nowinaminute

Just tried the outer cups/axles and they seem to work fine. Just a question of dog bones now. Maybe TL-01B ones will fit?

I've got my eye on some 3racing inner cups and universals which I know would be the best solution BUT, looking around a few forums threads about people DIYing it I wondered if these TL-01 parts I already have in hand would theoretically work just got let me get rid of the plastic parts? Always good to avoid spending money lol. TL-01 style diff gears with the splines instead of the rectangular cutouts TL-01 inner cups TL-01 outer cups/axles And I have various different length dog bones, some of which may be the right fit. But I'm not sure if the other parts would work too? I'm quite sure the diff gears and inner cups will fit but not sure about the outer ones that have the wheel axles on, any ideas?

I've not tried the Revell stuff. I've had good experiences and bad experiences with de-solv-it. Sometimes I get a lovely clear finish like this Other times, the lexan gets a white residue. Sometimes it's easy to remove, other times it's near impossible. Note on this shell how the clear window parts didn't react to the the cleaner at all, only the parts that actually had paint on turned white so the cleaner itself is not effecting the raw lexan. It's possible to remove it on this shell but very hard work and would take forever in the books and crannies. I think tamiya do a paint remover too in a bigger bottle than the cleaner but I dont think it's easy to get in the UK.

Mine spends half its life at the beach! If you have any dune like areas with dry sand you can pretty much entirely negate the need to clean up, it will just fall off. Otherwise, if you wait till the tide is fully out, the sand should only be a little bit damp and not super wet. When it's like that, I let the car dry off after a run, brush the sand off and just clean the metal screw heads etc with a little wd40 or 3 in 1 oil, haven't had any major rust issues so far. Mind you, the Lunchbox is so simple to strip and rebuild, sometimes I get carried away and go through the really wet sand knowing I can do a full strip and rebuild in an afternoon easily. Like an occasional treat lol. I do a lot of running on the dry sand if I can though, pretty much zero cleaning needed. As for attention, it definitely stands out with the van body. I get the same with the dump truck too. Sometimes a couple just walk past and you hear the wife say "you're not having one"

I saw that too 🤣 Bit of a bodge job to put it mildly

It's a bit of both for me, It's great to solve problems but sometimes when you've tried every obvious fix and something still doesn't work it can be maddening. I had it with an old Nikko Dictator I was working on a while back (yeah, I know, what a surprise, working on old toy grades ) I had binding in the gearbox despite swapping the plastic bushing for proper bearings. I tried adding shims which just seemed to make things worse. I tried leaving the gears out in the sun for several days because I had previously cleaned them in an ultrasonic cleaner and nylon can sometimes absorb moisture and expand slightly but no dice. I tried to see if there was any warping or irregularities in the gears but they were fine. I tried 3 different pinions just in case that was the problem but it had no effect. The gears were butter smooth with the gearbox case open but when you put it together, they all became stiff and difficult to turn. After pulling all my hair out and contemplating smashing the thing with a hammer, I decided to sleep on it. The next day I had a thought out of nowhere to check the shaft the spur gear ran on, turns out with the gearbox halves assembled, the shaft could slide side to side slightly. The way the gearbox is assembled means there's a pinching force in the area of the spur gear and because the shaft wasn't quite wide enough, the two halves of the gearbox were able to go slightly concave, just enough to pinch on the bearings and make the spur gear stiff. All I had to do was put a little spacer on one side of the shaft to stop the gearbox halves pressing inward and suddenly, a kittens breath could make the spur gear spin! It was a great feeling in the end but it got incredibly frustrating along the way! Having the same issue with another vintage RC right at this moment. A Yonezawa Land Dash. All the teeth are smooth, no warping, all conform to the exact diameter they should be for their pitch (0.8m) and tooth count and yet when I close the gearbox case, sometimes they move freely and other times they are almost bound solid! There's no rhyme and reason to it that I can see. Sometimes just opening and closing the case randomly can make the problem disappear but then other times you can barely turn the wheels! Hopefully I can get my head around this one too! I hate binding gears, they sound bad, hog power and make motors way hotter.

Lol it would be quicker to ask what's on my finished list 🤣

Not sure what the mods really add apart from better clearance in between the axles but it's interesting. https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/274425993734

Aristocraft Kangaroo you say?

They seem to work pretty well! LEDs are one of those subjects that I looked into quickly and it turned out to be a rabbit hole! It's a bit tricky setting LEDs up precisely using a simple resistor to limit current because the calculations require you to enter the forward voltage/voltage drop but in reality, this can vary significantly between batches. The Cree for example has a voltage range of anywhere between 2.8 and 4.0v while pulling the same current. In other words, when working at 30ma (the max continuous for the units I'm using) some units will drop 2.8v and some might drop 4.0v. If you set up a resistor up for 4v but the LED drops 30ma at 2.8v then it would be overdriven and vice versa. The manufacturers tend to do something called "binning" where units with similar voltages and colour temperatures etc get put together. This means my LEDs are probably quite well matched but I still have no idea what voltage they are at 30ma. The most sure way is to have a current limiting circuit but it's more complicated and expensive than the simple resistor. In the end I just used the max current figure and went with 3.4v as a guess. They seem to work pretty well, putting out plenty of light and not getting hot at all so I think I'm in the right ball park. I might try more voltage at some point though and see what happens. Most decent LEDs can be overdriven to some degree and the only downside is it will reduce the lifespan but for RC use it isn't much of an issue if your LED "only" lasts 500 hours instead of 20,000!

Put 4 Cree LEDs in the light bar on my Lunchbox. Waiting for it to get dark to see how they perform. I already put 2 Nichia ones in the headlights, they are super bright but have a wide 70 degree beam so are quite diffuse, the Crees have a lower total light output but have a 15 degree beam so they are much brighter over a focused area and there will be 4 of them. Hopefully the 2 types in combination will give a good result. I tried to take the easy route at first and install a cheap pre-wired set of lights from China but it turned out they were 2 white and 2 red despite coming in a set of 4 front spotlights . Somehow the lights included with this: Looked like this:

I'm not familiar enough with the transmission to say. The Grasshopper gearbox is as tough as nails.

It is stiffer but not because the spring rate has changed. It's stiffer because the pre-load is having the same effect as more weight would. The more the spring is compressed, the more force the next increment requires. It's also a factor that with RC shocks, you can usually still achieve full compression even with pre-load added whereas with some vehicles, adding too much means the springs will be completely collapsed before full suspension movement. Adding preload increases the amount of load needed to make the spring move so it would raise the ride height and get rid of the sagging but it would also make the suspension less responsive to small variations in the terrain. A spring with a higher rate would also fix your sag but still give some responsiveness and allow a little body roll. In all honesty though, I'm not sure if either would be necessary. I know with my Blackfoot, the front suspension barely works when on the move even though you can push it down by hand easily. I think the weight is biased to the rear a lot, especially under throttle. Have you actually looked at how it behaves when the car is in action?

I really love the Lunchbox in all forms. When I first got back into RC a few years back (last stuff I had were toy grades as a kid), the first hobby grade I got was a Grasshopper and although it's beautiful and great fun on the right surfaces, I was somewhat disappointed by how badly it coped on some terrains such as gravel and hard soil that was bumpy, it has the suspension of a house brick and would easily leave the ground and land facing in a totally different direction or flip over entirely. Because of that, I avoided the Lunchbox for quite a long time because I was worried it would be more of the same but those big tyres make a heck of a difference to how it copes with surface imperfections even though the rear suspension is all but immobile just like the Grasshopper. I honestly find the Lunchbox to be a better driver than the Grasshopper overall, especially if you stray from the tarmac. It has a reputation for tipping over but even in totally stock configuration, I didn't suffer near as many roll overs with the LB as I did with the GH. I spent a lot less time walking over to the LB to put it back on it's wheels. How it manages to be more stable despite having the same basic layout and being twice as tall is a real mystery! Aside from the mandatory bearings, the first upgrade I made was the CVA dampers which certainly made the front end more compliant (rear end not so much lol) I also did the rear brace although the fishing string mod is just as good IMO. Neither really help the suspension to work when you use the throttle though, it's just that way by design. I could have left mine like that and I would have been perfectly happy but the more I saw people say "no point trying to upgrade them" "waste of time hopping them up" the more it irked me because you could literally say that about any RC except for the very best racing ones. Most people don't upgrade their RCs to make them world class racers, they do it because they enjoy it and they find the improvements rewarding even if you just go from something nasty to something a bit less nasty! So over time I ended up fitting DT02 front suspension using @ThunderDragonCy's adapter and then some time later I worked with member Marks on a 4-link rear end using 3d printed parts. The DT02 conversion had a happy side effect of increasing the front track by a few cm which helped to increase stability. The 4 link at the back means it now squats under throttle when launching instead if the rear end rising and the suspension locking solid. The rear suspension now works even when using throttle and the back end is a lot more compliant over rough terrain although the large unsprung mass means the rear end is still awful at landing jumps. I even went off the beaten track with the power plant. I'm using a 4400KV outrunner motor meant for a helicopter. It doesn't really give any advantage over a conventional motor but it sounds unique and gives a nice compromise between power and battery life using the standard gearing (10t pinion) It's probably my favourite RC out of all of them. It's still unmistakably a Lunchbox, it still has the turning circle of a barge but it hardly ever tips over unless I'm doing something dumb and it's fun to drive over any surface pretty much. It's a lot more composed than stock but it's still a wallowy mess compared to a racing buggy. It's in the weet spot between good and bad lol. Anyway, sorry for the life story! But I'm sure you will love it no matter what you do with it. I have throughly enjoyed mine at every stage in it's life! I have probably used it more than the rest of my RCs combined!

That particular motor is known as a finned 380. The actual motor is a 380/390 size brushless with large cooling fins to make it the same diameter as a 540. They still work very well and have more power than most if not all brushed 540s but they tend to get a bit warmer than a full size 540 and can cog more (stuttering when trying to pull away gently at low throttle). Of you get one around 3000-3300KV, they work fine even in monster trucks etc but as you go further up the KV range, they begin to be a bit out of their depth because faster motors tend to cog more anyway and when you add in the fact it's a smaller motor it's like a double whammy. I have a 3930KV one in my dump truck and it works great but it will stutter if you try to make a gentle start so a 4370 would only be worse. I tend to avoid them most of the time because the price difference compared to a full 540 isn't much but they can be useful in certain situations. The torque is lower than a full 540 so they can be easier on the gears of vintage models whilst still offering a boost over brushed. The battery life tends to be terrific on them too.