Clodbuster With A Difference

[MadInventor]

Hi all. I've just joined the forum, and would like to share some photos of my clod. Being too tight to spend money on lots of nice rockcrawler aluminium bits, I decided to have a go at making some myself. The cages that hold the gearboxes and steering servos are made from 4mm aluminium, with the top horizontal cross piece made from 7mm ally. Designed this after breaking the normal attachment points. A bonus as well is that I can fit 1/4 scale servos ala txt-1 to it for more powerful steering. The ball joints for suspension are 8mm balls, threaded into the link arms with 5mm threaded rod. Since using it I've not broken anything yet .(if I have a frontal impact the cage takes all the strain, none of impact is transferred to the gearbox, also, there are 8 attachment points where the cages are attached to the gearboxes.) There's room in the chassis for 2 batteries and I have 12V 550 motors fitted, but have only run it with 1 pack for fear of shredding the gearboxes. The car handles well on a 9.6V battery, I have the front diff locked for hill climbing, and with only a rear anti roll bar the front wheel lifts during cornering, releasing the strain on the front axle.

Detail of cage that holds servo, mounts suspension cantilever, and major suspension points

1/4 scale servo fitted

Home made suspension cantilevers

Space for twin battery packs

[lupogtiboy]

Now that my eyes have gone back into their sockets, and my jaw is off the floor, I think I can safely say that is a truly great piece of workmanship!

Oh, and welcome to the club!

[skinner2]

That looks like a lot of time has gone in too that mate , Very nice .

[gothcat]

Very nice build indeed and welcome to the club

[kaiser]

nice job m8!

[commiedoor]

the CLODINATOR lives ! ..true work of art , i love home made mods !

[lentner3]

Truly awesome please build me one

[DCLXVI]

ClodXT

I'd call it...

[MadInventor]

ClodXT

I'd call it...

I have to confess I copied a lot of the design features from a TXT-1. The cage sides are a modified profile of txt-1 items and the bumper guards that the servos mount to are standard txt-1 parts. I think the mount points for the 4 link suspension is copied off the txt-1 chassis ( I had to lower the bottom mounts points slightly to clear the 550 motors currently installed, but the standard holes can be used with normal 540 size motors). The chassis plates are also the same distance apart as txt-1 items. The wheelbase has shortened to that of a standard clodbuster, but I did have a previous chassis for it that was a txt-1 clone, with slightly longer suspension arms to give txt-1 axle geometry, but created this new one so that I could fit an F350 Hi-Lift shell on it.

IMHO, I think that the cage is the best way to connect clod gearboxes to a chassis on a monster truck or rock crawler. They put all the mount points for the 4 links onto the cage, so that if you get a frontal impact on the guard, the gearbox does not have to transmit the impact to the chassis, and none of the suspension arms are mounted onto weak points on the gearbox. I broke the original steering arm collar on the gearbox by mounting the top 2 suspension arms onto a post fitted in it, and also broke axle tubes having the lower arms mounted onto them. The cages also provide a very easy way to mount servos onto the gearbox, as well providing mount points for cantilever suspension. Although I haven't tested the idea, I think they will also fit to a standard clod if you wanted to fit dual servos in it.

I'd be very interested to hear what other people think of them, good or bad. Would you fit the cages to your clodbuster / clod rockcrawler if they were professionally machined ???? Are manufacturers out there manufacturing a better idea ???? (I know my machining is not the best, but it's the idea..)

[DCLXVI]

I do agree with the eye/jaw comment earlier but I do wish to add, as a TXT owner, I do think the axle guards are to bulky, I understand why though I couldn't reconcile with the original TXT ones either...

Don't mean to slag your effort (wich is stunning), I just have something personal against axle guards it seems...

[emory70]

it looks like a very unique approach to a clod, and after all these years, that's something special. i'm curious how well it works.

[MadInventor]

it looks like a very unique approach to a clod, and after all these years, that's something special. i'm curious how well it works.

I'll try to twist a friends arm with a video camera to take some footage of it. I've tried it on 14.4V recently and it's not as fast as i would have expected (It's a bit of a panzer tank with all that plate aluminium), but it was a bit deceptive as I was running it in a park. Minimum turning circle at full throttle was about 30m. Any less than that and it would roll over. (very twitchy on 4ws at high speed). It's very manouverable on a 9.6v battery due to the 4 wheel steering and not having the rear diff locked, with a turning circle of less that an a metre (Shorter wheelbase than the txt-1) with a good blat of throttle. Suspension travel is 'adequate' . If you lift one front wheel for full articulation you can get it off the ground by it's own diameter (About 170mm). Off road I would say it is on a par with my txt-1 for getting across rough terrain and climbing steep hills.

I guess the proof of the pudding is that I've had the car like this for about 3 years and have not broken anything on it in that time. The ball joints on it are captivated with springs and retaining clips, so they never pop out. (They weren't cheap at £1.80 each, but they are tough as old boots and never pop off.)

As soon as I've got a vid and figured out how to upload it I'll post a link to it here.

[emory70]

how much steering throw do you have on the rear? if you are using a 2 channel radio, you may wanna choke up on the rear linkage and only use a small amount of travel. chevy made a 4 wheel steer iroc camaro back in the 80s, and the rear wheels only turned a max of 3 degrees.

[MadInventor]

This truck now for sale. Please see my trade room.

**** SOLD ****