[So, What Have You Done Today?]

Took a screwdriver to the Dual Hunter to check the inside of the gearboxes.

They look excellent, ball bearings and all, gears are fine. And a nice metal gear steering servo that is new the same price as I paid for the entire car.

I'm not going to give this car a full clean and rebuild at this point. Just a quick damp-cloth cleanup. Some new grease in the gearboxes while they are open.

Also the sealed Carson motors that are on the car have seen some abuse and overload, so I took a bamboo stick and a small screwdriver to the comms while running the motors off a bench power supply to clean up the comms from black buildup. That really helped, they run better now but with a small difference in RPM. Good enough for wat I want though.

To do list: A receiver, an ESC, shorter dampers by placing an insert in the ones that are present.
And she'll be good to go as an extra basher!

Edit: Steel pinions! These are Module 0.6 for a WR-01 chassis right?

[So, What Have You Done Today?]

More work on the Bullhead.

Stuck the reciever and ESC into the bottom of the chassis.

 

And 3D printed a new battery case for a length-wise orientation.

 

With all this  in place, I popped on the body and took it for its first drive outside. I was very pleasently surprised with this chassis!
The steering is sharp and direct, turning circle is very good for the size of the truck. Almost looks unreal, I'm a novice driver when it comes to 4 wheel steering.
Accelleration is fine too, and going from reverse to full forward it will do wheellies.
Full speed to maximum brake will kick-up the rear wheels for a moment.

So a very good first impression. Loving this beast already!
And speed can be increased with a 3S lipo if I ever want to do that. And better motors, currently very happy with the silvercans.

[The "Postman Brought Me" Thread]

Today a Dual Hunter appeared.

Seems in very reasonable condition, has oil shocks and two 23T motors.
The wheels have ball bearings so hopefully the gearboxes too.

Needs electronics (ESC is broken), steel pinions, the caps that hold the battery in place and and a cleanup.
Maybe shorten the shocks a bit to give it a better stance.

Should be a nice basher/lazy driver.

[So, What Have You Done Today?]

Busy with the Bullhead's body.

Normally, the body posts are 22mm and 42mm long (rear/front), I've tested posts that are 5mm and 25mm long. Body height now looks good to me, not as 'high in the sky' as with standard posts.
The battery will be inside the chassis length-wise, so the holes for the battery box extensions will be closed as well.

Also test printed the tailgate, to marui big-bear example.

Next on the list, bigger fenders on the back wheel arches.

[So, What Have You Done Today?]

Been trying alternate ways to mount the clod buster body, so it sits lower on the chassis. 

I did not succeed, the grille always hits the bumper mounts. But just had an idea.... The only difference between front and back of the chassis is the position of said bumper mounts, so I'll try this again with the body on backwards. If that does work, reverse the motor leads and set steering servo to reserve. 

[Classic touring cars 90s era]

57 minutes ago, Scipunk said:

I grew up drawing Calvin and Hobbs, this car makes me smile  Did you hand paint the characters on first from then inside and then spray the yellow? Came out amazing!

 

Thanks!

Yes these are hand-painted from the inside, it is actually quite simple!

Take the picture you want, and print it in reverse image on paper with the required picture size.
Stick the paper on the outside of the polycarb body.
With a fine pencil, trace the black lines of the picture inside the body, and allow to dry completely.
Then, paint the colors in the corresponding areas inside the black lines. You can move onto a black line with the paint no problem, just do not go over the black line if antoher color is next to it. Allow to dry between colors.
And presto, on the inside the figures look a bit strange and messy with all the colors on the black lines, but on the outside they come out perfect. An advantage of the polycarb body.

For finish, spray the rest of the body in the desired color, you can paint over the pictures too is long as the paints are compatible.

 

[So, What Have You Done Today?]

Sick at home with a bad cold, bored so looking through local rc car ads.

long story short, I did it again ......

 

edit:

Bullhead’s anti rotation brackets came in, so something to doo this afternoon.

 

Edit 2:

Bullhead chassis drove it's first laps! Wish the oil-shocks were here...

[So, What Have You Done Today?]

Experimented further with the Bullhead's electronics.

I modified the TG-3 reciever, so the servo signal from channel 1 steering is now alco on the VCC power connector. This saved me a Y cable for the 2 steering servos. They can now go directly into the receiver.

Tested it, and when the front wheels turn left, the rear wheels turn left too instead of right... Woops. 

So have to look into either a servo reverse cable thingy something, or I'll modify the rear servo internally so it counter rotates.

[So, What Have You Done Today?]

Got great work done on the Bullhead.

2 of the suspension arms were badly bend and partially broken when I got the car.
I 3D printed patches for them, first bent the arms straight using a hot air gun, and glued the patches in place with epoxy glue.
The arms feel strong again now, and a touch of silver paint hides the work.

 

Next, re-assembled the suspension arms to the gearboxes.
Too bad the aluminium anti-rotation brackets have not arrived yet, otherwise I could finish this and mount them to the chassis.
I ordered oil-filled shocks, but they have not been send out yet after a week processing time... So I'll mount the old shocks to test-drive.

 

Also modeled and test-printed a new grille for the Clod Buster body. Plan is to make this car a bigger version of, and inspired on, my first RC Marui Big Bear monster truck.

Need to do the tailgate, side badges, and rear wheel fenders too. Re-print it all in ABS.
Then a full respray of the clod body in dark metallic blue, and I already have 120% sized decals from MCI.

[The "Postman Brought Me" Thread]

Good haul this week so far.

Picked up a Clod body, to be used on the Bullhead chassis.

I have some modifications and a full respray in mind, but use as-is for now...

And half the bearings (metal sides, for the gears) for the Konghead arrived. The wheels will get rubber sided bearings.
And the servo-savers for the bullhead's modified steering are also here, so I can finish the gearboxes/steering this weekend.

[Show us your Ghetto Mods......]

I don't have a picture of it anymore, but imagine the following...

Take a Grasshopper and cut the chassis and body in half, just after the steering servo.

Extend chassis with 20cm meccano bars, and extend body with some ABS sheet. Paint it bright orange.

Mount lunchbox tires on the back, keep the original fronts.

Voila, instant top-fuel dragster lookalike!!

[The "Postman Brought Me" Thread]

4 MG996R servos.

2 For the bullhead steering, 2 for future use. 

[So, What Have You Done Today?]

Primed and painted more bullhead plastic suspension parts. 

This did not work out as expected. The surface is 'stained', possible because of the high air humidity from the rain we've had all night.

Just leave as-is for now, and consider it a base coat.  Try again later this week.

To soften the damage, ordered 8 oil-shocks. 

[Top Restoration Tips Thread]

For cleaning of parts I now use (as mentiomed above) the ultrasonics cleaner with washing up liquid.

For very dirty parts like gears coated in aluminium pinion paste, I put these in a plastic resealable bag with some low-aromatic terpentine, and put that bag into the ultrasonic cleaner that is further filled up with water. This gets the gears really clean. 

For stubborn dirt, loosen it with a toothbrush and give it a second round.

And all my newly cleaned cars get full bearings and an ESC. This is better for the gears as power can be slowely increased, and no more wear on the rotatimg parts. And a 2.4GHz set, much more stable and compact compared to the old 27MHz types. This also eliminated the antenna straw, improving looks in my opinion.

[So, What Have You Done Today?]

Working on the Bullhead's axels.

To finish for now, I need the 10mm aluminium bar I bought, but can't seem to find.

And to test the dual motor drive, I need the receiver I know I have somewhere, but can't seem to find.

Its just one of those days.....

At least I got this far, the steering modifications are 3D printed, and the chassis paint turned out OK.

[Classic touring cars 90s era]

13 hours ago, Theibault said:

This is my original HPI RS4 from 1995. Needs a bit of love if I can ever find the time to do a rebuild. 

This chassis reminds me that I also had a HPI mini-RS4 chassis. Great runner, but could not use it indoors because of all the rubber stripes it would leave on the livingroom floor.  It had a Mini Cooper body, yellow with black bonnet. Sold it a few years ago...

[Classic touring cars 90s era]

Love the cars, in the 90s a buddy I mostly drove on-road nitro.

The first was a Kyosho Corvette ZR-1. Rear wheel drive. Not very fast with it's 1.5cc engine, but all that changed with an OS-Max 2.11cc CV-something  CZRengine. It would howl like a wolf!

After that came the 4WD Mugen Seiki Prime 12 chassis, 2.5cc and for some time the 2-speed box, with various HPI bodys on it like the Viper, McLaren F1, and last in line the Lamborgini:

 

Doing the Calvind and Hobbs images took some time in painting to allow for drying-time, but were easy to do.  It is still my personal favourite.
And the car is still in line to drive again, after a stripdown, clean, and conversion to brushless. I still have a new Lamborgini Calvin and Hobbs ready-painted body, it only needs the finish overall color, which will probably be yellow again.

[Custom MFC using Arduino]

Good to hear progress is made!

I do not recall the servo issues you are having, when I was experimenting with the LEDs setup and steering limiter based on throttle setting.

I'm still searching for the code, as I seem to have misplaced it somehow. It was a while back. 
I'm sure I did  not use the servo library, but cannot recall how I did the pulseout to the servo, perhaps with a microseconds pulseout function library or something??

Are you sure the servo is functioning normally when it is directly connected to the receiver?
Just this weekend, I had a terribly misbehaving servo. It was simply broken, brand new out of package from China.  

[So, What Have You Done Today?]

I want the chassis of the bullhead in black, so gave it a good cleanup with soap, sprayed it with plastic primer, and now to satin black.

[I thought I was the oldest member on here , but it seems todays birthday list has a few guys that are well over 100 ?- have a look]

1 hour ago, KEV THE REV said:

Cool - is he a member here ?

Ah, there is always a catch.........

[I thought I was the oldest member on here , but it seems todays birthday list has a few guys that are well over 100 ?- have a look]

13 minutes ago, KEV THE REV said:

Ok let's 'ave it - I'm 60 - anyone top that ?

My father can top that easily! 

[So, What Have You Done Today?]

Some time ago I got inspired from a thread I saw somewere over here, where a Clod Buster had it's steering servo's mounted between the bumper mounts.

So I made some custom bumper mounts/servo brackets, and coupled that with 10mm thick and 12cm long aluminium tube.

This prototype is made from white PLA, the final product will be black ABS.

[So, What Have You Done Today?]

After tiding and cleaning of the man-cave, inspected the Konghead to see if it will fit a hardcase lipo and made plans for a customised body.

The lipo fits no problem. Squeezed just fine into the tray.

I did notice quite some free play on a front axle. So inspected it and looks like the previous owner forgot something.

No biggy, it will get a full ball bearing conversion anyway.

[Happy New Year!]

Happy new year!

May all our projects work out like we planned, and the gearboxes free from stripped gears!

[The "Postman Brought Me" Thread]

A slightly used Marui Ninja chassis and gearbox plastics, dampers and wheels.

Very happy with this, my Ninja's rear gearbox has bad plastics. Drivable, but an eyesore.