58441 Rough Rider "Buggy Champ" Re-release

[Doc007]

As long as you use decent servo tape (Schumacher does very good servo tape) then the servo is held very firmly indeed, it's good enough for a Cougar 2 to win titles with, anyway. Make sure that servo surface is very smooth (no damages) and that servo and mounting surface have been cleaned with White Spirit ( Mineral Spirits ), and that you get no finger marks on either before the tape is applied. When applying, press the tape all over it's surface by dragging a spoon or finger nail over the surface to remove any air bubbles and make sure that it's firmly pressed on, over all the surface area, just like when repairing a puncture on a bicycle tyre with a repair patch.

To remove tape residue completely (which you MUST before putting new tape on) with ease, use White Spirit, it dissolves the "glue".

Load your photo's into e.g. Photoshop and select " image / image size " from the menu to 1024 horizontal pixels. Ignore the height figure. Make sure that " Constrain Proportions " and " resample image - Bicubic " are both ticked. For best results make sure to select " window / tools " to show the vertical tools bar and select the top left one, then drag to select only the relevant part of the image, plus a small border. Then select " image / crop ", this being before you resize it. 1024 pixels is what Chris wants used on TC.

When taking pic, make sure to let camera lock on with focus (correct beep tone / green lamp) by pressing and holding shutter down 1/2 way before pressing down fully. Do not have camera too close to subject or it will blur. If you get blur, back off or lower the zoom amount. Set camera for shutter priority if available, and 1/100 sec. shutter speed. Set ISO gain to 50 or as low as possible. Use the flash. If flash too intense, change it in the menu to lower flash intensity. Also try and keep aperture at F8 or higher number.

Save your image in Photoshop at level 6 JPEG compression, so compression artefacts will be frankly invisible. No lower compression. Use filter / unsharp mask at about 80 per cent to get a bit more crispness but it's a trade off with noise (grain). That's why DSLR's were invented (big chip, plenty signal, low noise).

Now your file size will be about 200 KB or lower. Uploads in a few seconds only.

Just my 2 pence worth of thoughts.

Cheers,

Alistair G.

Cheers Alistair - thats great detailed info. Ill give it a bash

[Thermionic]

Hi everyone, respects and greetings to all.

Hope you don’t mind a rank newbie posting some comments and a few snaps of his own variation of this great nostalgia trip.

Like many I also had a Sand Scorcher when it first came out, and had much fun trying to improve it with things like a rear anti-roll bar, a self-adjusting rear wing (that varied according to steering position), better motor and a Demon esc, but when that blew up I later gave the car away to the son of a friend (!). Thirty years later and we have just moved to a place with a large garden, and was thinking it might be fun to get a tough radio controlled car to play in it with when by chance I discovered the re-issue. Bravo Tamiya problem sorted!

So having pre-ordered a Buggy Champ I needed to get some electrics for it. As I probably wouldn’t be doing this again for a while I thought I would look for an interesting radio and eventually settled on the Spektrum DX3S system. Being interested in radio technology I liked the apparent intelligence of this system together with the ‘duplex’ telemetry and large lcd on the handset. So, I also use a Spektrum radio with the BC, though being old and used to sticks am not sure about the look or feel of the TX - perhaps with my Darth Vader costume on I will feel more at home with it.

Anyway, the BC kit itself looked as far as I can remember virtually identical to my original srb rolling chassis apart from the few minor changes already noted by others, and I had some serious deja-vu putting the machine together, hardly needing the instructions.

I also found that the front wheel bearings were a bit narrow for the stub axles, and my own fix was to place a ring of 20guage solder in the corner of the bearing well to space the inner bearing away from the hub centre. The loose (always were I think) rear shock absorber top mounts were fixed by a bit of duck tape wrapped around the roll bar before clamping the castings on.

I liked the idea of knowing battery volts and esc temperature as well as having a rev-counter on the handset, but found that the optical sensor position was fairly critical and a special light proof mounting seemed to be needed. In the end I milled a small alloy box out of the solid and chopped away the area around the motor pinion on the clear plastic cover. Painting that area black I replaced the sensor’s ribbon cable with some thin but tough headphone wire. This was threaded through the existing rubber esc wire grommet into the electronics box. (You don’t have to cut this grommet to fit it if you remove the soft plastic bullet connector covers from the esc wires first.)

BC Tacho Mount

Frustratingly the ‘needle’ on the lcd remains fairly erratic (perhaps some revised firmware is needed here), though the MPH option seems to be more stable. But I wonder how you are supposed to drive the car while looking at the Speedo, as my car usually ends up in the scenery! However, with the taller gear option fitted an indicated 25 MPH is displayed on the handset at full throttle.

For the receiver I thought it would be a good practice to take the short aerial wire straight up and out of the electronics box. The Specktrum reciever was placed in the original RX position and the antenna tube mounted on the centre line of the car. I had to remove the bottom case half of the RX to get the connectors to fit, and also mod some of the connectors, but the unit works fine just retained with a simple foam block. A slight problem was that I now needed to re-route the stering rod, but with a bit if bending this seems to be ok now. As regards flexibility issues with the servo mounting (we happily used tape way back when), the steering I imagine was never that precise on this model, but probably perfectly ok for careering about on sand.

BC Ant Mount

I fixed the temperature sensor on the esc heat sink as I was interested to see how hot this would get. The Tamiya unit was probably designed to be mounted in the open but now of course it’s in a virtually sealed box. The rest of the electrics consist of a Prolux 5009F metal geared servo and a Carson 7.2 Volt pack.

The first run seemed fine apart from the esc reaching 85 deg C after about 15 mins of fairly hard running over grass and gravell. Would this become a problem? The esc had not cut out and MOSFETS can take more than this of course, but the temperature was not heading in the right direction.. So I hacked a chunk of aluminium about to give some more mass and surface area, and bonded this to the esc heat sink with silver thermal epoxy. This seems to lower the temp by about 10 degrees C.

BC Heat Sink

The last couple of small mods. are to the body. As I don’t want to worry about damaging paintwork or those spot lights when bashing about I have left the body un-finished and in the white but with a few relevant stickers. But as the body helps with chassis rigidity I did though re-enforce plastic at the fixing clip hole at the front, and I also made a sacrificial ‘hat’ over the roof to give some protection when rolling over.

BC Front Mount

BC Complete

[tamiya monkey]

Hi there welcome to the money pit, nice report, good reading. i have yet to get a buggy champ.

[Wandy]

Now that's a high tech Buggy Champ. Welcome to the club, but keep your wallet locked!

[Live Steam Mad]

@Thermionic , Wow, an involved and fascinating post, way cool, I enjoyed the read. Interesting on the sensor stuff. Good luck with the conversion from sticks to a wheel - when I got a wheel TX second hand with one buggy it was like it was from an alien planet, I couldn't hardly control the car to move around slowly indoors on carpet I was so confused. LOL.

I just got my Buggy Champ black bumper from a UK seller at a good price (I waited) and is it just me or is it quite a lot harder plastic than the original ?

Says ABS on it, along with 58015 and copyright 1979 2009 and 0979050 - 00 . My F150 original grey bumper felt softer some how. I just wonder if this is more brittle in impacts. Has anyone broken one yet ?

Cheers,

Alistair G.

[Live Steam Mad]

Ahh I just went and compared the new black bumper to my NIP grey one on my F150 XLT (not the one that came with the XLT) and it's just about the same hardness as the new black one, perhaps the black one is a touch harder. The plastic on my original used bumper must have aged (UV or something) and gone softer.

Also noticed that the new black bumper has the exact same moulding mark running in a curve up to the "S" of the "PLASTIC" wording as the NIP grey one I got a couple of years ago, so Tamiya are definitely using the same mould as the original back in 1979 for the bumper. However the new one seems to used just CNC turned metal (Stainless Steel ?) where the old bumper seems to be hard Nickel / Chrome plated Steel . I can kinda tell because the new one is rough when I run my finger nail along it but the old one is smooth.

Cheers,

Alistair G.

[Thermionic]

Thanks for the welcome and kind remarks guys, I expect I will just lurk mostly.

I think you are right Live Steam in that the plastic moulding is the same as the ones made in 1979; it IS a 79 bumper. But I agree that the metal rod is different. I seem to recall some plating flaking on my old SS bumper rod, though can’t recall what was underneath, These new ones look to me like they have been cut from what I think is called ground stainless stock.

Ah Wandy, I have a sinking feeling that the lock on my wallet is not strong enough as I have already been poring over brushless motor and esc specs. I know I don’t need this technology as it would seem even to this newb that the 540 supplied is a pretty good compromise for my casual use. But I had an up-rated motor in the SS years ago and that made it go very nicely but perhaps more importantly stop much better. The braking in the BC seems fairly non-existent at the moment. It may not apply to RC cars but having good brakes in a quick road (motor) car to me is equally important as good acceleration. So I imagine something with fewer turns would when shorted out (I assume that’s how it’s done) by the esc, haul the speed down quicker. Or at least that’s how I recalled my old set up with the Demon esc did. Am I correct in this gents?

But whatever I went for I would still have to make it fit the BC’s gearbox and plastic cover as I would like to retain the waterproof aspects of the car. So I suppose a ’Sport Tuned’ 540 is the sensible option, and anyway there seems a mind boggling array of brushless motor systems out there to chose from (and to get wrong - help).

Ho hum, the 540 is perfectly adequate, it is perfectly adequate, perfectly adequate.

Cheers, T

[kalsh]

Ok JR just sold 100 rear cages which I had been waiting for ages for him to list - he even emailed me to tell he was given I had asked politely and have purchased plenty of stuff off him however given my time zone I got the email at 11.50pm and naturally wasn't still up at that time. When I looked in the morning all 100 were gone. Who was the lucky ****** who purchased 42 of them??? Greed some you would say - it will no doubt be a reseller trying to make a living. My locay Hobby store still cant get them.

[Live Steam Mad]

Can anyone who has an original Rough Rider shell please have a look and compare it to their Buggy Champ shell, are there any differences ?

Does the new body shell fit the original RR SRB chassis ?

Sorry if this was answered before but I did a search and couldn't find the info.

I see the retail price on the body set is 3400 Yen which is about 22 quid. Most UK resellers are doing them at almost 40 quid I won't be buying it at that price.

Cheers,

Alistair G.

[Shodog]

Can anyone who has an original Rough Rider shell please have a look and compare it to their Buggy Champ shell, are there any differences ?

Does the new body shell fit the original RR SRB chassis ?

Sorry if this was answered before but I did a search and couldn't find the info.

I see the retail price on the body set is 3400 Yen which is about 22 quid. Most UK resellers are doing them at almost 40 quid I won't be buying it at that price.

Cheers,

Alistair G.

Yes it will fit the vintage chassis. The body is essentially the same as the vintage body is the same with the exception of the molding marks on the underside of the shell which state Tamiya 2009.

[Live Steam Mad]

...but perhaps more importantly stop much better. The braking in the BC seems fairly non-existent at the moment. It may not apply to RC cars but having good brakes in a quick road (motor) car to me is equally important as good acceleration. So I imagine something with fewer turns would when shorted out (I assume that’s how it’s done) by the esc, haul the speed down quicker. Or at least that’s how I recalled my old set up with the Demon esc did. Am I correct in this gents?

The problem is with the braking circuit in the ESC. The brakes in my Tamiya TEU101BK ESC are prefectly adequate for a 180 or maybe 270 motor or something similar. However in a 540 motor they are terrible with even average to higher gear ratios when the chassis weight is 2 Kg or more. The Futaba MC330CR ESC works in exactly the same " double tap " control method ( pull back once for brakes , pull back a second time for reverse ) but has much better brakes but still not what I would call satisfactory. My Tamiya TEU302BK ESC is a little better than the Futaba 330 but still inadequate to stop my XLT quickly enough (2.2 Kg of SRB ).

My Novak GT7 with a 12 double motor has really very good brakes but the Top Force with 12 double that's in it weighs maybe 600 grams less than my XLT, and the braking circuit is much higher rated, and it has the diode in the braking circuit to help out. Trouble is, it's a Forwards only controller.

Apparently the brushless controllers and motors have excellent brakes, they can lock the wheels if needed so I was told. Sounds great, but I haven't been able to afford to go down that route yet. If anyone finds a Sport Tuned equivalent but brushless plus suitable ESC, with really powerful brakes, I'd love to know about it.

Cheers,

Alistair G.

[Live Steam Mad]

Ok JR just sold 100 rear cages which I had been waiting for ages for him to list - he even emailed me to tell he was given I had asked politely and have purchased plenty of stuff off him however given my time zone I got the email at 11.50pm and naturally wasn't still up at that time. When I looked in the morning all 100 were gone. Who was the lucky ****** who purchased 42 of them??? Greed some you would say - it will no doubt be a reseller trying to make a living. My locay Hobby store still cant get them.

Yep I grabbed a bumper from a real UK model shop on the bay for a good price but I missed the rear cages , and the seller only lists them slowly, 1 at a time, and they sell out instantaniously, like the bumpers!

Cheers

ARG

[Live Steam Mad]

Yes it will fit the vintage chassis. The body is essentially the same as the vintage body is the same with the exception of the molding marks on the underside of the shell which state Tamiya 2009.

Excellent. Thanks Jim.

Cheers,

Alistair G.

[Live Steam Mad]

Yes it will fit the vintage chassis. The body is essentially the same as the vintage body is the same with the exception of the molding marks on the underside of the shell which state Tamiya 2009.

Does the new body shell have any of the tool marks from the original bodyshell ? Then we can tell if they are using the same moulding as the original 1979 body mould. Which reminds me I'll take a picture of the front bumper to show this aspect.

Cheers,

Alistair G.

[Live Steam Mad]

Now added pic's of bumper to show the new one comes from the same moulding as the old one ;-

http://www.tamiyaclub.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=52463

Cheers,

Alistair G.

[Raman36]

I started to finally paint my body.. going with Box art Orange and White. Fired up the airbrush after 6 months.. first coat is down. In the mean time I decided the new born SRB needs to have some run time. So I slapped on my Kamtech SS body and took the lil guy out on a dirt trail.

I forgot how tough this lil guy can be. I drove into some shrubs and it look like it got stuck.. pulled the throttle and it plowed right through the shrubs. Incidentally Im running black can and paddle trac on rear. Had great traction too.

SRB is nice and dusty but the cool part is you can rinse with water lol.. its water resistant! :-)

[Thermionic]

Many thanks Live Steam Mad for your comments about the Tamiya esc and its marginal braking efficiency with the BC. All interesting and thought provoking stuff. It looks like at some point I need to find a not too rabid (low max RPM/KV rating) brushless system, and somehow shoehorn the motor into the gearbox casting and end moulding. Or perhaps on the other hand simply fit a ‘Sport Tuned’ 540 brushed motor and a much better esc.

looks like this will be my next little project with the buggy.

Thanks, T

[Raman36]

I'm running my SRB with a Novak XRS sport esc and Tamiya black can and it has plenty of brakes! The XRS sport can run down to a 15 turn motor. I also have Brushless motors / esc and yes you are able to control the breaking, espeically with sensored brushless systems, because it knows the position of the rotor. Installing a brushless system will require drilling holes mount the motor, instead of the nubs.. And you won't be able to use the back cover... Unless someone comes up with a brushless version.

All in all, I think the Novak XRS is well matched for the SRB and it's not too expensive at $40

[Live Steam Mad]

I'm running my SRB with a Novak XRS sport esc and Tamiya black can and it has plenty of brakes! The XRS sport can run down to a 15 turn motor. I also have Brushless motors / esc and yes you are able to control the breaking, espeically with sensored brushless systems, because it knows the position of the rotor. Installing a brushless system will require drilling holes mount the motor, instead of the nubs.. And you won't be able to use the back cover... Unless someone comes up with a brushless version.

All in all, I think the Novak XRS is well matched for the SRB and it's not too expensive at $40

Unfortunately (for me) the Novak controllers (the reversible ones) are not " double-tap " controllers and you pull back and the truck slows down and *almost* stops and then goes straight into reverse. At least my Novak Rooster did this. That's not for me. I need one where it operates like the ones that I mentioned above. I'm sure someone else prefers the Novak style though. I only got the Novak GT7 as it's got no reverse so it's not an issue, and it was for racing only really.

Cheers,

Alistair G.

[Shodog]

Unfortunately (for me) the Novak controllers (the reversible ones) are not " double-tap " controllers and you pull back and the truck slows down and *almost* stops and then goes straight into reverse. At least my Novak Rooster did this. That's not for me. I need one where it operates like the ones that I mentioned above. I'm sure someone else prefers the Novak style though. I only got the Novak GT7 as it's got no reverse so it's not an issue, and it was for racing only really.

Cheers,

Alistair G.

The novak XRS is a good esc in certain applications but overall it's a weak controller. It only has 40 max forward amps which is lame. In my vintage rough rider I run a GT7 and a 17 turn mod motor. With paddles and my electrics, the buggy will hang a wheelie for a few feet. I have bought several used GT7's and never paid over $60 a piece.

[Raman36]

The novak XRS is a good esc in certain applications but overall it's a weak controller. It only has 40 max forward amps which is lame. In my vintage rough rider I run a GT7 and a 17 turn mod motor. With paddles and my electrics, the buggy will hang a wheelie for a few feet. I have bought several used GT7's and never paid over $60 a piece.

The XRS is a weak controller.. hence the "sport" moniker.. Running a Tamiya black can is sufficient for it.

I personally don't plan on putting too much power through the SRB gear box.... its not up to the task.. neither is the suspension for that matter. I've seen DF03 gear boxes nuked when people use a brushless 5.5 system.. can you imagine what would happen to a SRB lol. Poor lil guy would do back flips down the beach.

[Shodog]

I personally don't plan on putting too much power through the SRB gear box.... its not up to the task..

can you imagine what would happen to a SRB lol. Poor lil guy would do back flips down the beach.

Like I said in certian applications the XRS is fine. I have one in my WW2 with a ball bearinged stock motor works great. For a buggy this heavy, and with limited gearing choices I wouldn't use one. the WW2 is geared so low it doesn't matter.

The SRB gearbox can be made stronger. With the re-re I see that they sent it out with the nylon idler gear. I grenaded one of these on the beach a few years ago during a tamiyaclub get together. Upgrade to the metal one from CRP and with the addition of the brass CRP spool or thorp metal geared diff, the gearbox is almost bullet proof.

with mine, it hanges a wheelie and scrapes the back cage.

[tpsolid]

i finally built the buggy champ last night and the fiberglass is flimsy as badword. i guess time to buy the cf chassis plate off ebay now

[Wandy]

What options do we have available for upgrading/replacing the dampers? I see CRP do an option for upgrading the existing rear dampers to coil sprung items but nothing for the front.

Is there a hop-up set of shock absorbers, or a set used on a road/rally car that can be fitted to the SRB chassis?

[Live Steam Mad]

Yes it will fit the vintage chassis. The body is essentially the same as the vintage body is the same with the exception of the molding marks on the underside of the shell which state Tamiya 2009.

Just grabbed a body set from Jason's store, it's item 51386 for the whole set. 28 quid shipped!! Result! This is for the complete set of re-re decals and B parts (driver etc) and box and body and hardware. There were 5 of them, it was a brand new listing only been on there a couple of hours or less from what I could see. I only grabbed one because UK duty would get me otherwise. Also I am not a reseller LOL. Of course as I imagined, the next person after me grabbed all 4 that were left, a reseller maybe LOL.

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vie...e=STRK:MEWNX:IT (auction ended)

I didn't grab just the body as the B parts seem to be going for inflated prices so it was better to buy the set as the body would be not much use to me without the B parts...

I wonder how many bodies / body sets have been sold so far? I'd like to get an idea

Not looking forwards to painting it! No TS paints available for it in UK either

Cheers,

Alistair G.