Super Clod Buster upgrades and build tips?

[stockae92]

What are the recommended / good to have upgrades for Super Clod Buster? Motor upgrades for the included ESC? I supposed high tq servo is a must.

Would oil shocks be a good upgrade? I remember seeing people did 4 instead of 8 oil shocks. Which is the better way to go? 

I don't plan on anything to extreme, but looking for a fun basher in the park. 

 

 

[MadAtComputer]

Ball bearings, steel pinions, aluminum axle anti rotation brackets, and on axle steering. Oil shocks are not really needed, all the weight is on the axles so they don't do much. most of the suspension is the tires. I run stock motors and find them fast enough for what the clod dose best. If you run 4 wheel steer you won't want faster motors.

[WhteRbt]

Check my thread, it contains a few tips and also some links for oil shocks: 

Trying to start this build during the Easter holidays… fingers crossed!

[ABigChungus]

I would 100% go for the dual servo, on axle steering set up. The ClodBuster becomes a lot more fun to drive, and the steering is obviously vastly improved when this is done!  It's very easy to do. It's a lot easier to do this during a build as well rather than having to start taking things apart. UK Monsters I think the website was called? They did a kit that included a mouthing plate to attach the servos to the front and rear. Obviously this adds the cost of another servo as well, but I would 100% do this upgrade. I'm normally a Tamiya purist and only add the Tamiya own brand hop ups, but the difference in performance is night and day...if there's ever a ClodBuster 2, dual servo steering should be the standard!

As others have said, the obvious ball bearings, the obvious steel pinions, the aluminium anti rotation brackets (install these as a priority, the stock ones are plastic and mine looked quite stressed when I swapped to metal ones). A good quality, dual motor ESC (I think mine is something like a Hobbywing 0880). I'm not sure about the motor side, as I've seen people say different things. Some Youtubers I've watched have gone brushless or put in lower turn motors and say it goes so much faster, whereas others I've watched say because the of the way the ClodBuster is geared, they only gained about an extra 1 or 2 MPH for an additional cost of £20+, so they couldn't really recommend it.

Oil shocks, now there are a lot of aftermarket ones out there. If you want to be a 100% Tamiya purist, the orignal Clodbuster manual states you can upgrade to oil filled shocks by using the front shock parts off of a HotShot/SuperShot. However, back in the 80's, these parts were sold together in a package that you would need FOUR of to upgrade the Clod! These days you would need to look at the HotShot manual, study the front shock assembly, and then buy each individual piece to make the eight shocks needed! 

I was fortunate in that I had nearly all of the spare parts on hand to do the "Tamiya Official" upgrade, but I imagine if you were to buy all of the pieces to make up eight shocks these days (pistons, the shock pieces, o rings, nuts, e-clips etc...) it might work out to be a fairly expensive upgrade, so after market shocks might be the better way to go!

[Rokka]

10 hours ago, stockae92 said:

Motor upgrades for the included ESC?

I don't have a Clod Buster, but one youtuber mentioned that you must use motors with zero-timing (or adjustable timing). The motors rotate in different directions and with advance-timing the one with reversed polarity will become retarded, causing front and back wheels rotating at different speeds.

[2qwik]

Ive 3 clods and love them all. The usual upgrades and I run dual alloy oil shocks on all 4 corners. Havent done the steering mods as I know no different and they drive like..well, Clods!

[Wooders28]

For my Bullhead, I went with an 860 esc (think they're 880's now, so better still), and a pair of 15t Firebolts (Corerc 15t). 

It's about the same on 2s, and it was with silver cans on 3s, which is probably as fast as the chassis can go, without it bouncing itself onto its roof every couple of minutes. 

Looking into a dual servo mod next tbh, as I doesn't really matter about the servo strength, its the , spung loaded V in a wedge servo savers on each axle that just make the steering......interesting. 

[stockae92]

On 4/15/2025 at 11:31 PM, Rokka said:

I don't have a Clod Buster, but one youtuber mentioned that you must use motors with zero-timing (or adjustable timing). The motors rotate in different directions and with advance-timing the one with reversed polarity will become retarded, causing front and back wheels rotating at different speeds.

I need to look into this. I guess on lose surface, different wheel speed front and back may not be a huge issue. But I can imagine it will cause some problem on higher traction surface.

I actually thought about if 550 motor would work. I have no idea. Just a wild thought.

And thanks everyone for the suggestions! 

[Rokka]

This is the video, from the demonstration it looks like with Torque Tuned motors the rear wheels are rotating ~10% slower than the front wheels (after 4 turns in front back is almost a half turn behind).

 

[stockae92]

17 hours ago, Rokka said:

This is the video, from the demonstration it looks like with Torque Tuned motors the rear wheels are rotating ~10% slower than the front wheels (after 4 turns in front back is almost a half turn behind).

Thanks for the info. That make sense.  I guess I need more research on motor upgrades

 

 

[Wystan Withers]

Just a slight correction, it's the Super Shot/Boomerang rear shock not the front shocks (C.V.A. Long). Not a whole lot of suspension travel before your axles hit the chassis tub anyway- as mentioned earlier most of the 'suspension' is in the tires and even with the C.V.A. damper you see they want you to use the rubber travel limiter. Been building my shopping list, and there are enough bits and bops out there to assemble a set of 8 by buying various prats bags and such, but unless it's for the pure nostalgia of having the 'correct' hop up damper there are much better value per currency unit options out there given the suspension design.

Also a drop of glue when assembling the spring holder cap to the spring holder body (I refuse to call the stock spring holders dampers) and an o-ring on the mounting screw helps minimize rattles.

 

 

[ad456]

So I’ve got two Clods.

One is fairly standard for a long time now with the only real mod being a servo horn to sort the steering out a bit, a 20kg servo and a Traxxas EVX2 esc. It’s been just ace, great fun on most surfaces and well within my expectations and wants. I swapped it back to a full body after this picture as I wanted to run it instead of have it in project badword. It’s back on the bench at the moment as I took a notion to finish the tilts but didn’t so body is going to get swapped back as I really miss running it. I’ve even floated it a couple of times, nothing looks funnier than a Clod driving on water!

 

The other is a full custom mod clod that I designed and built most of during lockdown and finished over the years after. It’s been great fun, I actually had it out for the first time in a year this afternoon and it’s great fun, it always seems to bring the attention of my neighbours as they come over to find out about it. It’s in need of a bit of a rebuild, tweak and clean. Full custom chassis, Thunder Tech Racing CVDs, Traxxas Maxx shocks, sway bars robbed from the front of a UDR, an EVX2 and shaved the standard Clod tyres(messy but way cheaper than JConcepts), UKMonsters lower links and Traxxas uppers, probably other things I can’t think of. Absolute blast on 3s and drives like it’s on rails, very ridiculous fun and great for jumps and backflips. These pics were taken before I switched out the sway bars and lower links. It also sits a good bit lower with the 5500mah 3s I run it on. 

 

Having ran many incarnations of Clods since 2014 I’ve come to the fact that less is more as you lose the character fast once you start modding it. That said if you mod it right you can turn it into quite a different beast as you can see above. I think it’s one of Tamiya’s best models by a long way.