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ThunderDragonCy

Grasshopper (DT0)3 - Adventures in getting back into RC - Now with Proline truck shell

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Ha that looks mental, she handle well now????

Blitzer wheels and tyres with longer Blitzer front axles?

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Quick blast on the street so nothing conclusive but it really good. Front end is super positive and I nearly grip rolled it once which I haven't managed on other tyres in the street. It is very promising. I'll get it on some other surfaces this weekend.

Parts? Correct. Blitzer wheels and uprights. Schumacher 1/10 truck tyres - cut stagger front, vee 4 rear, both with inserts and yellow compound. The plan is to use redundant plastic bearings to space the axles when using buggy wheels so I don't have to keep switching them. 

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First test of Mad Hopper Aqro Bull Shot 2 on gravel and grass. It's bloody ace! Bigger wheels and more ground clearance mean grass running is great and still handles on the loose. Doesn't play nicely with fence posts though! Just an upright broken thankfu

First proper running at lunch time on gravel and grass. In short, it's ace! Extra clearance means grass running is easier and handling on loose is still good. Performance against fence posts not so good. Oops! Only a new upright required though. 

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Commiserating on the above by starting my new shell project. The colour and decals idea is too good not to do even though I salvaged the original shell. 

Trial fit of Mad Bull shell. 

2017-04-07_12-09-59

Closer than the GH2 shell but still not a straight for the DT03. Some cutting and filing later....

Cut by eye and the odd measurement and marking with a Stanley knife, filed to even it up.

Mad bull body mount nowhere near so needed drilling. I will cover the hole with a decal hopefully. 

Here it is drilled, washed, keyed and with the headlight from the driver kit added. Bit of a nod to the original Grasshopper. Now for priming

Washed, keyed and lights added ready for primer

 

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I love what you have done here. This car looks really good and is a great overall set up. Totally what a GH3 would have been plus I love that bumper! The addition of the spot lights is a must. I see we think alike.

30410218395_54ca6bbdb2_b.jpg

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Indeed! It was your videos that made me realise the lights were missing, and for plenty of other inspiration. 

Keep an eye. I have found an awesome idea for decals on the new shell. 

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Hi thunder I was wondering what width the Schumacher rt1 front tyres are. Are they the same width as the standard or wider I need to order new wheels with the tyres. Thanks

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They mount on regular 2wd fronts, although the tread is wider than buggy off road tyres. I am running mine on regular tamiya dish fronts

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Just search ebay for "tamiya dish 2wd front" or add "star dish" or "astral dish" for the different styles. All styles and colours available from the eBay shops for £7- £8

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3 minutes ago, super gripper said:

Thanks. That was one of the first things I read. Really interested to know whether you're running much stiffer springs than the kit. Also the thinking behind to lighter damper oil rear. Loved the aqroshot conversion by the way.

Thanks!

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the basic starting point when thinking 2wd is 40 weight oil in the front and 30 weight n the rear. 

3 hole piston front and rear, I use this set up in my TRF201 Vega and my TRF703 Hybrid.

Also my DT02 Desert Gator plus of course my DT03 whether it be the buggy or truggy.

Quality shock oil makes a huge difference, the kit rubbish goes in the bin. I use Associated oil, this comes in ten and fives weight - just what I have always used and understand how to use when setting up my cars. 

Springs I only use Tamiya springs for the Aeration dampers. This is because 90% of my cars use these dampers and again I understand how to set shocks up with these springs and Associated shock oil.

Years upon years of racing buggies, truggies and Touring cars has taught me alot.

If the springs are too stiff the car is a nightmare to drive. If it is jacked up for ground clearance then the suspension will be pants.

 

 

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Little change. You can just see the little blue chip poking out from under the gearbox. After smashing up the front the other day, and seeing a couple of chassis breakages on other dt03 I thought better safe than sorry. And a bit of retail therapy to cheer myself up after the breakage!

Gearbox bridges installed and rear arb back on

Also refitted the rear arb to give me some options now I have the big wheels on.

Final thing was some red seals for the shocks. The rear rods were getting a little worn so got them changed. They feel lovely!

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Spent a very enjoyable hour or so running on gravel and grass last night, changing things and seeing the effects after reading most racers set there cars up with really soft damping,and with higher weight oil front than rear. Also been using this lookup sheet to learn a bit about setup.

http://www.rcscrapyard.net/uk/tips.html

My starting point was single hole pistons as I found I needed the support to stop it bottoming out too often on buggy tyres, especially on street tyres. I was down to 30wt front and rear with single hole pistons, soft DF03 spring front, hardest rear. Since getting the truck wheels I'm loving using them so got some more ground clearance to play with too.

Started last night with single hole pistons 40wt front, but was a bit stiff I felt, but 30wt rear seemed good. I have put the 2 hole pistons in something else so only option was to go right down to 3 hole pistons both ends after this. Again 40wt / 30wt. This is Super Grippers recommended setup. Really supple in the rough, but even on the truck wheels there was occasional bottoming out and bucking over bigger compressions and holes. On buggy wheels it would have been bottoming more so I think this is too far for me! Played around with the springs, ended up with the gold middle weight spring on the front with the softer damping. Still some more testing to do. Need to fish the 2 hole pistons out of the other cars I put them in! 

Pretty much all the setups ran nicely on grass. Lots of grip there I guess? I did notice I could grip roll the car with the softer damping so more grip there I suppose? On the gravel it was oversteer central, just varying degrees of this. Main difference was how nicely the car rode the really rough stuff and holes. 

Didn't try this on the street on buggy tyres, or on dirt on buggy wheels either, so no idea how it works on smooth surfaces yet.

My theory about needing more support in my car compared to race cars is that I use high mAh NIMH batteries and an abs plastic shell so my car is much heavier than a race car.

In other news, my new shell has come out rather green despite using Neon Yellow paint. I guess that's grey primer? 

2017-04-14_09-39-24

This hasn't derailed the decal plan though. Just waiting for something to turn up so I can send it to MCI.

 

 

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So I ran the setup above on the buggy wheels, both mini pins and street tyres and got tonnes of understeer! Turn in wasn't great, lots of power understeer. This is on street and dirt, not a loose surface. Quick read up and I have dulled the turn in with the softer rear oil and taken grip away from the front with stiffer front springs. Hooking up the rear anti roll bar didn't help. Also got bottoming problems due to the very light damping again.

So, my original setup was better than this! 

Didn't have time/couldn't be bothered to tear down the shocks and put the single hole pistons back in so I evened out the oil weights by putting 40wt in the rear. The aim being to improve turn in and increase bottom out resistance. I also put the softer front springs back in to reduce understeer so soft front/hard rear is back to my previous setup on springs. Unhooked the rear arb as wanted more rear grip.

Ran again today on loose dirt and grass with the truck and the buggy tyres and on tarmac with street wheels. There's still some occasional power understeer on tarmac but turn in much stronger again and on all the different surfaces and wheel/tyre options there is a LOT of oversteer again. Was actually borderline undriveable on the mini pins so might have to get some more loose surface friendly off road buggy tyres. 

So, more experimenting to be done. What I have found is the rear arb is no good to me where I drive; doesn’t seem to curb understeer when i have it and when oversteering you do not what it there takibg away rear grip and adding more front! So off that came:

More running on the loose today with truck and buggy tyres and tarmac on the street tyres all revealed a wildly over steering balance! This being the case the rear arb is utterly superfluous and needed to come off again, but thought front arb might be wor

Also fitted the softest df03 springs at the rear replacing the hardest. This matches rates front to rear and should give more rear grip. We will see whether this causes bottom out problems.

In pursuit of a less oversteery balance I refitted the front arb (softest option)

More running on the loose today with truck and buggy tyres and tarmac on the street tyres all revealed a wildly over steering balance! This being the case the rear arb is utterly superfluous and needed to come off again, but thought front arb might be wor

By hooking this up or not I can test how effective it is. I don't expect the car to be totally neutral on loose surface, but a little more accurate and less of a handful would be good.

Remember I don't have a ball diff. I have packed the gear diff with grease and it seems to put its power down cleanly, but would a ball diff massively improve things? It's a spendy upgrade when I have to buy new out drives too.

Hopefully will get some more running tomorrow test the new setup. I'll take some spring options with me too. 

Hoping some of you are finding this useful! 

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Managed to get lots of running in today on the new setup from the post above on loose surface with the truck wheels and street on the RT1s. Also did a bit of bashing up on the moors after riding my bike at the local trails. Rode up the byway a while and had a play.

Couple of additional bits of setup: I added the thick preload collars at the rear and I am also running both ends in lowest ride height settings.

New setup generally much better. More rear grip, good turn in, just the occasional bottom out. On loose the front anti roll bar really improves the handling.  It was way more of a handful when unhooked. On the street wheels it's also an improvement but the handling is definitely better without the front anti roll bar hooked up. It just seems to respond better to having more front end grip with better rear traction.

So it seems I am zeroing in on a good setup. Just hook up the front anti roll bar or not depending on surface. Need to try it on grass and the BMX track on buggy off road wheels. Might also see if the stiffer blue roll bar improves things on loose even more. Mine is a pretty heavy buggy after all.

 

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Got a loose surface session in this evening. Gave the blue thicker front anti roll bar a go, but it's too much. On the truck wheels it was OK and better than not hooked up, but the red one I put back in later on is the best balance of handling. Also ran the buggy offroad wheels for the first time in this setup. The MiniPins are just no good on loose surfaces. Nowhere near enough grip, at the rear especially. Stick the deep rib kit fronts and the Schumacher Cat Blocks on the rear and there was some actual grip! Thick blue front bar was no good at all with the buggy wheels. With the narrower fronts you need more mechanical grip and the blue bar took too much away. Better with no bar. Popped the red one back in later and it was OK, but a little inconclusive. I suspect I'll run with the red bar unhooked on any buggy wheels and hooked up for truck wheels.

Leaves me in a bit of a quandry about buggy offroad wheels though. The minipins only really work on grass and the bmx track, where they're ace, but on grass the truck wheels are better because of the extra clearance. Would probably get better performance out of the loose surface with some Schumacher yellow cut staggers, but again, the truck wheels are brilliant. Sort of coming to the conclusion that I like the truck wheels too much to need offroad buggy wheels! 

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Chucked the street wheels back on and took it for a spin outside the house and was getting loads of oversteer again. Hooked up the front anti roll bar and unlike the other day, this definitely improved the handling. Less oversteer, and certainly easier to manage when it is sliding. Had to go back to the inner shock mounting at the rear for ground clearance. The street wheels are so small and I'm dropping off kerbs and driving over manhole covers and it's just bottoming out too much. Higher rear not so good for rear grip, but didn't seem to make too much difference. Also had a quick check and tweak of the camber. Looked out (was out!) on one side. Put it back to -3deg all round, setting as best I can with a bubble level app on my phone. Judging by the wear pattern on the rear street wheels it could probably stand more for street running but I don't want to be setting up the camber every time I change wheels.

After tea had a quick read of the setup guide and it suggests stiffer front springs to get oversteer under control. Swapped out the soft black springs for medium gold and it was handling pretty well. Still some power oversteer, but that's fun, right? Thought I'd check the setup on dirt so popped the truck wheels on and headed down to the woods. Got some video....

Someone on another thread asked if I had a side shot of the car and realised I don't, so took a couple of extra pics too:

Grasshopper3 in truggy mode

Also popped a chassis shot whilst changing the battery

Grasshopper3 in truggy mode

What else? Oh yes, I go some Tamiya 53056 metal hexes for the rear as the plastic ones were getting deformed. Fitting these resulted in loads of lateral play in the rear hubs, so added 1mm plastic shim each side behind the pin and it's nice and tight now. 

So, current suspension setup is:

Tamiya CVAs with Tamiya red seals, DF03 springs (gold medium front, black soft rear), 3 hole pistons front and rear, Associated 40wt oil front and rear.

Front shocks on outer position, rear on inner position.

Front anti roll bar, soft red, fitted.

50 grams of ballast weights fitted to the front of the car. These are sticky 1:1 car wheel balance weights. Search ebay. They're only a couple of quid.

Standard kit shock towers

Plans? Keep running and tweaking! I broke one of my GPM upright mounts so got another set coming along with the aluminum GPM front lower wishbone mounting. When postage was costing so much I thought I'd buy something else too! I have a set of stagger rib 2wd buggy fronts in yellow compound coming from Schumacher to see about a dirt buggy wheel setup. Going to run them with the Cat Block rears off my Thunder Dragon. Need to try this stiffer front with with buggy wheels offroad as they tend to need more mechanical grip so not sure how it will go with them with the stiffer springs.  

Thoughts and advice always welcome. Hope you like!

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On 19/03/2017 at 6:44 PM, ThunderDragonCy said:

Shifted this thread over here as I posted in General Discussions as my first post before I knew about how things worked. Also, work on the car escalated and I wanted to keep a note of ongoing upgrades/changes. Hopefully of interest to DT03 runners/buyer.

I have an original Thunder Dragon from 1988 which has had a bit of a restomod, but getting that sorted recently led to the purchase of a cheap Racing Fighter from Germany as I've never had a 2WD buggy before.

Build pics of the Grasshopper3

First buggy full build in about 30 years, although the Thunder Dragon has been torn down and rebuilt several times. Really enjoyed it. 

Build pics of the Grasshopper3

I had an old Grasshopper2 shell in my bit box from back in the day, and I'd never painted a shell before. I don't like the modern look of buggies, being a child of the 80's I love the older buggies so I decided to have a go and some light body mods to fit it to my DT03. It was already slightly modified around the front shocks to fit on my Thunder Dragon. Here's a couple of trial fits with the primer on, trying to figure out the mountings and proportion. Couldn't resist getting the wheels on to see what it might look like:

Build pics of the Grasshopper3Build pics of the Grasshopper3

Figured out the body mods, enlarging the front hole to use the central front mount on the chassis, and adding holes in the haunches for the large l-shaped body mount towers that came with the kit. I ended up going narrower than I could have got away with on the front cuts. I chopped the DT-03 suspension mount in the centre to get the front of the shell on and off. Not bothered about the nth degree of wheel control and can always get the fancy TRF carbon one if I feel the need in future. 

After a couple of aborted attempts at orange from Tamiya and Halfords, and neither before strong enough for my liking and went for it with neon orange. 

Build pics of the Grasshopper3

Stickers are from MCI Racing, with red replaced with black, and yellow replaced with dark grey. Pretty pleased with how it came out.

Build pics of the Grasshopper3

Another modern look I'm not keen on is the super short front overhang. I like the big 80s bull bars, so inspired by AMPRO Engineering on Youtube I knocked up a bull bar bumper in 3D CAD and got it 3D printed from Shapeways. Only cost a tenner! Sets the stance off nicely, I think. I do love the kit black star dish wheels though. 

33150834890_701d9bcbf1.jpg

 

33150831760_1cf7c8a26d.jpg

As for the car, I loved building it and it seems solid. I've never had brushless before either, so I went for a 13.5R Speed Passion MMM motor from Modelsport who also did my some leads with tamiya plugs, and a steel 17t pinion and a bearing set to start with. The kit came with the CVA dampers with the fixed solid plates on top of the shafts. 

Initially I was a bit disappointed. I'm certainly no expert and have no plans to race, but it was very understeery and bottomed out a lot. Due to older equipment I have already, I still use ACOMS 27MHz radio and NiMH batteries to keep costs down which I've since learnt are on the heavy side, but they work fine in my Thunder Dragon! 

So, after going down the rabbit hole of what mods to do where, trying not to spend a fortune on hop ups and learning as I go, this I think is my basics for getting the DT-03 to somewhere near it's potential and also hopefully help some newbies looking at getting their DT-03 running nice in my opinion:

1) Junk the stock tyres. The deep rib fronts that come with the Racing Fighter in particular are useless on hard surfaces and I generally muck about in the street or at the yard at work. With the fiesty motor I started tearing through the rears too, and have ended up with Schumacher Mini Pin Yellows on the stock rims. Works great, and the yellows last longer than the blue counter-intuitively, because the blue is harder it span up too easily on hard surfaces and wore out. On things like the pump track in the pictures, the mini pins are immense. 

2) Connected to 1 - Be honest about where you drive. Having burnt through cool looking buggy tyres I now have a second set of wheels (Schumacher Flexlite read, Tamiya Dish Front both in black) with Schumacher RT1s and medium inserts for tarmac. 

3) Suspension - I'm using the DF03 (not a typo, the 4WD car) setting springs, hard rear, softest front. Both are firmer than the kit springs. The DT-03 settings springs were right out because the colours would have looked rubbish if I'd needed the red ones. Yes, I am enough of a tart for that. Plus, couldn't see the point of a softer set of springs if the kit springs were in the middle. I saw the DF03 springs suggested on a thread on here I think. Great call.

I got the TRF 54043 piston rods for the rear shock and standard CVA mini shock shafts 50601 for the front and used the kit sprues and some e-clips to convert the dampers to proper pistons. After some experimentation I'm running single hole pistons with the kit Soft Tamiya 400 CST oil

4) I got the anti roll bars, but have ended up not using them. Now I have the suspension firm enough to hold the car up it handles fine without the anti roll bars. IMHO.

5) I used the leftover ball studs from the unused roll bars to replace as many of the step screws in the damper mounts as possible. Much nicer and less rattly I got a bag of ball connectors (50591) to finish the job off, although the fronts need a bit of filing to get them to fit the wishbones.

6) Turnbuckles - Don't be a cheapskate like me and pick up a cheap DT02 set, as the steering arms don't fit! These do seen good for getting the grip up though. 2-3 neg both ends.

7) Driveshafts - I had no issues with the toughness of the plastic driveshafts, but I couldn't believe how much they restrict suspension movement. I didn't want to spend out on Universals as I'm not racing. I ended up taking a leaf out of the Sand Viper book and went to the metal driveshaft and cups. Only cost about a tenner for the parts, and the car stands up at the rear about another 10mm! They look better too, IMHO. Parts are:

Shafts - Tamiya 9805551

Outdrives - Tamiya 9804237

Hub end cups - Tamiya 50823

Metal driveshaft upgrade

8) Geared diff with the kit seems fine. I stuffed it with grease as advised somewhere on the internet and does fine for me. 

9) Kimborough servo saver was a fiver well spent. Much more crisp steering.

10) Not sure if the Hop Up servo mount was £18 well spent, but it looks pretty and does look into the chassis and servo much more firmly. I'm open on this one as it's pretty expensive. 

Hope you like it, and hope that helps anyone looking at getting a DT-03.

Cheers!

Loving the neon orange and great write up!! I've just purchased a dark impact for my first ever build as wanted an rc I could bash about a bit more than my Thunder Dragon.

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1 hour ago, mman2005 said:

Loving the neon orange and great write up!! I've just purchased a dark impact for my first ever build as wanted an rc I could bash about a bit more than my Thunder Dragon.

Ooooo nice. Would love to know how a modern 4wd compares to the old rolling Thunder. I've not driven my Dragon for a while as it's pretty sorted so I just drive it. I'm slightly embarrassed to say it's a little boring. It's so hard to get the 2WD buggy setup just to run and work that I'm actually enjoying the challenge and tweaking. I do have a 10.5t brushless system on the way to put in the TD so maybe Too Much Power (tm) will be make more of a handful/interesting!

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