Jedi Master wrote:Some pics of my Pred. It's new built. Not sure what model.....
That's a Predator International from 1996, identified by the moulded chassis and blue anodised alloy parts.
It's fitted with the Grand Prix rockers, that's the carbon plates on the moulded front rockers to change the geometry. They were an option part that became standard on later models.
They were pretty popular in the UK in the late 90s, with many UK nationals and European Championships wins, as well as the US Winternationals (Kinwalds first race with the car) and NORRCA nationals.
The only real fault with them was the bevel gears on the diffs, you really had to shim them correctly to make them last, too loose and you would be lucky to get through a meeting without destroying them. Later reinforced gears were much stronger but quite a few were modified to fit Associated TC3 gears instead. The one piece moulded chassis helped gearbox reliability as it meant you couldn't get the propshaft out of alignment when assembling the car. The early wishbones were weak but it didn't take long until the flat ribs were added to them that beefed them up.
Regarding the early carbon fibre chassis, Richard Weatherley, who basically was Tenth Technology, was a very successful karter up to world championship level, and was friends with the owner of Tillett Racing Seats who made carbon and fibreglass seats for karts. All the carbon fibre chassis were hand made by Tillett Racing Seats.
The last big win was the 2001 Euros where Ian Kenningley and Craig Drescher finished 1-2 with the Predator, but after that Richard Weatherley was concentrating more on his distribution company than developing the Predator.
After the X10 was introduced after a 5 year break, Richard Weatherley developed the
TCS Thermal Cooling System which led on to
TCS Micropumps. To concentrate on the pumps business the Predator was sold on to Team Xtreme, based in the UK. After developing the X11, Team Xtreme concentrated on their Vega mid motor buggy conversions and again the Pred was neglected. The Team Xtreme business was dissolved in February this year, so the Predator is no more.