Clod Steering Upgrade - Bumper Mounted Steering Servos

[tamiya_1971]

After owning Clod Busters off and on since around 1989, I finally found the best steering system for it. I'm thrilled. I ran it for the first time without the back wheels going more to the right while the front ones drift a bit more to the left or any combination of either. No stupid middle mounted servo with two rods attached to it. 

I have an original Clod I bought off eBay a few years ago and I was determined to keep it close to unmodified (except for the Crawford Performance replacement steering rods).  I purchased a Sassy Chassis a couple months ago and began to mount everything to it. Along the way I found some broken plastic parts, a few cracked pieces and replaced a few of them. I left some in place to get as much mileage out of the parts before they break. I began to mount the middle servo and realized how much I needed something better for steering. 

I researched steering options for it all over the place -TamiyaClub, search engines, Facebook groups, etc, then gave up because everything seemed too expensive. I already had the Crawford Performance replacement heavy duty rods.  I tried 3d printing an axle mounted system but found that I needed two "shorty" servos which was just going to add to the cost and I didn't want to fuss with shorty servos when I had two perfectly good standard budget ones. Went back to more research and finally found one that was highly recommended on one of the FB groups and looked into the Arch Machine option. I had both front/back bumpers in the cart and was trying to justify the purchase. I slept on it and then the next day continued a search on Amazon for a different option and found one.

It appears to be a clone of the Arch bumper I was looking at. I went with the clone, ordered two thinking I would save about 25 bucks and it would be less of a hit if they didn't work the way I had hoped. They arrived and I ended up with two sets, about $23 for a pair of the bumpers (10% off if you ordered two). A nice surprise and I'll just keep the second set. 

 

 

The machining is nice and the screw holes and the hardware all worked perfectly. No issues at all on installation.

After mounting I did find one slight detail that didn't even enter into my head..crab steering due to the servos going the same direction.

My rear servo required a servo reverser/inverter wire because you cannot just swap the red and the black wire in the servo plug.  Ordered the inverter, tested it and it didn't work.  Back to Amazon it goes.

Once again, started down the Youtube route to find out if I could just pull apart the servo and do some wiring mods. Found some videos, pulled mine apart and flipped some wires around and got it all back together with no issues. I now have normal Clod steering. I used two MG996r's and they worked fine. No centering issues, or at least, not any worse than other servos I have used. 

My only fix remaining is having to put a 4-5mm spacer between the servo mount and the bumper to keep the bottom of the servo from hitting the chassis on big impacts, but that's an easy mod. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[MadAnt]

49 minutes ago, tamiya_1971 said:

used two MG996r's

Yeah, um... don't expect much from them servos, torque is fine, everything else is par. 

And yeah, just swap the servo motor wires and BAM! You have reverse direction. 

I've made the single mounted servo steering work better, but yeah, it still has some major flaws. I can probably fix most of the geometry issues, but the problem of parts flexing and the axles rotating from flex as well when the linkages push and pull is still an issue. So an axle mounted servo mounted setup like what you have and others as well fixes all those issues. 

[CMshooter]

For over 20 years, the servos on my clod have just been bolted to the stamped metal braces on the top of the axles. I used some scrap aluminum U channel from the chassis.  Have I done it wrong?

[Heavy Duty TLT]

I'm using JConcept's BTA steering servo mounts, they're a bit pricy and I bought 2 for the 4WS setup.  With minor shaving, I can still use the stock axle guards, so my Clodbuster could look stock, except I use Lexan body on that truck.  

I'm still using the stock steering setup for one of my Clodbusters.  Do you know about this trick to make it steer better?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6cKUdmUaenA

I just set up the rear to have less throw than the front by using the hole closer to the center of the servo spline and using the hole closer to the servo saver shaft on the axle for the rear steering.

 

[GooneyBird]

12 hours ago, Heavy Duty TLT said:

I'm using JConcept's BTA steering servo mounts, they're a bit pricy and I bought 2 for the 4WS setup.  With minor shaving, I can still use the stock axle guards, so my Clodbuster could look stock, except I use Lexan body on that truck.  

I'm still using the stock steering setup for one of my Clodbusters.  Do you know about this trick to make it steer better?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6cKUdmUaenA

I just set up the rear to have less throw than the front by using the hole closer to the center of the servo spline and using the hole closer to the servo saver shaft on the axle for the rear steering.

 

Same here. On my Clod I used JConcept's BTA steering as well. Very happy with it, and with a bit of clever radio mixing you can do all sorts of tricks with it.

 

[tamiya_1971]

20 hours ago, CMshooter said:

For over 20 years, the servos on my clod have just been bolted to the stamped metal braces on the top of the axles. I used some scrap aluminum U channel from the chassis.  Have I done it wrong?

Another good way to do it. After jacking with printing with what I thought would be good, I just didn't want to spend any more on shorty servos, at least with what I had printed and what the print required. 

 

17 hours ago, Heavy Duty TLT said:

I'm using JConcept's BTA steering servo mounts, they're a bit pricy and I bought 2 for the 4WS setup.  With minor shaving, I can still use the stock axle guards, so my Clodbuster could look stock, except I use Lexan body on that truck.  

I'm still using the stock steering setup for one of my Clodbusters.  Do you know about this trick to make it steer better?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6cKUdmUaenA

I just set up the rear to have less throw than the front by using the hole closer to the center of the servo spline and using the hole closer to the servo saver shaft on the axle for the rear steering.

 

The JConcepts is nice, but like you said, pricey. (that's for just one end, correct?)

On the youtube video, I've seen that too, but didn't want to mess with the single servo at the bottom of the bathtub chassis.