This week's featured teapot racer is Potions in Motion, a racer built by Stephanie Dunnam and run by Tracy Dunnam.
Potions in Motion won the ribbon for best design at Renninger Steampunk Industrial Show on Oct. 15, 2016. The judges had some disagreement about the winner of this award, but two factors led to this racer being chosen the winner.
1. Two out of three games of "Rock, Paper, Scissors" and
2. One judge's love of purple.
The Dunnams also took home the medal for fastest course completion and no other racer even came close to their time of 1 minute, 5 seconds.
The bribing of the judges:
Preparing to race:
Stephanie and Tracy did not receive a single deduction and were given extra points for showmanship.
Hi, I'm making my first splendid teapot racer for the upcoming Teslacon. I've never seen a racer or a race in person, only via your blog's Teapot Tuesday feature. Is there some secret for making a racer more stable?
ReplyDeleteI spent several weeks making and painting two little tea-trays with vignettes. (I plan to use them interchangeably on the vehicle using industrial velcro). When the truck arrived from Amazon and I took off the "truck body," I was left with the bottom half of the truck, including car seats, steering wheel, etc.--no flat surface for attaching a tea tray. I couldn't take off more, as the truck body was the top of the battery compartment.
I used Epoxy to flatten out the top of the truck, and then put industrial velcro on that surface. There's about a 3" x 3" surface of Velcro on the truck that I can attach things to. I tried sticking the lightest of my two trays to the truck. However, even on flat ground, it tips over. My RC truck is a small "rock climber" with a high center of gravity. The suspension sways several inches to the side if I even go over throw rug.I see other teapot racers using the same type of spring-suspension RC truck with MUCH heavier decor on it, and theirs look stable.
Is there some trick to attaching the tea tray that I don't know about? Or some particular truck body I should be using? I spent $65 on the RC truck body for this thing, and am not going to get two feet in a race without the suspension flinging the tea tray precariously to the side and the whole thing toppling over. I can't find any info online to see what type of car body to use or how to attach the bobbles and teapots. Do you know of any resources, or have first-hand knowledge of how people are attaching things? Thanks!
I was able to attach the tea tray to my son's Rock Crawler with screws.
ReplyDeletehttp://overthecrescentmoon.blogspot.com/2015/08/tea-pirates-we-created-teapot-racer.html
After almost a year of use, something went wrong with the suspension or balance and it started tipping to one side, so I bought a new Rock Crawler. The new one has never worked properly.
For my other builds, I've been using E6000 to attach everything. It must be used in a well-ventilated area, but it hold well.
I've never seen any racers held together with Velco, but I don't see why it wouldn't work. One of my ramps uses Velco and it's been pretty durable. It is important to make sure everything is balanced.
I'm sorry, I haven't seen much online about how to assemble a racer. I've posted the progress of a couple of my builds, but I'm just figuring this out as I go. I've only used trucks for my build, not cars, because so far, the truck bodies have been easy to remove.
http://overthecrescentmoon.blogspot.com/2016/04/speed-reader-my-new-teapot-racer.html
and
http://overthecrescentmoon.blogspot.com/2016/06/eat-our-dust-very-pink-and-frilly.html
Thanks for the great info and links. The photos were very helpful. You've made some INCREDIBLE racers. I esp. love the one with the books, which look so realistic and I would never have guessed were foamboard.
ReplyDeleteSince posting my comment, I cut down my tea trays and really crammed the teapots and characters together on them. I tried them out today, and I'm now able to navigate on flat ground and carpet bumps without tipping over. I need to go build a little ramp now so I can practice the Ramp of Doom before Teslacon. :-)
I guess I was just unlucky that I chose an RC truck whose body did NOT come off with screws to leave a flat surface. In my case, I had to deal with a completely lumpy and uneven surface with 3D plastic fire extinguisher, bucket seats, etc. The way I fixed this was to tape doubled aluminum foil around the entire lower truck body (the part that couldn't be removed without exposing the battery). Then I poured in E6000, a bit at a time and let it set. It was like flooding a car with water up to ones neck. :-) In the end, I had a level surface for attaching industrial velcro for my tea trays. I could also have simply used more E6000 to attach the tray directly. Hopefully, this will help somebody if they have a similar situation of an RC truck without a flat surface.
Thanks again for the help and links. Will you be at Teslacon in a few weeks?
Thank you!
ReplyDeleteI'm glad I could be at least a little helpful.
Someday I would love to go to TeslaCon, but I can't afford it this year. I've heard so many good things about it, including that the teapot racing course is going to look like Paris.
Good luck with the race!