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nowinaminute

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Everything posted by nowinaminute

  1. Well I took it out yesterday and broke another servo! It was my fault this time though. There's so much slop in the steering and front end that I glued the servo saver to try and get rid of a little slop. I've done this loads of times on other vehicles but I usually use a metal gear servo and the glue breaks before the servo does but on this occasion, I only had a regular servo to hand and it apparently wasn't a match for Tommy Walsh's mighty Poundland super glue There's a metal gear one on there now. I'll have a look into shimming some of the slop out and then maybe I can go back to a normal servo saver anyway. Besides the technical glitch, I enjoyed driving it a lot on the dirt again and it definitely does better there, the only two times I rolled it where when it happened to be sliding and then hit a patch of ground with more grip. On once ocaasion it was a clump of grass and on another it was a section of larger stones like railway ballast. I think I definitely need another shell for the shelf though. Even driving it on dirt it's not going to be 100% immune to damage and I'd rather be able to relax and just go for it without worrying about the shell all the time. My Lunchbox has a bashing shell and shelf one too. I occasionally go over the bashing one with some fine wet and dry just to tidy it up a bit and then the shelf shell I only use for special occasions like the beach or on grass where the damage risk is much lower. There should be some more video soon. I might wait till I can get her back out with the metal servo though to get a bit more footage first.
  2. Me too. When I try to use 3d software I end up with stuff like this: I have all the ambition but none of the ability lol
  3. I definitely had more fun with it in the dirt. I think half the problem is I forget how challenging that old carpark can be, it's like the surface of the moon, probably the worst surface imaginable for avoiding tip overs. There's plenty of dusty patches to slide in but it's interspersed with clean parts and the transition from sliding to 100% grip can send the best of them into a roll. I didn't realise how much the wind can sweep the place clean of dust either, so some days it's much less forgiving. I'll go back to the same dirt spit on Wednesday hopefully. It will be interesting to see if the rear end is *slightly* more manageable with a new servo too. The S3003 was apparently dying and it wasn't the fastest servo even in it's prime anyway so there was quite a delay between control inputs and results. I'll put a servo in tonight and look at a few other things. I might super glue the servo saver to cut out some slop. Maybe centralize the servo too while I'm in there? I can make some new links with m3 rod easily enough. I'm going to shim the front wheels too because they are sliding back and forth on the axles quite a lot.
  4. Well, I think I was enjoying it but about 5 minutes in the servo self destructed 🤣😭 I knew I should have changed it when I got it, no idea what the S3003 had been through before I got it. I was supposed to put a cheapie but goodie like a Hobbyking or MG996R in there. Absolutely typical! I got a bit of video that I'll post later. It definitely seemed happier in the dirt although it was very fine coal dust/spoils so it was a real handful, especially with that crappy servo. I don't even make it to the harder packed dirt where I think it would have shone. Not going to get a chance to drive it again till Wednesday probably!
  5. Well it's a nice evening for it. Let's see how I get on...
  6. I've just cleaned up the chassis to inspect the damage, it's broken in the usual weak spots. I'm going to have a try and using an acetone/abs paste to repair it. I'm going to add some extra bits of scrap ABS as additional reinforcement too. This is crack number one: As well as bonding the actual crack, I will add an extra sheet of ABS across the highlighted area which should help to keep it together. On the outside there is another crack where screw mount/anchor point thingy is breaking away from the rest of the chassis: But, after looking closely, it seems like I have all of the highlighted area available to add additional material without interfereing with the fit between the chassis and gearbox. It does make me wonder why the moulding wasn't just made chunkier to begin with! Perhaps it's because it started life as the chassis for the considerably smaller Double Dare? I can't say for sure how well the repair will work but I do know that using acetone is very effective and chemically bonds the plastic together so in theory, it should be stronger than any kind of adhesive. It won't be pretty but hopefully it will be effective!
  7. Sure, it's still in prototype form at the moment but I'll share a few pics. A very kind friend did all the hard work of designing it, I just had it printed and assembled it. The design is really elegant and in practice it works really well. It was my idea to flip the gearbox around to create more room for the links and what used to be the pivot mount will become a wheelie bar but otherwise, he was the brains behind the operation. I just had a dream and some measurements. The links are just simple m3 rod. Spot the obvious mistake with the upper links 😶 And the front end was possible thanks to an adapter @ThunderDragonCy designed to allow DT03 front arms to be fitted to the GH2 but it also works for the Lunchie. Those two mods made a world of difference to the amount of flex and how well it handles. I'm still in the tweaking phase at the moment and the design isn't finalised, the guy who designed it intends to have some CNC'd in aluminium at some point. There should be a buggy version too and even some of my Nikko stuff that uses a very similar rear gearbox to the Tamiya ones. I guess I could make a thread about it now the cat is out of the bag! I'm not sure if the printed version would handle 6s but it managed 3s ok lol could do with a diff locker next time though!
  8. I think you're right. I take for granted how tough that carpark is too with its continual alternating between dirt and tarmac, like sliding along a frozen puddle and then hitting dry pavement! Something else occurred to me too. It had been blowing a storm up here for almost a week. I think a lot of the dust had been swept away in the wind. I did notice little "dunes" of it all along the kerb but didn't put two and two together. If I get time after work, I'll take it a little further away to some dirt. I'm lucky in this valley because there used to be a train line for coal but it was turned into a footpath years ago. Some of the old colliery sites haven't been developed so they are a haven of dirt tracks and access roads etc. All covered in glorious dirt and coal dust and the footpath makes it easy to get to them because obviously the rail line used to serve the collieries.
  9. I think that's the crux of it really, I need to stick to the dirt or at least grass where I won't wince if it rolls over. I suppose my nearest little area I go to drive (a car park) can be deceptive too. There's lots of gravel and loose dirt but it's also rough concrete and tarmac so you can go from sliding to suddenly being on a clean patch and it goes from 0-100% grip instantly. It has proven to be a bit of a torture test even for some of the best handling vehicles. I think perhaps I have underestimated just how much I've managed to improve the Lunchbox too. I can't drive the Blackfoot like this in the same car park: It now has DT03 front arms and a prototype 4 link system at the rear and I'm able to drive it pretty hard in that carpark before it will tip. Perhaps I'm simply not giving the Lunchbox enough credit and in turn, judging the Blackfoot too harshly. The Lunchbox tends to have a built in stability aid too because it is very reluctant to turn in sharply until a lot of speed has bled off anyway. There's another spot not far away that is all dirt/gravel so I'll pop over there tomorrow after work if I get time and see how it does there, hopefully it will raise some smiles. I'll definitely think about taking it to the beach too, nothing rolls on sand!
  10. The re-re came with oil dampers and they seem to work really well. It's pretty planted in a straight line, I'm just finding cornering a little nerve wracking.
  11. I wanted one for ages, finally got one, spent quite a while stopping the universals from falling out and I have to say that I don't enjoy driving it as much as I thought I would, mostly because I find it's quite easy to tip over. I wasn't expecting miracles from a hard body 80s monster truck but honestly, I find it more tip happy than my Lunchbox was stock and now I have modded my LB I find it way more planted and "chuckable" and this is despite the Blackfoot having what I consider to be a superior suspension setup. That's not to say I think the BlackFoot is inhrerently the worse handling of the two, it isn't. In stock form it follows the terrain WAY better and it has much more front end grip and steering lock but that's also part of the reason it seems to have a lower threshold for tipping. I'm not sure what to do, I love how the truck looks but I feel like I'm on on eggshells when I drive it because nobody likes the sound of a hard body scraping along the ground. It's great in a straight line but I have to be so cautious when making tight turns that it kind of takes the fun away a little. Being the owner of numerous obscure trucks like old Nikkos and such, I'm well aware that you have to adapt your driving style to suit a particular vehicle's capabilities but even with that in mind and even with the steering end point turned down, I still feel like I can't relax enough to enjoy it. All this with the stock motor! I'm not really sure where I'm going with this, I guess I just wanted to hear from some fellow monster ORV owners. Should I persevere? Just stick to using it on grass or at the beach maybe? Maybe I just haven't used it in the right circumstances yet, I know how much a few bad experiences can sway your opinion of an RC unfairly. Maybe a few mods would help too like getting rid of the bump steer etc?
  12. I really like these but hard to get in the UK, same with spares.
  13. One pleasant surprise I had was the suspension. I knew going into this not to expect massive articulation like a monster truggy but even so, it seemed to have almost no articulation at all, it just kind of flexed a little bit without the dampers even moving so when I started stripping it down, I was relieved to find out there were 2 errors made by the previous owner which were easily corrected. Firstly, they had locked out the rear steering. The problem is that when they relocated the inner ends of the tie rods, they just screwed them directly into some random mounting points in the chassis, with no balls joints! Thanks to that, the rear suspension was completely locked up so just addressing that is going to give a big improvement! But it got better, the previous owner had also assembled the shocks incorrectly. There is supposed to be tube on the shafts to limit upwards suspension travel a little, I'm assuming to stop the wheels from rubbing the shell like on a Lunchbox and so on. Well it turns out they put the tubes INSIDE the shocks instead which was lowering the ride height and limiting the travel severely! If you look at this photo, you can see the difference between the corrected rear end and the front end that still has the tubes inside the shocks! The hinge pins were also rusted and causing a lot of binding on the suspension arms so I just put them in a drill, ran them over some fine wet and dry and then rubbed a little oil onto them to inhibit new rust. I did the same with all the ball joints too which had become rusty and were binding. If they do start rusting again, I'll try bathing them in white vinegar, that usually gets rid of the rust and encourages a layer of black oxide rust to grow instead which protects the metal as opposed to regular rust which eats at it. After all that, the rear end feels night and day better now! It's still not ultra flex but it feels like it in comparison! It's so nice to see the suspension actually work!
  14. So it was fairly quiet at work on Saturday and just me in so I took 5 minutes here and there to start stripping the rear end down for cleaning. I basically just took it all apart and cleaned it all in an ultrasonic cleaner: EXCEPT for the gears, this was the third time I had rebuilt a gearbox and the previous 2 both had a tight spot on the diff carrier gear (at least I think that gear is the suspect, when you roll one along a desk it makes a kind of undulating sound and has a distinct spot where it slows down then speeds up again) so this time I avoided the ultrasonic cleaner just in case I had inadvertently caused the gears to warp or something but alas, I got the exact same result. I checked out the front gearbox and it was the same way before I had even taken it apart so definitely not anything I've done. I also checked the gearboxes on the Double Dare which I haven't meddled with yet and they also do it. The best one out of the lot was the Corvette Hi Rider but even that one does it a little so it's 6 for 6 so far in terms of them having this tight spot. Surely I can't be that unlucky that I have the same random issue 6 times and there's no inherent, underlying cause? Here's some examples of how noisy other people's gearboxes are: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LM3rrRNB8l0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VN2mrCPk7lc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DVQOqe8hW-Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3dh2jRUkb2M&t=131sMaybe its just the way it is with these trucks?
  15. I thought that too when it first turned up but putting them side by side, they are virtually identical. Yup, it was very well regarded too. I was fully open to the idea of getting one and converting it to brushless too but this one showed up for such a good price I couldn't resist. I will still look out for a cheap nitro version, I feel like it would have the potential to be a little faster and take more of a bashing. With the electric, I get the feeling it will work out better with stock power and not trying to go too nuts with it.
  16. Today I began a "wreckstoration" on a Kyosho USA-1. I have to say, I was quite disappointed by the suspension articulation at first, I wasn't expecting X-Maxx levels of flex but even so, it seemed to barely move! So imagine my relief when I realised that A: The previous owner had unwittingly locked the rear suspension completely when he removed the rear steering (relocated the inboard ends of the tie rods into random holes in the chassis with no ball joints!) and B: Had assembled the shocks wrong by putting the rubber tubes for limiting the upwards travel inside the shocks instead thus limiting the downwards travel! On to of that, the hinge pins were all rusty and make everything stiff (no giggling!) Can you notice a subtle difference!? Even though the suspension travel was never that great on this truck, it still felt a million times better!
  17. Inspired by @Saito2 I got interested in the Kyosho car crusher family of trucks this year. As is often the case, I tell myself I probably won't get any due to them getting collectable and the value going up plus being rare as hens teeth in the UK, then proceeded to have numerous bargains throw themselves at me! As a result if this, I now have 4 fixer-upper trucks consistenting of: USA-1 Hi Rider Corvette Double Dare (missing body) Big Brute (missing body) None of them are perfect but on the other hand, all of them have the potential to run without much expense so I'm quite happy that the whole lot cost me comfortably less than £150! I thought I might as well start off with a thread about the USA-1 as it's the top of the Car Crusher family tree! So this is the truck, picked it up on eBay a while back for a surprisingly low price. It was obviously in need of attention but it seemed like there was a lot to work with. The seller mentioned holes had been cut in the front of the body shell but I have a feeling this is the shell from the Nitro version which was slightly different around the grill area for reasons unknown to me. I have a grill laying around somewhere but it's for the electric version so might need some "convincing" to fit but I'm sure I'll manage. The shell is actually in fairly good shape for it's age, the old two tone paint is holding up well although the stickers are showing their age a bit. The roll bar has spotlights missing and there was no grill, bumpers or mirrors but those are always the first thing to be missing. I'm confident that just adding the grill will make a world of difference and as long as the shell looks cleanish on the outside then I don't care what kind of bodging or reinforcing I have to do inside to get the grill to fit and keep it all in one piece! The tyres are intact and crack free but have gone very firm, I might try a glycerol soak to see if they will soften up. The wheels aren't too bad but appear to be a little warped, I'm more worried about the firm tyres though, I think that could have a larger impact on the ride. Worse case here, I'll just borrow the wheels and tyres from my Bullhead which are the exact same size. The only major issue is that there is a crack in the chassis but I've been experimenting with using acetone and melted ABS to make adhesive recently and the results have been incredibly strong so I'm confident I can salvage the chassis. Whether I can or not, I'm going to attempt to make my own chassis loosely based on the style of the Riskeyconcept one but with some sheets of polycarbonate I have laying around. It's basically two slabs with some spacers in betwern so I think even I can pull this one off! If I can pull that off I can get some cheap Traxxas or whatever bell cranks and replace the "interesting" stock 4ws system. Speaking of which, the previous owner had opted to remove the rear steering from the equation which is fair enough but then they decided to just attatch the links directly onto the chassis with no ball joints! It did a great job of locking the rear steering but also did a great job of locking the suspension too! No wonder the rods are so bent 😏 Ita not like the suspension would have worked too well anyway because the shocks were assembled incorrectly too! And the motor wire? I'm not sure a servo would have been able to draw enough current through it let alone a 540! More to come soon!
  18. One thing I can tell you for sure is that all 6 of the gearboxes I've acquired have the same tight spot! I'm starting to think it's something in the original moulds and the more I listen to then running on YouTube the more it makes sense lol. It's the diff carrier gear that seems to be the problem, even just rolling it along a desk you can hear there's a lumpy part. Are they all like it to varying degrees? Or does the plastic warp with age? I even rebuilt two without ultrasonic cleaning the gears just in case it was that but it made no difference. I'm not sure it would have much of a negative effect when it's up and running but it's a little annoying even by my standards and I'm usually about as anti OCD as you can get! I'm still tempted to try and carefully sand down the gear a tiny bit just in the area where it's effected, it only seems to happen over the course of 2 or 3 teeth so if you could pinpoint it accurately it would probably have no negative effects, you'd only be turning an over tight mesh into a normal mesh. I think I'll actually run them and see how they go before I take such measures though! I'm going to start my own thread now so I'm not cluttering up Saito2s thread!
  19. I neeeeed to see how it drives lol, the curiosity is immense. I did a lot of work to my Lunchbox to make it handle better but it's still a Lunchbox. It would be interesting to know how it compares to an inhrrently more sophisticated chassis. I looked on youtube to see if I could find any examples of a LWB wr02 running but there's nothing there. I'll have to lend you some gear at this rate lol
  20. Well as per usual, my attention pinged off like a pinball or a fly in a shop window But I hope to have some updates soon. I've fallen into that trap of acquiring a model and then noticing similar models that I never would have noticed before. As the result of a few bargains, I have made the following additions besides the Brute for less than £100 Corvette Hi Rider = pretty much complete but in need of work. Double Dare = complete chassis but no body. USA-1 = mostly complete, body missing bumpers and mirrors, spotlights broken off but not too bad for it's age. And a set of proper wheels and tyres for the Big Brute. I've somehow managed to go from owning none of these trucks to 4! None are perfect but I think all have potential. I think I can get them all to a fair standard without much outlay. I just need to decide which ones to keep because 4 is ridiculous. The USA-1 and Corvette seem the obvious choices because they both have bodies and I would have an example each of the 2wd and 4wd but we'll see, maybe I'll be tempted to turn the double dare into a 4wd corvette. I used to think if I was strict with budgets I would never end up acquiring too much gear but I've accepted now that it just makes me more efficient at finding loads of gear for small amounts of money. The way I scour eBay and Facebook ads is like the way the Terminator scans for Sarah Connor.
  21. Awww I would have loved to see how it ran vs the original. I was just looking up those extensions, seems they are discontinued. I wonder if i could make something similar with some trial and error. Great build either way!
  22. I *think* they just taper to a point and are the same length overall rather that the sharp part being in addition to the length. I'll have to double check now!
  23. I got some of these for when I want to be a little "posh" too, they have pointed tips but I've honestly never had an issue because of it. https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/20-50-100Pcs-Grade-8-Carbon-Steel-Hex-Socket-Head-Cap-Self-tapping-Screws-M3-Z2/153465926215?ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT&var=453420596520&_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649
  24. That's the kind of thing I have, just cheap Chinese ones. The only thing I would say to watch out for is the size of the screw head, it needs to be narrow like these. I remanufacture printer toner cartridges for a living and built up a huge collection of high quality Japanese screws over time from all the scrap/reject cartridges and printers. It was a few years before I actually needed to use some on a Tamiya and lo and behold, the heads were too wide to fit in the Tamiya screw holes. Not to worry, I'm sure they will fit my Nikkos.....nope. Kyosho....mostly nope *throws box of lovingly collected and arranged screws on the desk and sulks* I hate it when a plan doesn't come together.
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