Toad16v

Cool. I'm surprised how hot mine is considering it's nowhere near the top end of the gearing spectrum. I really like the clear sections.

I'm having a few issues with motor temps on my tt01e with a dust cover and car body. Do you think there is any risk of having overheating with the back end of the body giving such little clearance, or is it likely to run in short heats and then be allowed to cool?

Realised last night that I have spares for the steering after buying a c parts tree for the front hubs. I could have swapped them all out while it was in bits yesterday. Doh!

Thank you! It's ps 59 Dark metallic Blue backed with bright silver. I'm pleased with the way it came out.

Thank you. The braces aren't the prettiest, but hopefully do the job.

Awesome, looks like I've got a fair bit of work to do to catch up with those at the top of the table!

Had some time today where I had nothing else to do, so stripped the front of the Dark Impact and fitted bearings instead of bushes to the steering arms. Wish I had done it sooner, the grease and dust had combined to start wearing away at the bushes, posts and the arms. Also, there is some play in the arms from where the step screws fit, it isn't something that can be removed by tightening. Might have to buy a new set and see if I can find a way to remove the slop. The work I did has removed some play from the steering. Also fitted the turnbuckle steering rod from the servo, completely unnecessary, and was annoying to adjust when the old one was perfect really.

I can't seem to get any cvas perfectly oil tight, there is always some dust adhering to them. I just have to admit I'll have to rebuild them every so often. I'm running thin spacers front and rear at the moment, but the rear is definitely lower than the front. Will try those little extra spacers to try to balance it up.

Thanks for organising this again. I definitely wouldn't be using my cars as much, or improving my driving without it.

I've used the 500cst oil in the shocks, replaced the front arms and shimmed the slop out of it, gave it a touch more toe out and it drives a lot better on tarmac. Less understeer and adjustable oversteer with throttle.

Submitted my scores. The Hornet did significantly better than I expected. I'm really pleased I ran it, was a lot more fun than I expected. Also, luckily the two times I rolled it it ended up back on its wheels without my intervention.

Spent some time practicing with the tt01 and Terra Scorcher yesterday. Took the Dark Impact and Terra Scorcher out this morning for timed runs, will head out with the tt01 and maybe hornet later. As much as I think the Dark Impact is a nicer, more modern buggy with more hop ups, the Terra Scorcher seems to work better for these courses. My first run was interrupted by a neighbour but was a few laps better than the Dark Impact. I've put 500wt oil in the shocks, fitted new front arms and taken play out of the front which I think helped, until I inexplicably drove it straight on into a kerb just now and introduced wheel wobble, and some more sloppiness. I think the tt01 is going to beat both buggies though after yesterday's practice runs.

Gave the tt01 a good blast today, first proper go since fitting the motor and dust cover. Been having a go at the racing by post course with the occasional blast up and down the road. I've not got an especially arduous set of gearing in it 22t pinion and the kit 61t spur. Everything seems to turn and run fine, but when I stopped after probably 15 to 20 mins of hooning around the car had that electrical burning smell and the motor was too hot to even consider touching, in fact I can barely touch it now. It's the 21 turn smd motor I fitted a couple of weeks back, hw1060 esc, 4400 Nimh battery. Is this normal/expected? The heat sink hasn't arrived yet and I doubt that it's going to bring the temps down that much.

I've been struggling to do too much this month but am charging all cars up for a thrash around this afternoon or tomorrow.

Decided to get the tt02 prop shaft and hotshot drive cups to upgrade my terra scorcher prop shaft the other day. All the parts arrived today so while the gf was on Zoom with friends I set about fitting it. Swapped the 1150 bearings for some nice fresh rubber sealed units as they're exposed to a bit of dirt, cleaned up the 'thrust' bearing arrangement of the plastic and metal washers and regreased them. I used the dremel to cut a little groove in the bulkhead in front of the battery and to extend the slot for the driveshaft at the rear gearbox end slightly. Bit concerned now it is together that a red o-ring in each drive cup was a bit too much, but it doesn't seem unhappy when running it up on the stand and I guess it's better to be a little tight than have the drive cups coming out. Has anyone any suggestions for an uprated servo saver? I have a kimbrough mid sized one but it's too large to fit without hitting the bumper.

The smoke paint arrived a day or so later, and I painted the sunroof without incident. On unmasking the windows it became clear that my masking job hadn't been great and some of the a,b amd c pillars are a bit wonky. Still, could be worse. I ordered a motor heat sink for it, as I'm a little worried about the potential heat buildup, and also picked up one of the black can 21t motors which are branded in a million different ways to see what that was like. The car is definitely faster than with the torque tuned motor, but it's difficult to quantify by how much. I did notice the esc and motor were warmer than I would have expected given the short duration of my test drive, something to keep an eye on I guess. The heat sink hasn't arrived, hopefully that will have a significant effect on temperatures. Tempted to get another of those motors to try in my terra scorcher, to replace the Carson Cup machine motor it has.

Could you fill the hole with something like jb weld and redrill?

Afternoon. I've tried searching, but have never found a decent guide, tables etc to help me understand the best final drive ratios to use with different motors. I'm mostly thinking brushed motors if it makes a difference... As I understand it, most kits come with a 27t silvercan motor and a 'kit' final drive ratio. If I fit a 25t torque tuned motor, I think I can get away with a taller final drive ratio as it has the extra torque to cope with it. This is the anomaly. If I fit a 23t sport tuned motor (or indeed a lower turn motor), then the motor has a higher max rpm, and I should reduce the fdr so that the motor can reach its maximum speed, instead of bogging it down. For instance I fitted a 14t pinion to my terra scorcher instead of the 15t pinion it came with when fitting a 23t motor. Firstly, can someone confirm that this is right, and can anyone tell me if there is a resource to indicate the ideal fdr for a given motor, depending on its use?

I'm not sure. All of mine have come brushless. One was already setup with high points, the other I had to do. I was using them fine until it started resetting itself. I really want a car I can pick up, take out and hoon around when the mood takes me, so I found this a little vexing.

I think that is the same as mine - can't tell from the video but is it flashing multiple colours all quickly? My esc would just go into brushless mode randomly, and then sit and flash lots instead of moving. I fixed it by swapping to a different esc.

I think it's really easy to forget that this isn't a hobby that is logical, or needs to be logical, it's just fun. I'm sticking to brushed motors with NiMH batteries, as they are pretty simple, and the cars I have fitted with them fulfil my requirements for having fun, so I concur fully with your comments here.

The smoke paint hasn't arrived, I've been bored so I uncovered the front and rear of the shell and wacked stickers on. Badly. Anyway, I did find that using my girlfriend's hairdryer helped a lot with the stickering.

I set about painting the shell today, armed with last nights experiment results. Last night I remembered that the real car features a black plastic number plate surround on the boot lid, and a black lower spoiler on the front, I don't have any matte black, but I do have some gunmetal, so I masked these areas off before putting any paint on. The best results I've had have been when the paint and shell have been warm, it was often sunny today with a few overcast spells, so I was fairly happy to paint outside and bring it back in to put in front of a fan heater if it was a bit chilly. I put the cans of paint in a pan of hot water to get them nice and toasty. After the disappointment of the Pearl effect paint, I wondered if I hadn't applied enough, so I put the entire can of paint on the shell in around 5 layers. You could see an effect, with a slight shimmer/shine in the light, but effectively the paint was completely clear. Next I applied a can of dark metallic blue again in around 5 thin layers. It seemed a bit translucent at this stage, so I applied two layers of the metallic blue followed by two layers of bright silver. Usually it had 15 minutes drying between layers, sometimes more. I noticed during the first blue layers that the sunroof mask had started to lift a bit on one corner, and the front splitter mask had started to lift in the corners, which was annoying and made me a bit sad. I stuck them back down with carefully applied extra masking tape, but the damage was done. I removed the mask for the number plate surround and the splitter and applied a few layers of gunmetal. It's a bit lighter coloured than I would have wanted, but it isn't a bad fit. Most of the number plate surround will be filled with a number plate anyway. The splitter has so blue paint bleeding in the corners, I couldn't remove it with any of the household chemicals I had lying around and left it in the end. It isn't great, but I don't have the patience to wait for paint remover. I just need my can of smoke paint to arrive tomorrow to paint the sunroof and I'll be able to reveal it properly. I peeled some of the protective film off the rear quarter. The paint does look nice, nice and deep blue, but I can't really pick up any significant evidence of the pearl layer. In hindsight, I should have done the grille in gunmetal as well.

I experimented with three different offcuts. I put a thin layer of ps 58 pearl clear down followed by a thicker coat, then three thin coats of an old can of ps 59 dark metallic blue. Then I applied another coat of ps 59 to one sample, a coat of ps 16 metallic blue to another and a coat of ps 41, bright silver to the last one. I've put photos below and compared them to my Dark Impact shell (ps 59 and ps 41) and the Impreza shell (ps 16 and ps 41). 1. Silver backing. 2. Ps 16 backing. 3. Just ps 59. 4. All 3. 5. Against the subaru shell. As far as I can tell from looking at them, there is almost no discernable difference in the three samples, and there isn't really any pearlescent effect from the ps 58. Maybe I used it wrong, maybe it was a bit too cold? Either way, I don't think it matters too much as to what I do in terms of paint.

I've been waiting for more masking tape to arrive as I had very little left on my original roll, that arrived today and I've been able to continue with body prep. The body work, painting and stickers are my least favourite bits. I'm just not accurate enough. I was eased to see that the kamtec shell came with window masks - one less job for me to do wrong. However, they don't fit right. They're too small and my attempts to get then in the middle of the windows failed. I resorted to putting tape on the outside of the windows, drawing round, cutting out and fitting to the correct side of the shell. Sadly, the indentations for the windows on this shell are really faint, so you can't see or feel it through masking tape. I ended up using thin tape drawing the edges on each strip before putting another one on. They haven't turned out terrible, but they aren't amazing either. I spent a bit of time measuring my actual car and making up a sunroof mask for the shell too. Hopefully it'll look right when painted. I've just started painting some offcuts to see what the paint comes out like. Hopefully will have a good idea of how to paint it later.