Building a CUSTOM CHASSIS for my 3D printed F1 Car

Added: 2026-05-25

[00:00:00]We're 3D printing an entire 2026 Formula 1 car and we're going to drift it. Yep.

[00:00:05]We're going to attempt to do this and this and maybe even a little bit of this and hopefully none of this. But there is a slight issue. Our 3D printed Formula 1 car is made up of hundreds of pieces of plastic. So the moment we try to drip this thing, it's going to fall to pieces on the track. So we need to create some kind of structure to mount our 3D printed panels to. And that means we need to call in some reinforcements.

[00:00:31]Well, thanks to a bunch of talented friends, I've come up with a solution.

[00:00:34]And today, I'm going to show you exactly what we're going to do to make this thing driftable. So, I've got my good friend Ryan from Fat Lip Collective. So, if you guys remember, Ryan is the designer of the DRS system on the GT3D.

[00:00:48]He's an absolute wizard, and I'm going to need his help once again because we are going to design a full custom tube frame chassis for this thing. But instead of trying to explain it to you, I'm going to hand it over to Ryan. Ryan, how did you go designing the chassis?

[00:01:01]>> So, because we had the files, we're actually able to begin printing and at the same time start doing the design for the chassis.

[00:01:06]>> Now, it's been a long time since I've done FSE, and I definitely wouldn't pretend to be an expert on vehicle dynamics. But normally, you'd start with wheels and tires, design your suspension and pickup points, then your chassis, engine, etc. We're doing things a little backwards here in that we already have a body or shell that we're trying to fit everything inside. So, my approach was to draw a frame that was basically as big as it could be to fit within the area, then to refine it down. After that, Mike and Bogger gave me some tube specs that they'd like to use, and as a first pass, this is pretty much how that came out. Being that Bogger is obviously more familiar with his equipment and what material he has available, he took this basic frame and made a V2, and it looks like a great job. I can now take this updated chassis from Bogger, put it back into my CAD workflow, and start adding in the suspension pickup points, playing around with the engine and gearbox mounting, etc. By the way, go to Fatlip Collective on YouTube and give him a sub because that is absolutely insane. But now that Ryan has designed the chassis, we need to head to BSC Performance and actually make the chassis in real life.

[00:02:02]>> Let's head over there and make sure that I didn't mess up the chassis too bad.

[00:02:05]>> At BSC Performance, these guys do everything from your everyday street cars to your crazy drift cars, performance dyno tuning, and everything in between, even jet skis. But we're here today because these guys have crazy machines that build custom roll cages and they call it cage kits Australia. So here we are at BC Performance with my man Bogger. Tell us what you had to do to that file and the process to get it from file to where we can put it in your insane machines and print this stuff off.

[00:02:34]>> We put it into Solid Works. We then select the tube that we're going to use which is chromoly 41 mil. And where the tubes marry up to each other leaves a notch. We then put it into nesting software for any straight bars. Go straight into our nesting software. Then we send it down to the laser and we literally cut it out. It's kind of that easy.

[00:02:51]>> Bogger and Cage Kits Australia are the people that are making this possible.

[00:02:55]We've been friends and drifting together for ages, but it's very cool to be able to collab together. Let's go hit some fancy machines. The first thing we need to do is grab our 41 mm chromoli tube and put it into the laser machine. This is definitely some Iron Man looking technology. Once that's done, it's time to calibrate the laser. Then we make sure the files have loaded onto the machine properly and it's time to start cutting.

[00:03:22]Watching this process in real time is pretty insane. The sheer amount of time that this is saving us is wild. These notches would have taken us days to do by hand.

[00:03:32]>> So that literally took I would say about 4 minutes and that is the whole front of the car notched and ready to weld together. This whole process took about half an hour in total. And once the bars were all notched, we threw them into the bender, bent them up, and we were ready to assemble our chassis. Welcome to my office. This is where every video that you see on this channel gets edited. I spend 12 to 15 hours sitting at this desk in this chair editing every one of those videos. And as you can see, we've quickly run out of space on the desk.

[00:04:01]And well, this chair has definitely seen better days. So, it's time for an upgrade. First, we need to get rid of our old desk. Perfect. All right. Now, time to build our new desk. I chose the Flexis Spot E7 Plus because it's an electric standing desk with four legs, so it's super sturdy even at full height. Of course, it comes with all of the instructions and tools for assembly and took me about 45 minutes to assemble. There are different materials you can choose from for your desktop, but I chose bamboo. Oh, that is a nice desk. We mounted the desktop using the screws and installed the electronics.

[00:04:33]And of course, last of all, the most satisfying part, peeling off the plastic. That is a massive improvement.

[00:04:40]So, I can confirm this thing is unbelievably sturdy. But the best part, of course, is how fast this thing goes up. These desks have three stage legs, which means they can go up to 131 cm in height. It has four memory presets inbuilt for the height. Plus, there's USB charging built into the controller, which is actually really handy. But, of course, with a good desk, we also need a good chair to sit on. For this, I chose the Flexis Spot C7 Max chair because it has the latex memory foam seat cushion, perfect for those long editing sessions.

[00:05:11]Assembly was really straightforward and took me about 20 minutes. Look at this seat. It looks so freaking cool. It has an adjustable headrest, lumbar support, which is amazing. The armrests are 5D adjustable, which is really handy. But of course, the real test is comfortability. Here we go. Oh yeah, this thing feels awesome. So, straight away, one of my favorite things is the lumbar and neck support. I definitely am not going to have any issues sitting in this thing editing for a long time. But one of my favorite features of this chair, this thing has a leg rest on it.

[00:05:45]Look at that. You can absolutely chill out. Also, the amount of adjustments this thing has is freaking wild. I could literally fall asleep in this thing.

[00:05:54]Both the desk and the chair have a 30-day risk-free return policy, and they have a 10-year warranty. And right now, they're having a massive up to 80% off brand sale. And of course, you can use this code right here to get $50 off the desk and this code right here to get $30 off the chair. Shout out to Flexispot.

[00:06:10]Now, let's get back to building the F1 car. So, we're back from BSC Performance and Bogger should be turning up any moment with our finished chassis. We're going to assemble the chassis on this table, which means we need to clear it off.

[00:06:25]Oh, that'll be the door's here.

[00:06:29]>> Delivery. Hey, let's go. Dude, what?

[00:06:32]>> I brought you some bars. Would you like some bars?

[00:06:35]>> I'd love some bars.

[00:06:36]>> He really wasn't lying when he said he brought us a lot of bars. At this point, I'm fascinated to see how this is all going to fit together. And here it is.

[00:06:44]The tube frame chassis for our Formula 1 car. Well, I probably should say it's about 50% of the chassis for our Formula 1 car.

[00:06:51]>> Yeah, it's about 50% done. How many bars are here?

[00:06:54]>> About 50 bars. That is absolutely insane. Now, to put this in context, how long do you think it would take if you notch this by hand?

[00:07:01]>> Some of these notches are pretty gnarly.

[00:07:03]I'm going to say it would be like four or 5 days of hand notching if you had to hand notch it. And being chromoly, too, it's like tough as.

[00:07:10]>> So, what are the challenges when it comes to actually assembling this thing?

[00:07:13]>> Alignment.

[00:07:14]>> Okay. So, all of this should tack together pretty easily, but it's about getting it dead >> square, right? And we've also we got to check and make sure it actually fits okay properly into your 3D printed chassis because like we said earlier we had the 3D model. Ryan went ahead and designed it within that 3D model. Then we had to convert it to make sure it actually worked in the machines at BC Performance. Now we have to put it together and see whether all of our calculations and time and effort are actually correct. All right. So where do we start with all of these bars?

[00:07:43]>> I reckon we start with all the hoops.

[00:07:45]>> So there's basically three hoops throughout it. Y >> I reckon we start with them. tack them together. That gives us the basis for all the straight bars to go to.

[00:07:53]>> Luckily, Bogger had a list with all the bars numbered and named. So, the first thing we had to do was familiarize ourselves with all of the bars.

[00:08:00]>> Can you see the 12? It's etched in very lightly right there. Can you see that?

[00:08:04]>> Hey, there it is. There it is.

[00:08:05]>> Well, the process is now it's just like macano for big boys.

[00:08:09]>> Awesome.

[00:08:10]>> So, we got to match the numbers to the bar and then literally slot in.

[00:08:15]>> That is insane. And look how tight the gaps are. Like it's actually freaking insane. That's not even sitting in its proper spot. That is now. Look at that.

[00:08:22]Once we had the first section figured out, it was time to get welding. First welds boger going onto the chassis.

[00:08:28]Let's go.

[00:08:32]So, this bar sits right somewhere around here. And this is the bar that sits behind me. So, I'll be sitting right here. And then the engine stays this stays somewhere around here, right? And then we're building everything from here forwards. Now, the reason we can't do the rear around the engine yet is because we do not have our gearbox. Now, the gearbox is a little bit of a touchy subject. They're very expensive. We're still working on getting the exact gearbox we want. But, if you want to support the channel, hit that subscribe button and watch these videos for as long as you possibly can. That is how we make the money on these videos, and that's how we afford the really expensive gear boxes. So, thanks in advance for watching the video.

[00:09:12]>> Is that right?

[00:09:12]>> That's right. Keep watching.

[00:09:13]>> Keep watching. And then come watch my stuff.

[00:09:15]>> Yeah. and then go watch his videos.

[00:09:18]>> No skipping. I see you. You're about to hit that skip button. Stop. Stop. A couple more tacks and our main hoop is together.

[00:09:25]>> Boom. Part one of 100 done. This, by the way, is not a gap for all you internet mechanics. There's another notch that meets up to that later on. So, >> yes.

[00:09:35]>> Yes.

[00:09:36]>> Just look at the perfect choreography between these two. Magic.

[00:09:40]>> Yes, boys. So, I sit here and then my legs go up here and then the pedals are here. Yes, >> that's crazy. We're marking a center line on our jigging table and then marking a center line on all of our pieces so we know everything is in the perfect position.

[00:09:59]>> Oh my god, nearly. You nearly went almost jeez, my heart's racing.

[00:10:06]>> Yeah, you're pretty much there with your feet up. But then it will be up. Yeah, like that's pretty much exactly how I need to do some >> I was going to say show us how long can you hold that position for. Okay.

[00:10:20]>> I can >> How much room do we have?

[00:10:29]>> So if you stay there >> Yeah.

[00:10:33]Oh, crazy. Really? That's how I And then there's bars through here.

[00:10:36]>> Yeah. You got this. Yep. And somehow we have to have a sequential shifter.

[00:10:41]Crazy.

[00:10:41]>> This is the moment I realized just how much work we have in front of us. But I guess they say nothing worth doing is ever easy.

[00:10:54]>> Do a kick flip.

[00:10:55]>> Don't kick flip.

[00:10:58]>> Get cracking.

[00:11:01]>> All right, enough mcking around. It's time to get into the juicy part of putting this chassis together. Because we don't have a proper jigging table and it's all kind of our first times putting something like this together. The hardest part was figuring out which order to do things in whilst also making sure that the chassis was perfectly square. We decided to put the main bars together first but quickly realized that this wasn't going to work because you have to fit all of the crossarss in in a certain way to get this together. So, we ended up pulling the whole thing down and starting from scratch. We took a bunch more measurements and then decided to weld the main hoop to our jigging table and base everything off that. Once that was done, we worked on putting the floor together first and built up from there. That seemed to work a whole lot better.

[00:11:57]So, it's been about 5 hours so far and we have absolutely smashed this.

[00:12:02]Unfortunately, Bogger had to leave, so it's just Ryan and I. This is kind of wild. It's definitely cheating with those machines and doing a chassis like this, right?

[00:12:13]>> Yeah.

[00:12:14]>> This would take how many days? Like days and days, >> especially seeing as it's not something that we do all the time. Probably longer.

[00:12:20]>> Longer. Like the hardest thing for us was figuring out which bars went where, right?

[00:12:24]>> Pretty much. Yeah. Which we could have, if we spent a little bit more time designing, definitely could have made the assembly quicker. There's obviously an overlap between how much time you spend designing and then just making the stuff and putting it together.

[00:12:34]>> And we make YouTube videos, so we have a finite amount of time as it is, right?

[00:12:38]>> Yeah.

[00:12:39]>> So, you kind of have to pick and choose where you draw the line basically. But this is what we have so far. So, this is essentially what you would have call the monok, I guess.

[00:12:49]>> Uh, space frame.

[00:12:50]>> Space frame. But in a Formula 1 car, this would be the monok, right?

[00:12:53]>> It would be the monok. Yeah.

[00:12:55]>> Yeah. Which is like this is where I sit.

[00:12:57]Yeah. This is where I need to be protected the most and that's why you see so many bars here. So, this is not your original design.

[00:13:06]>> No. So, I did basically like a preliminary design >> as I basically made it as big as wide as I possibly could to fit inside the 3D print.

[00:13:15]>> Yes.

[00:13:15]>> Um, without knowing exactly what tubes and what options Boger had for dyes and all that sort of thing.

[00:13:20]>> So, I gave that to him and then he kind of tweaked it and I would almost call this almost a new design. It's like a V2 of of that.

[00:13:27]>> Yes. Yeah. So, it's kind of putting your two brains together. And then Bogger smashed this out. And this is actually nowhere near the completed design. So, by the end of this video, you're going to see everything, including all of the front for the nose cone as well. But, this is as much as we can get done tonight. So, now we need to pull the wood out from the front because it no longer needs the wood to be supported.

[00:13:47]So, this is still welded to the bench, this table. So, man, if it if it all collapses, I would just laugh and then cry. Oh, there we go. Amazing.

[00:13:54]>> Yes. It's amazing, man. This is crazy, dude. Should we put the Oh, we can we can slide the plastic over. All right.

[00:14:03]So, it's the first fitment trial for our 3D printed pieces. So, cross your fingers for us. All right. Is this how fast we'll be able to get that going to go very wrong? And then WA NO WAY.

[00:14:21]Holy crap. No way.

[00:14:24]Dude, you. Yes. Let's go. This isn't just a YouTube reaction right now.

[00:14:31]I am mind blown. I didn't think that we would get to this stage. Are you getting in?

[00:14:36]>> All right. First sit down in the in the Formula 1 car. What do we call it? The F13D.

[00:14:41]>> Yeah, >> dude. Okay. How is it?

[00:14:44]>> It's pretty good.

[00:14:44]>> And then what do you do? Scooch forward a little bit. Your bum forward a little bit. Wow.

[00:14:48]>> Bum's meant to go under there.

[00:14:51]>> It is there. Yeah.

[00:14:53]>> Feel right? Yeah, it looks good. That's crap. I don't even know what to say right now. That's so freaking cool, dude. How's it feel?

[00:15:00]>> Awesome.

[00:15:00]>> Great.

[00:15:01]>> Yeah, >> I kind of do. That's sick. I actually can't believe it. Like, it literally fits so well and it looks amazing. So far, I would call this a massive success. But we're not done yet. We still have a bunch more bars we need to weld onto this thing. Unfortunately, Ryan had to go home because he has a family to attend to. So, please go over to his channel. Show him some love.

[00:15:22]Warrick is here with me. And now we're going to remove the body and we're going to continue welding on the rest of the chassis.

[00:15:33]Damn, this thing is looking awesome. So, the next part we're putting on is this front section right here. We also have this bar. And this bar should go somewhere, I think, around here. And that is where our halo connects to. And let's be honest, the halo is definitely one of the most exciting parts of this frame. Unfortunately, we're not going to install that in this video because we are going to make the halo removable.

[00:15:57]So, we're going to start with this little box at the front here. And that is this section right here. So, once again, let's go ahead and get welding.

[00:16:04]The most important thing with this little box thing is making sure that it's perfectly square. So, I held it together while was laid down a couple of TS. Then, we flipped it over, laid down the TS on the other side, and this is how it looks. So, we're drawing more center lines to make sure everything is perfectly centered. So far so good.

[00:16:22]Because we forgot our laser. Yes.

[00:16:24]>> We're going to use the old fashioned way of flat table center line.

[00:16:29]>> Square.

[00:16:30]>> All right. So, you're square up >> center line on our tube. It's more timeconuming. It's obviously fast with a laser.

[00:16:35]>> It is. This is the theory. Anyway, what did they do in the old days when they were building two frame tattoos like this lines, water levels?

[00:16:42]>> Yeah, pretty much what we're doing. But they have jigging tables, right? Like this is a very basic table.

[00:16:47]>> As I say, you always have to work with what you've got. It's worked for us so far for all of our builds, so I'm sure it's going to keep working for this build.

[00:16:53]>> So, we mark the center line on our tubes and use the good old blocks of wood to get our new piece exactly where we need it. And now we need to join this to this using the remaining bars. Science.

[00:17:06]After mocking up the bars to make sure the distance is correct, it's time to put our theory to the test and lay down some welds. Hoping everything is in the right place. All right, so this bar should technically slot in nicely on this side if we're correct. Which that sounds like it slot in really satisfying. That's sick, man. It just keeps getting bigger and bigger. Huh.

[00:17:28]>> It's massive. And that's not even freaking close to the whole thing. So here now we need to make sure that this is center. So as we can see right here, it is because I'm holding it. because every time you weld something, it pulls it towards the weld.

[00:17:46]>> So, now we're test fitting the other bars because you have to remember when you're building these two frame chassis that they have to go together in order because if you put say the bottom bar in, you're never going to get this crossbar in. Yeah. Ask us how we learned that the hard way with this thing. All right, we don't need the wood anymore.

[00:18:03]So, we think we're good now. We know where everything goes. We're pretty well centered. So, now it's time to slot these bars in and make some TS. Dude, that's looking really good, though. It's actually kind of crazy. Even though we're nearing the end of this part of the chassis build, it's still a constant trial and error with the bars, making sure that they go in in the right order.

[00:18:23]Once we're happy, we lay down a whole bunch of tack welds.

[00:18:43]And just like that, our chassis is now significantly bigger and it's definitely looking the part now. How long is that?

[00:18:49]>> 2.1 >> 2.1 m just for this section alone. Of course, we still have to have the nose cone on and we have to have the whole rear section as well, which is pretty freaking crazy. But all we have to do now is throw this bar on the top. We've notched it down to size properly, I think. Oh, other way around.

[00:19:08]Look at that. Our halo bar. So, the halo is going to come up over the top and to here, which is pretty cool.

[00:19:17]And once again, it's time to test fit the shell.

[00:19:20]>> On we go.

[00:19:22]Let's go.

[00:19:27]Woo. So, that is officially the front half of our chassis fully tacked together. And the shell fits like a glove over this thing. I've currently got a couple of blocks of wood and some foam holding the shell pretty much exactly where it's going to sit on the chassis and the clearance is just spoton. Even under here, look how everything fits up. It looks really, really tidy. But before we end this video, of course, I am going to jump in the car and just do a little bit of a test fit. Mostly because I'm too darn excited. This already feels so cool.

[00:19:59]All right, this is so exciting. I can't even explain to you guys. It's going to be the strangest car ever to drift, but imagine we have a halo over the top here and everything as well. It's going to be so weird. So, this is my view right now from the cockpit. And as you can see, yeah, I'm pretty low. Of course, we're going to have a seat in this thing. So, probably somewhere about like here. But look at this. It's going to be so strange. which of course we're going to plate all under here and everything like that so there'll be no gaps in the bars.

[00:20:27]We'll have a custom pedal box here and a custom steering column and everything like that. But uh this is definitely very exciting, but I'm definitely going to need to get a seat made because those bars on my butt are not comfortable at all. I'm genuinely so happy with how this has turned out and I cannot wait to kick on with this build. Now, I know a bunch of you guys will be sad that there was no 3D printing in this episode, but the chassis is obviously a fundamental part of the build and something that we had to do before we could move forward.

[00:20:55]And of course, I'm already very deep into 3D printing those parts. I've already got one whole side pod 3D printed. Also, I know a bunch of you guys will be wondering why we didn't do the nose cone bars in this video, and that is simply because I want to make the nose cone removable. So, I didn't want to weld the bars on yet without figuring out how we can make a system so that the nose cone can go on and off.

[00:21:14]And by nose cone, I do mean the front wing in case anyone is getting confused.

[00:21:17]But thank you guys so much for watching this episode. Man, we got so much done.

[00:21:21]Doing that whole space frame in one episode is absolutely crazy. And it's only possible thank you to Cage Kits and BC Performance as well as Ryan from Fatlip Collective. Remember, this space frame would have taken weeks to build by hand. So, huge thanks to those guys. And a huge thanks to you for watching. Of course, hit that like button, hype this video, and subscribe if you're enjoying the series. and I'll see you in the next