My Hornet Is Flipping Mental!

[lentner3]

ok i got my hornet set-up with a sports tuned (15 turn ansmann going in on the weekend) and monster beetle wheels fitted with the lunchbox uprights.

i've been running it with standard hornet front wheels up until tonight as i just got them.

At first with the hornet wheels is was quite unbalanced and flipped over easily so i thought with the front monster beetle wheels on as well this would rectify the problem.

oh no seems to be doing it even more now

the thing is fast and i don't have a problem with controling it in a straight line but if i try to turn quickly at full or even half speed the thing jumps in the air and lands either on it's back or side.

also happens at half speed to top speed when going from left to right lock quickly.

#is this just a limitation or is there anything i can do?

mabey change the suspension? or motor?

i think it is caused by center of gravity being lifted by another inch or so. is there any other way of balancing it out?

mabey i just need to accept the handeling limitations and learn to deal with it. it is really good off road now and does shift when up to speed.

looks rad too.

must be a few of you guys who have done this before? what kind of setups did you run and how did you find the handeling.

all input would be great.

cheers guys

[lentner3]

will shocks make a difference?

[Butler]

If something rolls over in the turns, its normally because...

Too much grip

Too soft suspension

Too high centre of gravity

You could try stiffer suspension or lower it or widen it.

Are you using it on tarmac? Its a car best suited to off road, slippery surfaces.

[lentner3]

ok where can i get smaller stiffer suspension from?

also is there a way of widening? how do i moove the wheels out?

i think it will be better off road too i didn't really thing of that but yes i was driving it on tarmac.

Is there some kind of roll cage i can get?

cheers.

will be trying it off road tonight!

[topforcein]

i seem to remember my hornet being mental in stock form. even indoors esp when i went full wack from the living room door and ending up planting it under the tv cabinet and snaping the front suspension mount of and thus needing a new chassis and this was after bouncing it of my bros head who was asleep at the time on the floor very funny until this woke him up. and this was back in 1989. i will have to get my other hornet out of the loft and make it a runner once again and remember the fun thay are

[civilguy]

I used to run Brat front tires on my Grasshopper and that seemed to help keep the front planted-- probably just the extra weight helped!!

Also, I think it was Parma that made dual wheel axle extensions (for both front and rear) so you could run two full sets of tires. I have the axles somewhere, but couldn't find an old pic of my Grasshopper set up that way. I think at the time I had butchered a kid's plastic garbage truck push toy and had that mounted on as a body. It looked quite silly....

[lentner3]

sounds like fun. but i cant put brat wheels on this will make it topple.

as i have monster beetle wheels all round.

what if i just put spacers in the damper springs to stiffen it up?

will this help?

if not i'm going back to my original wheels and tyres and putting a 15 turn in it should give me the speed just need to work out how to get more grip on the front.

mabey monster beetle wheels on the front and a 15 turn motor with hornet wheels on the rear.

will look very silly.????

what dya think?

[Live Steam Mad]

This is I think why the wide buggies (Fox, Optima, and later on, Manta Ray, Top Force) were popular in the UK for casual racing, because everywhere you look (in the populated areas) has been tarmac'ed over! So narrow buggies are not so great! Hence the reason why most UK ebay Rough Riders and Sand Scorchers have their roof lights missing / roof guttering ruined... I never actually saw a Grasshopper or Hornet being used where we used to race (40 or more people every Sunday, in the early 1990's, on a Supermarket carpark race track at Earlestown, Newton-Le-Willows, NW England), I only ever saw wide buggies (a lot of them had wide saloon Touring Car body shells).

That track (now Netto supermarket, was a different name supermarket back then) was an odd surface, it was actually quite slippery light grey tarmac (probably heavily worn) and it was actually very difficult to get any decent grip around the corners. Harvey's (owner of local Boats and Bits model shop, and organiser of the racing on this 'track', all 3 now long gone) Top Force Evolution, scrabbling for grip whilst leaning into the corners quite a bit, and with the noise of the tyres trying to bite into the tarmac, is something that is forever imprinted onto my memory!

To get an idea of where the Hornet was intended to be driven, one only has to look at the by now infamous (on this forum at least LOL) Punky Brewster episode called "Girls Will Be Boys" (from 1/12/1986) where they race the Frog, Brat, Hornet, Super Champ, and Fast Attack Vehicle on a small to medium sized "outdoors" (actually in a studio it would appear) off road custom made dirt track, which HAS DRY SOIL, i.e. light brown, NOT LIKE THE UK SOIL which is dark brown (i.e. WET all the a'curse'd time). These would be ideal conditions, the narrow cars wouldn't flip over nearly as much I think. Conditions like that just didn't (don't) exist over here. Pity.

Wide buggies like my Top Force just loose grip and spin out on tarmac at full throttle, not roll over, as you can imagine...

Cheers,

Alistair G.

[Lonestar]

>> mabey i just need to accept the handeling limitations and learn to deal with it

as Live Steam Mad just said - yes... The hornet is a "fun" car from 20 years back, not handling properly even then.... it's fun because it handles poorly, period.

stronger motors and higher speeds worsen all weak points of all cars. Put the 540 back in and it won't reach its limits as easily. Keep the bigger motors for more recent and performant designs!

LAter

Paul

[lentner3]

interesting point!

but there must be some dirt track i can use it on in the summer!