My Stadium Blitzer

[BuggyDad 6022]

This is going to be fairly closely based on my Super Falcon. I'll use pretty much the same steering mods, internal layout and mods to the rear suspension mount points which tie the sides together through the gearbox with CF. Also 3° toed in rear uprights. All this and a new body and mounts will go on a donor car which is a used Blitzer Beetle I bought some months ago from yet another very nice man I met through TC, Mr @Busdriver. 

I will slightly redesign the Falcon internal layout parts to optimise them for home printing. And I'm going to change the rear arms for both cars a little for better CVD to drive cup engagement vs my current Falcon ones. 

The sheet CF parts on the Falcon, which are in the steering and suspension mounts, will get CAD designed for CNC cutting in place of the Falcon's handmade parts. I might well go for GRP instead, and I can probably do it all with old offcuts. 

The Stadium Blitzer can keep the rear shock tower area all stock but I may well work quite a bit more on the shocks. I'd like to increase droop over the Blitzer Beetle's stock settings for jump landing and bumps, but I don't want to create too much roll in doing so, so I'll be feeling my way to a compromise there. I intend to keep the stock shocks but shafts, pistons and seals will likely all change. Then let's see what we end up with. It's conceivable I might want to fight my way to some homemade sway bar arrangement to control body roll if my other mods send that a bit out of control. Who knows. I don't have much experience of stadium trucks.

Altough it'll no doubt be fiddled with ad infinitum, I'm aiming for quite a quick build here, and it's already begun. The desired result is an improvement on stock steering, suspension and robustness for a nice driving tough runner that'll get used. Might see quite varied terrain from track to beach and anything in between.

Electronics wise I will try a Superstock I have and see how that goes. Query temperatures. Failing that I'll find another 10.5T brushless. But a sensored brushless car is c.£50 more than a Superstock and parts bin ESC one and this should really be a budget build - and water resistance would be nice on it. I will also give the existing sensorless combo a run, but I don't anticipate liking that - I'm a cogging snob. Then again, for the beach it's probably what you want. 

For my Falcon, which probably gives a lot more info on my mods, the build thread is here:

 

[BuggyDad 6022]

So what we've got so far is a body with now 90% of the stickers done:

(I really like this body)

A first CNC part which is a plate to which the steering posts fit for M-05 bell cranks:

(which I may repeat tomorrow for the Falcon assuming it fits together nicely - it's more accurate)

And of course the donor car:

Which will most likely get a complete strip down and I'll probably replace the screws with hex head stainless M3s. It'll also get a new tub and a couple of other plastic parts at the front.

On the body, it's box art all the way here. That's partly because I like it, partly because with the body being shared with other kits the stickers are a bigger part of the SB's identity IMO, and partly because this'll be modified enough that I want to pretend it's not - the cars I have that are stock, I tend to go away from box art, while my modified cars tend to be all stock on the body, all sorts underneath. 

[BuggyDad 6022]

Oh and I'm reminded to look again for different diff options. Does anyone know of a mod to get either a sealed gear diff or a ball diff into a Blitzer? 

Edit: Ah ha! Now there it is... 

One for the future I think. 

[bavee 1182]

Following with interest. Such a nice car.

Holds up well too. Looking foward to your progress!

[BuggyDad 6022]

22 minutes ago, bavee said:

Following with interest. Such a nice car.

Holds up well too. Looking foward to your progress!

Ooh. Nice! 

Is yours an original SB body? A question if I may - I was going to cut my number boards out of flat waste lexan, and probably paint black before adding the sticker. What are the kit ones? Are they lexan and did you paint them? 

[bavee 1182]

Yes, build from a re-release SB kit. The side panels / number boards are part of the "tool bag". They come in white and you apply a decal with a black background on them. Feel slightly thicker than your standard lexan.

Back of the car is a bit high on my first picture. Later I put some foam rings on the front body posts for height. Much better. You need to strengthen the body around the body posts on the back. Otherwise your body will crack if you are going to run your car (mine did).

[BuggyDad 6022]

38 minutes ago, bavee said:

Yes, build from a re-release SB kit. The side panels / number boards are part of the "tool bag". They come in white and you apply a decal with a black background on them. Feel slightly thicker than your standard lexan.

Back of the car is a bit high on my first picture. Later I lowered the back a little and put some foam rings on the front body posts for height. Much better. You need to strengthen the body around the body posts on the back. Otherwise your body will crack if you are going to run your car (mine did).

Ah that's good. I'll paint my number boards white then. It's good to know because otherwise I might've gone for black, but I think white sounds better. I guess the sticker and board exactly match in size? Thinking about it I might CNC them for accuracy if I can find a thin material (or maybe fast light passes under water will work for lexan) that won't melt. 

What did you reinforce with? Shoe goo and drywall tape do it or maybe glue on a second thickness of flat lexan? 

Yeah on heights, that's odd isn't it. I would expect to level the body so its sills sit parallel to the base of the tub, as you have ended up with. A fair bit of adjustment space in the posts though. 

[bavee 1182]

1 hour ago, BuggyDad said:

Ah that's good. I'll paint my number boards white then. It's good to know because otherwise I might've gone for black, but I think white sounds better. I guess the sticker and board exactly match in size?

  Correct. Will shoot you some photo's of the side panels and measure thickness for you once I get home in the evening.

1 hour ago, BuggyDad said:

What did you reinforce with? Shoe goo and drywall tape do it or maybe glue on a second thickness of flat lexan? 

Foam pads first. Then added shoe goo and drywall tape. Now I'm using a strip of lexan between the bodyclips and the body both under and over the body. Will shoot you some photo's.

1 hour ago, BuggyDad said:

Yeah on heights, that's odd isn't it. I would expect to level the body so its sills sit parallel to the base of the tub, as you have ended up with. A fair bit of adjustment space in the posts though. 

I think I'm using the highest mounting points up front and the lowest at the back now.

[bavee 1182]

You can just make out the side panels in this picture:

[Busdriver 6451]

Glad to hear the project is going ahead😃

[bavee 1182]

The side panels are 1.1mm thick and they are just a tiny fraction bigger in height and width than the decals.

This is going on with my reinforcing:

It isn't pretty but it works. Looking at it now it maybe a possibility to place the body directly on the shocktower at the rear.

[BuggyDad 6022]

2 hours ago, bavee said:

The side panels are 1.1mm thick and they are just a tiny fraction bigger in height and width than the decals.

Thanks. I have made a pair out of lexan offcuts, so mine are half that thickness, but it's the material I've got. I guess it doesn't matter too much but they might benefit from being doubled up. 

On the reinforcing it's good to see what's happened to yours to enable me to tackle it preemptively. I think I will glue a sheet of something to the back of the body. Nice that it's a flat section. 

[BuggyDad 6022]

Body done. Except reinforcing beneath. 

And what a lovely body this is. I know it's just a pretty standard truck but to me it is very period. Nailed on classic 👌

[BuggyDad 6022]

Not much time but got a few more bitsa my Bitsa Blitzer done.

Confirmed suspension pivot shaft requirements (and that I have a gazillion of the TL-01 sets and none of the M-05 sets, and that one M-05 set would pretty much do it - they're similar except the M-05 set adds the long 58mm one which I want at the back because of my bracing). I'm also building in a new tub and new B parts, which replaces pretty much all the hardest worn or cut parts in the original for relatively little money. So the original car actually remains almost complete for now except the front arms I've moved across. 

Fitted my Lunchbox knuckles - early indications fine. 

Confirmed my home printed versions of the internals are decent. They're just very slightly adjusted from the originals to make a flat floor where possible and reduce supports. The front brace could be redesigned better with home printing in mind just to leave a flat (angled) top surface but I think it'll be functionally fine as is. Perhaps even, with the extra give it has in PETG over PA12, it might be a more appropriate part. 

And I remembered I'd already designed and printed a home printed pair of rear arms which bring the hubs forward and in just a fraction in the name of better CVD to drive cup interface - to be tested in dims terms but I think they should be OK in strength terms as I overbuilt them. Holes all in one direction in arms so that's the printer z axis. 

To do:

- Finish gearbox surgery to take braces, and make cnc braces - direct copy of Falcon plus will produce better fitting braces for the Falcon. 

- Assemble everything

- tinker with shocks quite a lot for droop and travel as well as spring rate, damping and friction.

Then I think we'll have a complete runner, just with some future mods like the diff that can wait. 

Likely I won't get more time on this for a couple of weeks though. 

[BuggyDad 6022]

Well I thought I wouldn't get more time this week but the thing I was to do tonight was sadly cancelled. So here we are. 

I dismantled the donor car's gearbox to find the spur in a bad way. 

 

So I'm going to need a new one of those. Some assembly oddness too with some kind of thread lock stuff on a lot of nuts including flange nuts and some seized with rust. But still the only plastics that look like trouble are on the B tree and tub for which I have spares.

I've done my cutting work on the gearbox to get the braces in, which is the hard bit. 

And on the tub to fit the battery strap. 

So once I get a few last bits we're mainly onto assembly now.

In hindsight, I'm not sure I'll use enough of the donor car to justify its purchase, but so be it. 

[Carmine A 2602]

You've definitely been busy, young man!! I'll be following this one too, hopefully picking up more tips for my BB....

[BuggyDad 6022]

A tiny bit of progress as my M-05 suspensions shafts arrived. TTP are super quick considering postage included. Very good if you want a tiny order. 

Body mounts fitted too, because, like with wheels, you've got to get a body on at the earliest possible opportunity if you've painted it. For the socials, like. Is this a social? It's as close as I'm gonna get. 

[BuggyDad 6022]

I was just thinking about which parts of the donor car I'm actually using here. It's a shockingly short list:

- gearbox halves

- front lower arms and c-hubs

- bumpers front and rear

- shock plastics and maybe some springs and diaphragms

- the diff casing only

- tyres and foams

- bearings

- wheel nuts

- I may use the motor and ESC but it's not my "Plan A"

An absurdly short list but in new value it still probably just about stretches to the amount I paid.

And this isn't mainly because of condition (only the gear damage I couldn't see, and they're cheap), it's more just all the mods adding up to make so many parts redundant. And I'd always have replaced all the screws. 

The result, though, really will be a new car, just with scratched bumpers. And bumpers should be scratched. 

The chassis is assembled as far as arms, except it has no gears. So that's the central structure effectively complete. It feels stiff and tough. I knew what it'd be because the Falcon is the same, obvs, but the point is that it feels like a good basis for a truck. The out of place element in it is likely to be the noodly soft front arms. Also as per Falcon. Easy for me to make stiffer ones, but I'm not so sure they're a bad thing as they are, to put something in the firing line that gives a lot elastically in an impact. 

[BuggyDad 6022]

Back to the diff... 

The Xtra Speed casing tabs locate it perfectly in the Blitzer diff case. 

And then the gearbox goes back together. In this case I will steal the stock spur out of the Super Falcon to finish the SB, and try to make @ruebiracer's slipper mod for the Falcon later. This slipper mod is to introduce slip of course, but also to open up a range of gearing options, something I suspect my SB doesn't need so much but my Falcon definitely does. Plus most likely the SB will be given lower power and driven on lower grip surfaces. 

[Carmine A 2602]

Again, that has become a must do hop-up!

[BuggyDad 6022]

Turns out I'm a little light on parts. I have:

• The Xtra speed diff case
• 51553 gaskets
• 54533 cross shafts
• 54540 bevel gears
• 54543 Aluminium joint cups.

Had I bought 51554 in place of 54543 I'd have got the shims, pins and o-rings required as well, so it's those bits I'm missing. So I just put this here as a heads up to anyone else considering the same diff build. The bearings and bushings required are, I think, included but I need to assemble it fully to be entirely sure.

If you want to upgrade to the nice slop-free 54543 cups then you need some other bits and perhaps the practical way to achieve that is to buy 51554 anyway, it's not horribly expensive.

So therefore what I'm going to do is get my shopping list together for a repeat of this on my Falcon and DT-03, plus the necessaries to fit the TD-04 slipper to the Falcon. Jury's out on whether to go for the slipper mod on the SB. One factor I hadn't considered is that the need for a slipper is also partly a function of wheel size - bigger wheels increases mechanical advantage of a shock at the tyre over the gears.

Meantime, there's nothing stopping me from progressing almost all other aspects of the SB, so fingers crossed I'll get some more done in the next day or so.

[JimBear 1074]

Dumb question from the back of the class: then this conversion would fit the future Hornet Evo?

[BuggyDad 6022]

21 minutes ago, JimBear said:

Dumb question from the back of the class: then this conversion would fit the future Hornet Evo?

Yeah. There's a slightly different version of this conversion for the DT-02/3, see here:

 

If my understanding is correct that the Hornet EVO uses the same gearbox then the same should apply there as on the DTs. 

[JimBear 1074]

Thanks, @BuggyDad! It just crossed my mind that the DT-02/03 gearboxes are similar, so had to ask. What slipped my mind was @wtcc5s excellent thread.