Team Durango DNX408 Ready for World Champs in Pattaya
Here is the latest update from Team Durango that looks at the changes made to their DNX408 cars in response to the demands of the tough track in Thailand.
“Even before the Durango Worlds team went to the World Championship track in Pattaya in October, we knew that the track was hard. It is not only a hard track to drive, it is a hard track on cars. We knew from seeing how other teams’ cars suffered at the warm-up race that the chassis in particular came in for some real punishment. During our tests in October, Ryan Lutz, Hupo Honigl and Gerd Strenge were able to confirm quite how punishing the Pattaya track surface was. Since he returned from Pattaya three weeks ago, Gerd has been working night and day on a solution to protect the chassis from the super-hard track surface and mega-high jumps. The 7075 hardened aluminium chassis, which comes as standard on the DNX408, withstood the put nishment the track gave it really well, but Gerd wanted to give the chassis even more resilience. From these photos you can what Gerd has done. Using his engineering expertise, Gerd has taken two standard DNX408 chassis and made front and rear skid plates. What is special about Gerd’s work is that he has managed to bend the skid-plate around the front kick-up of the chassis and make the rear skid-plate cover the full width of the rear of the chassis. Gerd milled the underside of the top chassis layer and then, by using a second, standard DNX408 chassis, cut-out skid-plates for the front and rear of the car to the same height as the milled areas. This means that the 7075 hardened skid-plates sit perfectly flush to the bottom of the chassis. So, when the Pattaya track eats-away at the skid-plates, Gerd can simply replace them for new one.
“We look forward to seeing how well this works when the World Championships start on next week. At the moment there are no plans to put this ’skid-plate special’ chassis into production. Of course, if there is enough demand, Team Durango will listen to what our drivers want and we may offer it as an option part in the future.
Team Durango would like to wish all competitors at this year’s World Championships the best of luck.”
Source: Durango
