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DT-02 Desert Gator Item #58344

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The whole vintage car at the track thing isn't really working out for us so this is the first of two race buggy builds I'll be doing. This one is for my 8 year old son who is showing a lot of promise with his Grasshopper, especially considering its inherent limitations as a racer. I’m going to take my time with this build; partly because I want to do it right and partly because I’m still waiting for a number of hop up parts to arrive from Japan and Hong Kong.

The focus on this build will be durability rather than all out speed. We’re spending far too much time in the pits with the Grasshopper and Frog. The silver can 540 is plenty fast for him right now. I expect to upgrade to either a Sport Tuned or a Dirt Tuned motor in the nearish future and maybe, eventually, some day down the road to a brushless motor but that’s a long way off I’d wager. I’m also going to stick with the NiMh batteries for the time being. We have them, they're quite new, and they are plenty good enough for us at this point in time.

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I was curious if the kit would ship with an ESC and full set of ball bearings. On the Description tab at the Tamiya USA site it states on the picure that an ESC is included, but the Specifications tab state it's required. Also, in my experience kits sourced from Japan do not have the ESC in the box. So, my kit did ship with full ball bearings but no ESC. I'll use the Tamiya TBLM-02s ESC that came with my Frog for this build.

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Great start. You building it or your son?

We'll probably do like we did with the Grasshopper. I'll guide him in the build and do the bits he can't. I had to finish tightening a lot of the screws and what not but he did quite a bit himself.

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Hey guys, the hop-up parts are finally starting to arrive. Today we got the 19T steel pinion, and the front/rear carbon damper stays. I also got his racing tires mounted up to the star rims that came with the kit. We put the stock tires on a set of black Tamiya dish rims for bashing.

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We're going to try a set of AKA Handlebar clay compound tires to start. They were on sale for like $3.50 a pair, and my son likes the little mustache logo on the sidewall. haha

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I gotta tell ya, I much prefer the old style 3 piece rims over these jobbers. The modern tires definitely stick better to the clay track surface but gluing them on is for the birds!

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More Hop-ups arrived in the mail today. Short and long hard turn buckle shafts and the universal shaft kit. Not sure if he's going to want a box art finish or something custom. He keeps waffling between box art and dragons. Personally I hope is goes with DRAGONS! :ph34r: We're getting closer...

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Does the Gator come with plastic shafts? My DT-02 came with a rectangle drive plastic diff cups so I needed to replace bits of the diff to run universals.

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The Desert Gator kit comes with metal driveshafts and splined diff outdrives, as well as many other hopups (oil dampers, ball bearings, adjustable camber...). The Desert Gator RTR and other DT-02 RTRs do not have these hopups, just like the basic budget DT-02 kits.

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You know when he outgrows the silver can, which if my 8 year old is anything to go by will be about 3 race meets you can go straight to brushless power and dial back the power through the ESC (the Hobbyking x-car ESC's can limit power right down to nothing via the program card) rather than wasting the money on an intermediate setup, you can then increase 10% power at a time as his ability increases. I'm going to get mine a 60amp ESC and 9T motor and dial it back to 60% to start. You also have the advantage of having built in lipo cutoff that you can activate when you change to lipo batteries.

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That's an interesting idea drcarlos. I think that once he's out grown the silver can he'll get the Sport Tuned I just pulled out of my Frog. Once he out grows that I might consider a brushless system but that's an added expense I can't justify at the moment considering since I put the TBLE-02S into my Frog I decided to order up a HobbyWing Quicrun 1060 ESC for this. :)

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Parts are dribbling in but I'm still waiting for the bulk of the hop-up parts to arrive from Japan. In the meantime the inner stickers from XXX Main in Canada finally arrived so I was able to start painting the body. Yes, once my son saw the stickers in person he quickly decided Dragons were the way to go. I masked off the windows and pre-cut body holes with Tamiya painters tape and faded the Corsa Gray into the Metallic blue. It's all backed with Duratrax white backing paint.

After my experience painting the Frog I decided to not trim the body prior to painting. I hope this wasn't a bad idea. Any thoughts on the pros/cons of doing it this way?

The paint still needs to finish curing overnight before I can continue. I'm undecided if I should leave the windows clear or paint them with transparent smoke. What do you guys think? I'm leaning toward clear to keep it simple.

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Fade looks really good. I'd go with smoke on the windows to provide some real contrast to the paint job.

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I always go for smoked windows unless I have a driver figure on board. Something about seeing a driverless car driving around disturbs me - possibly too much Stephen King as a child. :)

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Dorvack, I left the protective layer on because these stickers are internal. ;) I really like the idea of the transparent yellow and have ordered up a can. Thanks for the idea!

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The body is fully painted. I really like how the transparent yellow looks on the windows. Sets up a nice contrast to the blue and brings out the yellow outline in the dragon just like Dorvack suggested. My son loves it. Just waiting for one more shipment from Japan and I can start this build.

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That is really some great work and the yellow windows DO work really well. I don't know if you only have black CVA shocks only right now, but perhaps some old school yellow shock bodies as well will put another stamp of individuality on your car.

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So all the hop-ups are finally in, it's Saturday, so it's time to start in on this build.

All the parts are laid out and our builder / future racer looks excited!

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It probably is a good idea to get a shot of all the hop-ups we're going to use as well, right?

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Step 1 is to charge the battery. That seems a little ambitious of a timeline to me so we're going to forge ahead and begin with Step 2, Front Arms assembly.

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Sizing up the Screw Pins to ensure we're using the right ones.

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Once he determined he had the right ones, I informed him that we weren't using them. :o Was that mean? We're actually using the RC TL01 Suspension Shaft Set - Stainless Steel (ITEM# 53301).

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The kit comes with this handy sizing card to ensure you're using the correct shaft in lieu of the screw pins from the manual.

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Time to liberate the front suspension arms from the sprue.

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A little dab of Anaerobic Gel Thread Lock (ITEM# 54032) to keep the ball connector nuts from vibrating off.

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And hey look, step 2 is complete. I decided to orient the arms as per the manual. I know that I could invert them creating a longer wheel base and thus a more stable car. To do so I'd have to grind away a part of the suspension arm to eliminate binding and I'm not prepared to do that at this point. If his driving gets to the point where THAT makes a difference then I'll revisit the suspension and wheel base question.

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Step 3: Front Axles is pretty short.

There are a lot of parts to gather up. I'm also using the RC 22mm Low Friction Sus Shaft - 4pcs (ITEM# 54395) here in place of the screw pins.

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#1 is the shaft built axle and #2 is the stock. (For illustrative purposes only. I didn't thread the screw pin in.) As you can see, the shaft requires 2 e-clips and a 1mm spacer on either end to take up the slack. The spacers come from RC 5.5 Aluminum Spacer (ITEM# 53539). Let me tell you this: I've never felt such a smooth and slop-free axle assembly on an R/C car before this. Well worth the investment in the these hop-ups IMHO!

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So we skip ahead to Step 14: Assembling Front Dampers because my son get invited to join his best buddy at the archery range. While he was out shooting I thought I'd get to work on the CVA dampers. Gotta get all the bits rounded up. I have an array of Tamiya oils and the RC DT-02 Spring Set (ITEM# 53832) so I should be able to fine tune them quite nicely. The plan is to build them up to the manuals specification (yellow weight oil and silver springs) and see how things work at the track. Stock settings seem like the best starting place.

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I used a little puddle of oil to prime the o-rings. Gently picking them up with the needle nose pliers I installed them as per the instructions.

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I got to try out my new HobbiCo soft grip pliers!

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I used my Tamiya tool to get a better grip on the lower end (V2) of the damper assembly. I had to squeeze pretty hard to keep the shaft from spinning but it worked quite well.

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I skipped Step 15 which is filling them with oil and went onto Step 16: Assembling the Rear Dampers. Essentially it's the same procedure as the fronts.

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.There's one big difference though. The soft grip pliers scored the shock shaft! <_< This is exactly the sort of thing I bought these to AVOID.

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I don't know if these shafts are coated or not. If not, I can try to polish out the grooves. The damage is too extensive to use as is. Ideally I want to just replace the shaft. I found one seller on eBay that was selling just the shafts, but with the exchange rate it'll cost me like $16 for two shafts. :o I could buy the whole parts bag for $19 from another vendor. Both prices seem high to me. So if anyone can help me with some ideas or hook me up with a shaft I'd very much appreciate it! :wub:

Another question, since I've never build CVAs before. The front shafts fully threaded into the lower bit. The rears, it seems, don't? If that's the case, how do I know when they've bottomed out?

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So I did side #2 with the ol' "hold the shaft with the side cutters wicked close to the threads" trick.

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That wraps up my damper building excitement for today. Once I sort out a solution to the shaft I wrecked, I'll will them with oil and finish building them up.

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Well crap, now I can cross the Hobico brand pliers off my list and keep saving for the Tamiya ones. I will buy some of the non marking pliers one day, just like I replaced my side cutters for cutting plastic off the sprue with true hobby shears, never go back to wire side cutters again, these leave so little left to trim off that I sometimes don't have to break out the Xacto knife. If it matters to ya, they are MADE IN THE USA too.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Xuron-410-Micro-Shear-Flush-Cutter-/120985834558?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item1c2b51543e

Now, not to pick, but wait a bit on the shafts as they will be coming to you cheaper if you find a seller breaking a kit. Those rear CVA shocks look a lot like others that date back nearly 30 years and I bet with a length measurement, you will find them loose or in a packet for a number of cars and cheap too. Get me and everyone a length and we might sort something out. All you stand to "ruin" is a red silicone O ring for now, so stock up on a package of them when you see them. Check JR-RC on ebay in Japan as he sells a bunch of the "little stuff" cheaply and sometimes even AFTER shipping costs cheaper than the USA hobby parts distributors. Get a few part numbers from all sources on that shaft part and see what your options become.

Funny how we can all learn new things every day, I had never given thought to screw the plastic bit onto the shaft with the Tamiya tool, that thing is more important than a Swiss Army knife. :) As far as "bottoming out" goes on the longer shafts, the old trick was to put an Oring on before the plastic bit for the shock body to run into it before it hit the plastic shock end, could be helpful. Doesn't matter if it is silicone red or the standard black O ring, they both work the same in my opinion, but the red ones are a bit softer, more supple.

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This is the exact shaft that I damaged with the HobbiCo pliers. If anyone has a spare or two please send me a message.

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I can see your frustration. I also see that TamiyaUSA actually has the part number in stock at only $2.80, but then shipping is to be considered. If it were me, I would go over there and buy it and a few other little things and call it a done deal. Looks like the shock shaft was first seen in that part number on the Gravel Hound car. How many mm long is it is another consideration as I have a box of loose/new shafts from the old damper bags of the cars before they crammed 8 steps worth of screws into a big bag. It is possible I have the shaft length you need.

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Doh! I never look there for parts because they are usually so expensive and often out of stock. :o Thanks Crash C, I ordered up 3 to make the $5 S&H worth it.

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