El Gecko

One of my favorites as well, can't believe I forgot about that one!! Thanks @ryback for digging up the image! I'm adding the layout for round 4 here, and the post above has been updated with the last two images. I'm good with whatever you lot decide!

Speaking of previous rounds, as I mentioned I've collected and organized all the previous tracks. I have the layout image for Round 4, I just need to copy it off my phone and upload it to the site. Does anyone have an image of the Round 6 course? Round 1: Winner: 48 laps - TurnipJF Round 2: Winner: 45 laps - TurnipJF https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ivbl4eenAuk Round 3: Winner: 64 laps - Carmine A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7A5GT3j9Tw Round 4: Winner: 53 laps - TurnipJF Best Lap: 5.52s Round 5: Winner: 42 laps - TurnipJF Best Lap: 7.02s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2BWPBRnnNk Round 6: Winner: 45 laps - jupitertwo Best Lap: 6.22s Round 7: Winner: 47 laps - ryback Round 8: Winner: 59 laps - JupiterTwo Best Lap: 4.42s Round 9: Winner: 58 laps - Carmine A

If it's not the microprocessor, it's probably the FETs. In other electrical applications (audio equipment) FETs and capacitors are usually the first things to go. FETs die if they're shorted at high voltage/amperage, and caps can blow for any reason including the changing of the seasons.

I think they're Troll brand tires maybe? I've seen some called "V-tractor" on Ebay that look very similar. I wish I knew--they don't have any markings and I'm not the one who bought them originally--they were mounted to my Hornet when I got it. And speaking of the Hornet, you got me curious about the offroad traction compared to standard Hornet spike tires, so I actually did some back to back driving with each set on the Grasshornet yesterday. As for the differences, let's just say it's complicated. The Troll tires are almost 50g heavier than normal Hornet tires (for the pair), and I'm not sure how much of that is attributable to the solid wheels on the Troll tires, but I'm assuming not 25g per wheel (all are plastic 3pc wheels with standard screws/nuts, the ones on the Troll tires just don't have the 5 spoke cutouts). This, combined with the driving characteristics, leads me to believe the Troll tires are a thicker rubber than the Hornet tires, at least for the main belt and sidewalls. The Troll chevrons are just as soft as the Hornet pin spikes, and each digs in about the same in a straight line. I didn't have access to really soft sandy loose terrain, but I'd guess the Troll tires would act like paddles and be quite a bit better than the Hornet spikes. I noticed some big differences in cornering, particularly under power. The Hornet spikes continue to dig in as you go sideways, offering a decent level of grip from all angles, even if they're spinning. But the Troll tires, like the paddles on a standard Grasshopper, will slide out sideways more quickly and easily. It's still controllable, but it's a bit odd to get used to at first, because they act like Hornet spikes on the straightaways but Grasshopper paddles in the corners. And the transition from power-understeer to power-oversteer is in a completely different place. They also have a taller, more rigid sidewall due to the thicker rubber, so although they give a smidge more ground clearance, they make the car more prone to rollovers on really rough terrain. The motor also seems to get bogged a bit easier with the taller, heavier tires, but on the flip side they'll give you a slightly higher top speed.

A few mistakes with the masking, and I used metalflake silver instead of metallic silver, but not bad for my first time ever painting anything on an RC besides a half-hearted attempt at tire lettering... they ended up matching the color on the CRP nerf bars almost perfectly! I have some plans to paint my Grasshopper wheels, so I decided to use this pair from my first Frog for a bit of practice. My cousin had these wheels mounted to homemade steel skis with tiny chains for snow driving, but they never worked as intended. So off came the skis, and after some sanding and a lot of masking, they've been given new life as the "runner" wheels for whenever I finally get the Frog running again

Hmm the wheelie problem is probably too much torque from the motor. It seems like you need more runway to be able to ease into it. Are you at the limits of your radio range?

WARNING: Local gravity increases when you click this link, and you may find yourself sucked into a black hole (in a good way) Also, thanks to this thread for giving me alternate Grasshopper/Hornet body ideas! (Panda Cyclone, Rockbuster, etc.)

I find the discussion interesting so by all means continue! I would agree with your assessment, and I'd just like to note that it would have been very interesting to be a fly on the wall at Tamiya HQ back in the day! As for the hex cup dilemma, is it usually the F3/K9 drive cups that fail first, or is it the hex ends on the shafts? This is my first time truly wearing one out, and although I haven't taken it apart yet to fully investigate, I did confirm that the right side driveshaft spins in the drive cup like a loose wrench on a stripped bolt.

How many times I've overlooked the simple things... and had to completely rebuild a gearbox (again) or a whole frontend (again) we're only human after all

Money, time, all of the above. I love R/C, but it has just never been a big priority for me, so it's ok if a few cars sit idle (undriveable) for a bit longer while I find the parts I really want. They've been in storage for the last 20 years, so at least they can enjoy some fresh air (and admiring glances) from their new home on the shelf while they wait! And if looking at the non-functional chassis on the shelf is making me feel sad, there are 5 others on the shelf that do run (barely!), that I can go hoon around with to make myself feel better

As has been said, pretty sure that's a vintage Losi, most likely JRXT. Not sure how to identify other than that though.

Since you are using an MSC, I would check the servo and servo horn that are connected to the MSC to see if something is wrong there. Could be that the gears in the servo have skipped out of position but not stripped out entirely, or it could be that the servo horn (if it's plastic) has cracked and allowed the splines to skip or strip. Was the MSC servo centered with the Tx trim at 0 when the servo horn was installed? Also, are you using a 4AA battery box or a BEC line from the MSC? Have you checked all the wiring for any cuts, crushed or melted areas that could cause a short or disconnect? It could be a faulty or loose plug somewhere too.

All Tamiya for me, for simplicity and interchangeability. I can use any of my batteries in any of my cars any time I want, no changes necessary. The connectors all seem to come from the factory with a little defect here or there, but thankfully they're easy to tweak into compliance. In extreme cases, they need to be replaced outright, but luckily they're cheap, and once they're replaced, I haven't had one fail again (yet). But that also makes it easy to make adapter cables if necessary. My Traxxas ESC came with a TRX plug, and I got a matching Traxxas-branded NiMH with a TRX plug for it at the time, but I wanted to use the battery with everything else too, so I chopped the battery wire off and made an adapter out of it, then soldered new wires onto the battery with a Tamiya plug. Now the battery works with any car, and the ESC works with any of my other batteries. The disclaimer is that I only run NiMH batteries and 15T+ brushed motors. But another plus is being able to occasionally charge up an old NiCd for testing while the NiMHs are charging.

If you actually get a response, I can't wait to hear the explanation

Another option I've been mulling is to pick a location and Dremel off any excess material. And possibly drill new holes if none of the other locations work, even after grinding.

Bad design, scrap aluminum that will work better for literally anything other than what they're intended. They attempted to improve them by adding (monster truck announcer voice) THREE MOUNTING POSITIONS! but they should have just stuck with a single hole in the same place as the original mounts. None of the three locations works for the stock shocks. You either have to fit super long ball ends so the springs clear, or super short shocks so they're not fully compressed at full trailing arm extension.

Yep, one of the oldest concepts in philosophy and one that is often discussed on hobby/restoration forums. In a funny coincidence, the Wikipedia page for the Ship of Theseus has the name "Blackfoot" listed as an example (The band continued with the same name despite no longer containing any original members.)

I have the same problem with my Flysky FS-i4, and it seems that the stick is not re-centering itself properly in the transmitter pod. To get "true neutral" I have to gently nudge the stick a hair one way or another so it lines up. It's not the ESC, as I have the same issue when I use the same Tx with a Traxxas ESC.

100% confirmed it was the air temperature outside. We've had warmer weather here lately and ever since it has been over 40F there hasn't been a single hiccup. Apparently the HW1060s aren't good for cold weather. The Traxxas XL-5 has worked perfectly fine the whole time in the same weather with the same batteries.

Right, my mistake. But I'd still suggest testing servos fully assembled for the other reasons mentioned

Right! I always try to keep as much original as possible, but it's difficult or impossible to fix some of the plastic parts, so replacements are unfortunately necessary. Luckily I don't think I'll ever break those beautiful gold skid plates, so at least that part of it will live on! @Saito2 I was thinking more about Sledgehammer vs. Blackfoot, and a good comparison for handling differences would be Frog vs. RC10 due to the suspension layout. Obviously the Sledge doesn't handle exactly like an RC10, but neither does a BF handle exactly like a Frog, however in terms of relative improvements in handling and adjustability, the Sledge has the same edge over the BF as the RC10 does over the Frog.

Yep, it's night and day compared to a Blackfoot. A well-prepped Blackfoot might have the edge on a smoother, longer track where you can run more wide open and not test the limits of the suspension, but the Sledge is great anywhere (or can be tuned for it). The weak spot on both trucks is the drivetrain. On the BF, it's more internal, like having the diff explode, and on the Sledge it's external because the plastic U-joint yokes/half shafts and axle carriers tend to snap. The front and rear suspension and gearbox is actually taken straight from the Rad and Hawk models, which all have lower wishbones with turnbuckles from the factory, so it does have some racing engineering behind it. The chassis tub on those models is low-slung and aligned with the bottom of the gearbox, but on the Sledge the tub sits on top of both suspension bulkheads, which gives it way more ground clearance in general than a Blackfoot. It'll get places the BF can't, and it can actually jump things in a controlled way. Also, the motor mount allows for any pinion from 10T all the way up to maybe 20T on the stock spur gear. I could never understand why they put 8 shocks on it. WAY too bouncy!

This is a good point. The case has built-in stops for the pot, to tell the pot when it has reached the end of the travel, one way or the other. If the case is not installed, the pot will not know where to stop, and the motor will just keep spinning. It's best to only test servos with all gears and the case fully installed.

Happy to report that the first test drive on the lawn was a success--it's a blast with the new setup! The new U-joint held up despite my terrible leadfoot, the "experimental" axle carriers survived, and the new suspension setup was perfectly balanced as well. The last wreck tore the rear wheel completely off, so it needed new axle carriers and turnbuckle ends. Amazon (via Google) had part 3752 listed as a replacement for the old axle carriers, but as you can see, they're not quite right. The lower mounting point is in the wrong place compared to the old carrier, so I've fabricated some aluminum plates to get them lined up correctly, otherwise the half shafts bind at full compression and it throws the suspension geometry all out of whack. There are plastic spacers between the plates when they're installed, and the whole axle carrier assemblies are actually quite rigid! We'll see how they hold up over time, but for $6 and a little creativity I'm certainly not complaining. There are OEM replacements on Ebay for when I feel like doing it the right way, but for now if the plates fail (they're the weak point) I can just crank out a few more. In the pic above you can also see the replacement black ball end connectors which turned out to be WAY too long, so I cut 1/4" off the end and drilled all the way through to the ball so the turnbuckles could be the right length. With all this modification, and an additional strengthening plate on the other side of the gearbox, the whole rear end is more taut and solid feeling than it's ever been (and it tracks straight for once in its life!). The new shock setup helped too and it drives like a dream now. All it took was a few zip ties to give the front springs some extra pep, and finally rebuilding the resurrected Blackfoot shocks the right way on the rear, with aluminum ball connectors and stronger springs. The last pic is what's left of the original body (on lowered/broken mounts) and why it's called "sludge". The rear bumper on the front body mount keeps the front of the windshield from drooping, and there's a metal strut bolted to the bottom of the rollbar that keeps the middle from sagging. Crude but still kicking!

Not sure about re-res but it's part F3 in the original Brat manual, which is the drive cup I mentioned without the hole in the center--totally solid, with a hex drive configuration. In the original Frog manual, it's part K9, which appears to have an identical hex drive and diff spline config, but the center has been drilled out for the rod that connects through the center of the diff. These have the same diff splines as the new dogbone setup but with hex drives--I'm not concerned about the re-re dogbone setup yet, except as a general knowledge type thing for when I eventually upgrade the Blackfoot. For the Brat, I'm thinking "why would Tamiya change the diff splines" so I'd assume Brat F3 = Frog K9, and K9 has a hole for the diff rod. However since the locked diff is different than the bevel gear diff, and the two drive cups have different part numbers, they may be slightly different in other ways (shorter or longer, etc.) My thought was to swap the hex drive setup from my vintage Blackfoot into the Brat, either with or without the BF diff, since the BF needs a stronger rear end setup. I'll eventually pull the trailing arms off the Brat and Blackfoot to compare splines and hexes, I just figured I'd see if anyone knew for sure before I committed to making a big mess on the workbench.