Time For My First Clod to Get Some TLC

[MadAnt]

Back when the Clodbuster made it's return as the "Super" Clodbuster years ago, I made the decision some short time after to save up and purchase one. I found it's old school looks, massive tires and MOA drivetrain to be very cool. It was an outdated different animal to what was out at the time, but with it's 80's charm and a retail price under $200 made it more attractive at the time. Back then there were as many aftermarket upgrades for the Clodbuster as there are now. Imex, ESP, Thunder Tech and New Erea were a few a of the well-known brands that made upgrades and accessories for the Clod platform at the time. I would drool looking at some of the expensive monster truck chassis you could buy knowing it was out of my price range, but it was still very cool to see. 

Over the years I had plenty of fun with my Super Clodbuster. I had originally painted the original body a satin metalic red which I think worked well with the blue shocks and bumpers and chrome wheels, then I did some repairs and it was repainted black. With the damage being to much on the hard body, I started using lexan bodies, which one is on a crawler and the other is on my other clod now. I have a hard body waiting to be finished, but I really don't want to damage it, so maybe I might pick up another lexan body in the future.

Anyway,  I've been thinking about slowing the Super Clod down. I have two Reedy 19T motors in it right now which I feel is too fast on 2S LiPo. For years I've ran two team Orion 17T motors and broke stuff multiple times. Before that I had the 23 turn 550 Titan motors, which had plenty of torque, but needed more voltage to be faster. 8.4 volts was pretty good, while running at 14.4 volts was a little crazy and was too much for the stock resistor and Mechanical Speed Controller. 

So now wanting to go slow again, I find myself messing with the Power/Economy switch and making it work with the ESC I have right now. I did plan on using a HobbyWing 880, but I'll get back to that. Just making the Dynamite 60A speed controller work with the Power/Economy switch is an easy task, as it turns out I have everything I need to get it done.

I've collected and saved the wiring needed, although some insulation make look a little bit melty on a couple of wires thanks to me using the crazy 550 setup in the past, they are actually very usable. Time to open the manual and see how this mess goes together.

As it turn out I modified some things in the past, probably to make it easier to swap speed controlers and bypassed the Power/Economy switch.

Above is the bypass Y harnesses I had made in the past. That's right! No soldering was done, I know some people reading hate crimp connections, and they see this and what was done now too as a an RC sin. I can hear the arguments now, but there are a few things those know it all's should understand. I know what I am doing, it's fine for this application and most important, this is my RC truck.😂

As it turn out, I had some extra factory wiring that a friend gave to me so making this work should be simple.

It's simple-ish, but it works. I now can have the dual motor circuits go from parallel to series with just a flip of a switch again. Sweet, but now I think it's time for a new ESC, I don't want to hurt this one like two before it and the new HobbyWing 880 that is meant for this application has a BEC that can supply 6 volts which should get me a little more torque from the steering servo since the the Dynamite ESC has a 5 volt BEC. So to make the 880 work with the setup I have now, two Y harness adapters with two male and one female bullet connectors are needed.

Oh what! I just need to crimp a male bullet on the each of the Y harnesses I already have. Now they can work as 2 into 1 harnesses and well... it works.

Stay tuned!

[MadAnt]

Ok, I did a little test session, it took over an hour and I broke a couple of things. The rear bumper bracket and the front anti rotation bracket had broke on me this time, but I at least had some fun. I'll do an inspection and update later, but it was pretty fun having power and economy modes using the 19 turn motors. The steering is well... terrible, at least in coo-coo power mode. In eco mode the Clodbuster is very controllable and still has enough torque for some fun low speed driving. 

Since I was running the much faster 19T motors, I slapped on one of my lexan bodies just incase I had a crash or rollover, but having the truck on economy mode made the Clod slow enough that a crash or rollover never happened.

I forgot how much power it had, it was really fun doing wheelies.

[MadAtComputer]

looks pretty wild with 19 turn motors

[MadAnt]

On 10/18/2024 at 10:50 PM, MadAtComputer said:

looks pretty wild with 19 turn motors

Oh yeah, it's a handful. I thought about running it on a 3S LiPo for a second, lol. The steering is a mess at high speed and trying launch straight is a challenge with the rear wondering. It would be so much better if it had the BAS steering and rear steer lockout like my other Clod has.

Stay tuned, I have some things to try with the old sort of original steering.

[urban warrior]

On 10/18/2024 at 6:39 PM, MadAnt said:

Anyway,  I've been thinking about slowing the Super Clod down. I have two Reedy 19T motors in it right now which I feel is too fast on 2S LiPo. For years I've ran two team Orion 17T motors and broke stuff multiple times. Before that I had the 23 turn 550 Titan motors, which had plenty of torque, but needed more voltage to be faster. 8.4 volts was pretty good, while running at 14.4 volts was a little crazy and was too much for the stock resistor and Mechanical Speed Controller.

Nice revival. Back in the late eighties I ran my Clod with two Technigold motors and a 12V lead gel battery, regulated by a Robbe maxi 600 boat ESC. I guess I ruined the Technigold motors that way, but we were young and sometimes not very smart.

Anyway ... the Clod was and is a cool truck. I would say one of Tamiyas best designs. Sturdy axles, large soft tires. No wonder that the Clod axles were used for so many projects by so many people during the decades of its existence.

One of the aftermarket companies were Sassy Chassis. There existed a 6x6 version for the Clod axles. Being located in Europe, I was never able to get hold on one of these. But I managed to get somekind of a re-enginered kit from a chinese manufacturer some years ago. It's waiting for its completion:

 

[MadAnt]

25 minutes ago, urban warrior said:

One of the aftermarket companies were Sassy Chassis. There existed a 6x6 version for the Clod axles. Being located in Europe, I was never able to get hold on one of these. But I managed to get somekind of a re-enginered kit from a chinese manufacturer some years ago. It's waiting for its completion:

That's a pretty cool 6x6.

The Sassy Chassis are cool, very old school.

[MadAnt]

Well... no more power/economy switch, I broke it, or just had it come apart. After seeing the very small amount of contact the electrical connections had in the switch, I decided not to fix it and just have the motor wires directly plugged into the leads from the HobbyWing 880 like normal. Below is the switch, after seeing this, I'm not trusting it.

Anyway,

Everyone who owns a Clod knows how bad the factory steering is. Running anything more powerful and faster than the stock 27t motors and the clodbuster's steering becomes a sketchy mess at higher speed and under acceleration. Mine was still sloppy, I had replaced the servo saver/steering arm in the front with something that does not give unless you crash it hard enough, but I never did the rear, so the rear wheels just went wherever they wanted when I put the power down sometimes or when turning. So I installed the metal arm kit which is made of multiple parts and the screw and nut needs to be extremely tight so the washers can bite well enough into the metal surfaces. It seems jank, but it works.

Of course that's not enough, so I upgraded the servo as well from the Hitech 645MG to an Eco Power WP110T. Well... High torque servo options in general have gotten cheaper or more abundant over the years and we now have more options than in the past in the more affordable $30-$40 USD price range, so last year or so I picked a few high torque metal gear servos for upgrades and future projects. Anyway, this new servo gives me a massive step up in torque going from 133 oz-in at 6 volts with the old 645MG to an 280 oz-in at 6 volts with the WP110T. 

The hole positions for the pivot balls on the new servo horn are asymmetrical to give less steering and more torque to the rear wheels. 

While I had the rear axle out, I decided to finally install the ball bearings that I bought some time ago. The gears still had a coat of grease on them, but some aluminum had mixed in from the old pinion gear. Rather than scrubing the gears clean, I just put a tiny dab of grease and left it alone. Trust me, it's fine, it spins so smooth and now a bit better with the ball bearings instead of bushings. Also, I changed the pinion gears a long time ago to steel gears, so everything has ran fine for years, I just had not seen the inside in a long while.

Back to the steering. With the goal of making rear steering less prone to instability, I positioned the linkages on the steering arm to give even less steering which means it would have less leverage to fight the servo in those dramatic driving situations.

For the front steering I was already at full lock and since I had less steering in the rear now, I should try to get more steering angle. The steering knuckles have these little nub stops on them, so I cut the front facing nubs off to get just a little bit more front steering angle. 

At full lock the tires are now a little bit more closer to the front bumper

In the pic below you can now see the differences in steering angles for the front and rear wheels.

I'm sure the turning circle is a little bit larger now, but that's fine as long as the truck is more stable. I'll need to test drive it and maybe dial in the steering a bit, I'll update when after I see how it goes.

 

[MadAtComputer]

bummer on the switch. I was wondering why I had not seen anyone use the extra spots on the servo saves to adjust the throw after I have been going through a PDF of the manual.  I hope it works out well. Looks good.

how do those servo savers work? do they need adjusted after a crash? I've seen them on ebay. I was looking more at the aluminum factory style servo savers from extra speed, but was thinking they would probably not be much better than stock.

 

 

[MadAnt]

5 hours ago, MadAtComputer said:

how do those servo savers work? do they need adjusted after a crash? I've seen them on ebay. I was looking more at the aluminum factory style servo savers from extra speed, but was thinking they would probably not be much better than stock.

 

Well... I have no more servo savers anymore. It's just the steering arm/bellcrank with almost no give now. I think the one in the photo you posted will be a good upgrade over stock, just replace the spring with a spacer and tighten the screw and nut down and you will have a bell crank/arm with no more servo saver effect.

Below is what I have on this clod.

If you buying from ebay or wherever, the shipping prices and taxes may vary depending on location.

The set from UK Monsters look pretty good too with the bearings and steel shaft.

Of course the best steering you are going to get is from an axle mounted servo conversion. There are multiple kits out there, but the servo clearance to the chassis is an issue. A BAS conversion like the kit from J Concepts can resolve the some of the clearance issues with the frame. 

 

[MadAnt]

Another Clodbuster update! 

We have improvements and it's very noticeable. So the modifications and adjustments I have made to the steering in the other post have worked. It's still far from perfect and I have the left steering EPA at 110-115%, but it's a positive result with way more controllable handling. There are still issues though, which is why I need more servo travel going left than right. These particular issues could be ignored, but I do have a plan to partially fix them. One issue is the sloppy steering rod ends, this Clod was used and abused for years, so things are a bit worn-out. The other issue is the flex of the plastics. Were the servo sits, the blue Suspension parts attached to the ladder bars and the servo horn all flex. There are a few things I can do about the flexible areas, but it's not something I feel needs attention right away. 

Also, if you see in the pic, I changed the front aluminum shocks I had to these vintage yellow units. I'm going to try and retro fit my aluminum shocks to something else, so I figured it was a good time to dig the old yellow CVAs out of the parts box purgatory and give them new life after a major wash and scrub down making them look good from 10 feet away.

Stay tuned, I have some more plans.

[MadAnt]

Time for some sprucing up.

I figured why not do a color change if I'm replacing the old beat up and worn parts.

[MadAnt]

Well... there was a lot of wear and tear. Almost every plastic ball connection was stretched or worn out and were beat up with scratches and deformed. Replacing the rod ends definitely reduced the amount of play in the steering. Here is a tip, use tape to mark the position of the old rod ends so you can have a guide for the new same size rod ends and not have to make many or any adjustments.

Some other things needed fixing. The screw holes for the lower cover were just so bad and cracked.

I checked my spare parts inventory and thankfully I had a new cover.

Now with thread lock and washers I think the new lower cover should be fine.

Replaced all the blue plastics with red plastics, put the hard body on and I think it looks pretty snazzy now. 

[MadAtComputer]

looking good! that bottom plate sure has seem better days.