The Hotshot II, Cool But Flawed (Improved With Traxxas Parts!)

[MadAnt]

Ok, it's late now and I'm done messing with the Hotshot 2 for tonight. I have the new Supershot/Super Hotshot/HP shock towers installed. The shocks I have on the car now are just for mockup, but things are evolving and looking good.

I'm going to try and keep the front swaybar, that's if clearance is not an issue for the shocks.

That's right, I'm still using the Traxxas Bandit rear lower control arms.

 

[BuggyDad]

5 hours ago, MadAnt said:

The track owner says metal caps only. I may have gotten away with running plastic for now, but for the future the shock caps need to be metal. They probably had some issues with oil on track at some time, IDK, so everyone cannot run with plastic caps now.

Oh right. Fair enough. 

Among the cheaper aluminium bodied shocks, the Yeah Racing ones seem to get decent reviews. As far as I could tell, pretty much everything else in that market segment is a bit unloved. I have only used them on road though, so although mine have been fine it's hard to comment in the buggy context. 

[BuggyDad]

2 hours ago, MadAnt said:

 

The brace is a good idea I think. I did similar on my Boomerang. What adjuster end and ball did you use to squeeze in at the gearbox end? It's tight in there. I ended up filing one down and 3d printing a ball to go in it to take up the slack. 

[Andreas W]

Looking good and am looking forward to read about the outcome. 

 

ThunderDragonCy is using Yeah Racing shocks on his HS 2 based on a SHS (with monoshock in the front though).

[MadAnt]

12 hours ago, BuggyDad said:

The brace is a good idea I think. I did similar on my Boomerang. What adjuster end and ball did you use to squeeze in at the gearbox end? It's tight in there. I ended up filing one down and 3d printing a ball to go in it to take up the slack. 

It's a standard Traxxas rod end just without the ball, I then cut a nylon tube as a bushing to fit snugly inside which takes up all the play when the screw is in. 

[MadAnt]

Worked on the Hotshot 2 a little bit more, mostly taking care of some issues. The smaller stock wheels were rubbing a little bit on the control arms and screw pins, oops! With 2.2 wheels it's not an issue, so now I notice it. Easy fix, I just ground down and shaped the control arm, then ground the pin shorter and repositioned the upright spacers. 

The rear wheels seem to have some wobble, so to eliminate most of the play I put a 5x8x2.5 bushing in-between the bearings on the axle shaft.

Saving those old bushings came in handy, that's why I keep them in my bearing stash.

Anyway, I installed a new cage so the original can be saved and have a stronger wing mount. Also, there were some other parts on the sprue I wanted. While it was looking like a whole buggy again, i changed the front springs to soft touring car springs to get a reasonable firmness and ride height. The shocks on it now are just temporary and will be upgraded, but I can still get an idea of how the car handles. Also, the oil I put in the mini CVA shocks seemed a bit too thin so I put the original front shock on for some extra dampening and weirdness. 

I have to get a new set of wheels and tires. I would like to use modern 2.2 buggy wheels, on RC Mart I found those 2.2 hotshot wheels from JC Racing that @Andreas Wmentioned. I don't have any experience with RC mart, I might give it a try.

 

[Andreas W]

RC Mart is safe and fine, if a little costy on the shipping. It seems like you'll have to go for it. The lovely car needs decent looking wheels. Grab a few of them when you are at it . 

 

There you'll maybe find the alu shocks in the measurements you want. ThunderDragonCy have Yeah Racing Big Bore Go on his and seems happy with them.

[MadAnt]

Test drove with the new setup today, had the Banditos on it for the asphalt and it was... HOLY COW! I did not expect such a big change in the on road handling, but it was different, in a good way. The Hotshot 2 was way more predictable when cornering and reaction was a bit more sharp, I was not used to this, but it was so easy to adapt my driving style. With the three shocks up front the weird wobble bounce was gone and since I still was using the front sway bar, the body roll was well under control just lifting the inside front wheel sometimes while cornering. I'm happy with this result so far.

[MadAnt]

Ok, I tried to do some shopping on rcMart and now they lost my potential business. They suck, search is flawed and the items in my cart keep getting deleted. Hmm... maybe that free shipping for orders over $75 is related some how? The items in the cart getting deleted kept getting on my nerves, so now rcMart is on my special poo word I can't say list. I will revisit my search for some JC Racing wheels in the future, but for now I'll try other things and sources I have better luck with.

rcMart gets no stars from me, it's two mid- ahem, thumbs down, I do not recommend them. 

[MadAnt]

Alrighty, things are moving along slowly, but the Hotshot 2 is getting better and soon to be better than that. I picked up some new wheels and tires from the hobby store that has the carpet track, and I had just received a delivery from Tower Hobbies. I wanted red aluminum shocks, but my options were cheap Chinese shocks on ebay or cheap Chinese shocks from some other site. It does not seem worth to me to save 15-20 bucks for a performance sidegrade, then pay for shipping and other fees. So after looking for deals and some research, I spent a little extra on the Tamiya Aluminum DF03 Damper set. Since I had other stuff together in the cart, the order was eligible for free shipping. Sweet!

I have to thank @Juls1for the write up on the "Buggy Damper Thread", those measurements help out a lot.

I'll update later when everything is installed.

[MadAnt]

The evolution continues. The new shocks are now installed and it does not look too bad. I do feel better about not cheaping out on the shocks after assembling them, they are very nice in quality and spotless clean. Definitely a huge step up from the cheap Chinese junk I have handled in the past. Anyway, this buggy is almost ready for a test and tune session at the track, let's hope it can do more than 2.5 laps.

Oh yeah, it's got new tires for the carpet/turf track. Proline pyramids at the rear and prisms at the front. This tire combo was recommended by the store and track owner, he actually races with those tires, so I'll take his word. The wheels are from DE racing and well... I messed up. I bought a set that had the center axle hole too deep.

I don't like giving up, so out came the big drill bit and... it's a little ugly.

Well... if you seen the other photos, it worked, lol. Just don't look close at it.

[MadAnt]

Had the Hotshot 2 at the astro turf track again. I broke a few things, but I got the results that I was looking for. Just the front bumper and steering knuckle are broken. The front bumper was just a homemade experiment, so finding it's breaking point was beneficial and it really did do it's job well. The front steering knuckle I should have replaced awhile ago, but I was just lazy and really I could just use the most inner holes. So with all off this, my bad driving and having some good track time in now, I consider this a success.

I really got to see what the old Hotshot 2 can do with the modifications I've done so far and make some tuning changes. The buggy had some understeer or front end push and it was clear the issue was the front sway bar. I quickly removed the sway bar and it definitely had a more responsive front end. Those aluminum DF03 shock worked great so far, I'm not going to change a thing with them, they handled the jumps pretty well with the medium oil and kept the heavy Hotshot 2 in control for the most part, it was my bad driving that caused the crashes, lol.

 

[MadAnt]

Alright, time to show off the damage from last night at the track.

The front bumper did it's job and for the most part and protected the car from my bad driving. I'll make some more bumpers in the future, maybe with some different designs.

The steering knuckle breaking is from hitting a large pipe at just the right angle. It was pretty much getting cold out making my driving worse. 

I think I will buy a few more sets of stock steering knuckles, it's better to have them break than something more expensive or complicated to deal with.

In the pics below you can see the difference between the re re steering knuckle on the left and the vintage part on the right. It looks like the re-re part has been beefed up a bit in the arm of the knuckle with the gusset now much thicker. Just thought that detail would be cool to add.

 

Well... It's evolving and turning out to be quite a better buggy now. Lol, it seems to be more durable than my RC10 B3 which has catastrophically broke almost every time at the track.

[Tigerstyle131]

New to the RC club. Owned the Hotshot II back in 87. Bought a re re out of the love for this model and looking to do some modifications to it once it arrives. 1st question is how did you go about modifying the front with 2 shocks instead of the one? Also what recommendations for upgrading this new model once received?

[Saito2]

21 hours ago, Tigerstyle131 said:

1st question is how did you go about modifying the front with 2 shocks instead of the one?

That HS2 is using the Super Hot Shot front shock towers and lower mounts that bolt to the stock arms.

[Tigerstyle131]

So, that's all that is needed to convert my Re release HS2 from single mono shock to dual?? 

[Tigerstyle131]

Are these the Super Hotshot parts you are talking about?

[Saito2]

5 minutes ago, Tigerstyle131 said:

Are these the Super Hotshot parts you are talking about?

Yep!

[Tigerstyle131]

Forgive me, I'm slow and just want to make sure. So, all I have to do is put these parts on my HS2 chassis and that's all I need ( besides the dampers ) to convert my buggy from a single mono shock to a dual set up? I'll jump for joy, if that's all there is to it!! Lol!

[MadAnt]

12 hours ago, Tigerstyle131 said:

Forgive me, I'm slow and just want to make sure. So, all I have to do is put these parts on my HS2 chassis and that's all I need ( besides the dampers ) to convert my buggy from a single mono shock to a dual set up? I'll jump for joy, if that's all there is to it!! Lol!

That's all, maybe with some spacers for the top of the shocks. I bought the Super Hotshot parts all together on ebay, it was cheaper that way and you pretty much get an HP conversion kit. With a good shock setup, you'll see a good difference in handling.

[Tigerstyle131]

Awesome! Thanks for your help! I actually was on ebay picking out the parts already yesterday. I will place the order shortly. What spacers would I need? How do I figure out a good set of performance shocks and measurement size for the set up? I know there's brands like gmade, Tamiya TRF...???

[Tigerstyle131]

I like these Gmade xd diaphragm shocks for the set up I'm going with. Not sure if the 75mm is good for new front conversion? Also for rear of re re HS2 would 93mm or 103mm would work? Any advice is immensely helpful. Thank you.

[MadAnt]

5 hours ago, Tigerstyle131 said:

Awesome! Thanks for your help! I actually was on ebay picking out the parts already yesterday. I will place the order shortly. What spacers would I need? How do I figure out a good set of performance shocks and measurement size for the set up? I know there's brands like gmade, Tamiya TRF...???

Tamiya aluminum DF-03 Damper set part number 54991 6200 like I show in the posts work pretty good. Just put spacers in them to get the correct or desired length. If you want different colors, you have to choose something else. For figuring out the length you need, it's the same-ish as the Supershot for mine, so a shock of a close length might just need internal spacers or different ball end lengths. Just remember that too much suspension droop can stress the working angles of the dogbone shafts in the axles. 

[Tigerstyle131]

I will go with the Gmade XD Diaphragm Shocks, as the black and red, goes with the color scheme that I will be doing with my re re HS2. Do you think 75mm is a good measurement to work with because of the super Hotshot front suspension  conversion? Thinking 75mm up front and maybe 103mm for the rear? Your feedback regarding the spacers is understood now as is the ball end lengths. Thank you. I will use the Tamiya aluminum DF-03 dampers , if I'm unsatisfied with the performance of the Gmade xd diaphragm shocks. 

[MadAnt]

17 hours ago, Tigerstyle131 said:

I will go with the Gmade XD Diaphragm Shocks, as the black and red, goes with the color scheme that I will be doing with my re re HS2. Do you think 75mm is a good measurement to work with because of the super Hotshot front suspension  conversion? Thinking 75mm up front and maybe 103mm for the rear? Your feedback regarding the spacers is understood now as is the ball end lengths. Thank you. I will use the Tamiya aluminum DF-03 dampers , if I'm unsatisfied with the performance of the Gmade xd diaphragm shocks. 

If you are using the stock Hotshot 2 rear shock tower, then I believe you want to be in the ballpark of 87mm. Using the Super Hotshot rear shock tower I think the length for the shocks is in the 93mm ballpark. For the front I think around 75mm. If you can't get the exact sizes, just get close enough and tune the length (before you put oil in the shocks) with internal spacers and different length rod ends. 

Also, not every brand of shock tunes the same, so it may be wise to pick up several different weights of shock oils.