I was well into building a tracked vehicle with the 3 inch Lynxmotion tracks, when I got concerned about tracks coming off in turns. I want to run it outdoors in grass, which puts a lot of lateral stress on the tracks when turning. My vehicle is large, 2.5 feet long. One reason I got concerned is looking at the tanks on rctankcombat.com, they all have track guides, usually in the center of the tracks, which move between pairs of road wheels to keep the track centered. Does anyone have suggestions about this - is it a problem, or a problem at certain speeds, etc? Any suggestions about how to avoid tracks coming off or how to build a system that doesn’t have that problem?
Probably the easiest way to keep the tracks in place is to keep them well tensioned and use additional sprockets as the idler boggies.
Yeah, additional sprockets would work, although they are expensive. It might be fairly easy to build them from a simple wooden wheel with little studs sticking out.
I find that sprockets are not too easy to make. If you already have some you might make a mold and cast the outer sprocket part to make the idlers.