21 Feb/04 - Detail Design drawings complete.

18 March/04 - Waiting for machine shop to fabricate mockup/prototype.

16 April/04 - Picked up first prototype parts and everything fits. A few minor glitches that will be fixed when the next five chassis are fabricated. The chassis is reallllllllly stiff in both torsion and bending. Check out the pics. Testing will start this weekend.

17 April/04 - In the process of cleaning up some of the parts I screwed up and broke a tap in the motor mount. So much for testing tomorrow.

18 April/04 - Managed to figure out a way around the motor mount problem and completed my mini test program today. Ran 3 packs with the old FT graphite chassis (battery slots modified) and then repeated with the TNG V7 chassis. The chassis performed even better than I had hoped. I didn't make any changes to the setup I have been running. Just adjusted front toe, droop and weight balance. Here is a summary of the results

20 April/04 - Club race night. Went to the track early to test the car with the V7.1 upper chassis. Essentially the same results as with the V7 upper chassis. Qualified second and finished second in the A main. Desperately need new batteries as you can see from looking at the testing lap times.

27 April/04 - Received 5 chassis from my fabricator today. Everything looks great.

28 April/04 - ED (the first Factory driver) made the switch today and did some track testing. His best lap time was a 10.19 versus the 10.32 he turned in the A main last night. Will be interesting to see what happens at next weeks club race.

1 May/04 - Built a simple test jig to measure bending and torsional chassis stiffness. Great results for both chassis when compared to the FT Graphite chassis