cars had problems of understeer which, if not possible on a slot track, should mean only the advantages should be left?
My interests in 4WD in slot cars are:
1. What fun, just love the challenge of making it work
2. I hate perceived wisdom; really have to test it myself!
3. Some of those cars have never / rarely been modelled before.
4. There are technologies newly available out there which make it easier to do.
5. Maybe, just maybe those technologies might render different results under certain conditions.....
The Costin car is an obvious choice when one studies the technical difficulties of the project:
1. I need to get a guide and a limited slip differential under the nose as well as at the rear.
2. I need to get a motor next to a drive shaft through the body of the car.
So my set of initial mechanical thoughts are:
a) I need to get 3 limited slip differentials into the car.
![cool.gif]()
One between each wheel on front and rear axles.
c) One splitting the front and rear parts of the central axle.
Body and chassis wise I have no choice but to design and make my own. This I will do by scratching with my mouse rather than with my scalpel. For me it is quicker and will be much easier to ensure all the mechanical parts coordinate before assembly... No dimensions exist for the car, nor any decent plans are to be found on the internet so I am going to set the base dimensions on the Lotus 72 in terms of track and wheelbase. The idea behind that is two fold; a) selfishly I need to have a benchmark for testing and![cool.gif]()
they were both cars designed in similar moments in time (the Coswor slightly earlier perhaps...)
Testing
If I manage to get is to a decent running point I intend to put together a full test. I have some ideas about how this might be done but will leave that for later as I am getting way ahead of myself....
Note; this will not be a cheap project and given the likely complexity (and lack of actual result) is not intended as a commercial project.
I have spent some time modelling the car in the computer and have got to the point that until I receive some of the mechanical parts and measure them I cannot really progress.
I have deduced that the largest crown diameter of wheel axle diff. I can accommodate without recourse to UJ's is 18mm so my fingers are crossed that the parts ordered slightly blindly from Japan will be of that diameter or less! Of course most gears will allow some reduction and still work so if they turn out to be only slightly more we can proceed....
The guide and front diff. should both fit in the nose without compromises to the radiator extract duct depth.
At the rear the diff. crown will break out of the top of the frame but hidden under the rear wing this compromise I will accept...
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Cheers
Andi
Although the technology was reasonably advanced by then, Ferguson having pointed the way with three limited slip differentials nearly a decade earlier, only some considerable time later did AWD come of age in motorsport although once again being particularly useful in low grip conditions such as rally and rallycross.
Into this arena, fresh off the huge success of the DFV which was just beginning its long and amazing career, swept Cosworth who decided to design their own F1 car. Being engineers of some repute they decided that it had to be 4WD as that was what looked like the next best thing. Robin Herd designed the car. Duckworth designed the engineering around a magnesium DFV and Costin tested it extensively.
So was born the 1969 Cosworth F1. Interesting for its total lack of any kind of designation or project number, something by then very fashionable in F1! As if it was destined always to be a unique car from the outset.....
Except of course that they made two and they were different from one another! The largest difference was the shape of the pannier tanks. They seem to have originated with the same narrow nose sides and only one was then modified to have the wider side pods. Other changes were the rear tea tray wing was replaced by the wing and the front brake feeding Naca duct was given a long scoop.
I will build the wide nose and rear wing version as it seems to be the 'final' evolution of the design prior to the project being abandoned.
In slot car racing I have not done a careful study of 4WD but it would appear that the early race pioneers, desperate for any kind of advantage and keen to try out new things had tried many options and set ups by the end of the 1960's and completely ruled it out of hand.
This is hardly a surprise given that perceived wisdom demonstrates that the guide and not the front tyres should touch the track. Plus with a guide no under or over steer is really possible. (?) As an aside this last seems interesting to me as the real cars had problems of understeer which, if not possible on a slot track, should mean only the advantages should be left?
My interests in 4WD in slot cars are:
1. What fun, just love the challenge of making it work
2. I hate perceived wisdom; really have to test it myself!
3. Some of those cars have never / rarely been modelled before.
4. There are technologies newly available out there which make it easier to do.
5. Maybe, just maybe those technologies might render different results under certain conditions.....
The Costin car is an obvious choice when one studies the technical difficulties of the project:
1. I need to get a guide and a limited slip differential under the nose as well as at the rear.
2. I need to get a motor next to a drive shaft through the body of the car.
So my set of initial mechanical thoughts are:
a) I need to get 3 limited slip differentials into the car.
One between each wheel on front and rear axles.c) One splitting the front and rear parts of the central axle.
Body and chassis wise I have no choice but to design and make my own. This I will do by scratching with my mouse rather than with my scalpel. For me it is quicker and will be much easier to ensure all the mechanical parts coordinate before assembly... No dimensions exist for the car, nor any decent plans are to be found on the internet so I am going to set the base dimensions on the Lotus 72 in terms of track and wheelbase. The idea behind that is two fold; a) selfishly I need to have a benchmark for testing and
they were both cars designed in similar moments in time (the Coswor slightly earlier perhaps...)Testing
If I manage to get is to a decent running point I intend to put together a full test. I have some ideas about how this might be done but will leave that for later as I am getting way ahead of myself....
Note; this will not be a cheap project and given the likely complexity (and lack of actual result) is not intended as a commercial project.
I have spent some time modelling the car in the computer and have got to the point that until I receive some of the mechanical parts and measure them I cannot really progress.
I have deduced that the largest crown diameter of wheel axle diff. I can accommodate without recourse to UJ's is 18mm so my fingers are crossed that the parts ordered slightly blindly from Japan will be of that diameter or less! Of course most gears will allow some reduction and still work so if they turn out to be only slightly more we can proceed....
The guide and front diff. should both fit in the nose without compromises to the radiator extract duct depth.
At the rear the diff. crown will break out of the top of the frame but hidden under the rear wing this compromise I will accept...
Cheers
Andi