jg009's Clod Build

[jg009 82]

First off, let me apologize for not getting better pictures of everything before now. I'll do my best to get better pics as I continue to make repairs and mods. But here goes nothing!

This is my original issue Clodbuster with an old Bullhead body on it. I got this one from a friend of mine whose father built it and then put it on a shelf for its entire life. Here's how it looked when I got my hands on it. This is actually it sitting on my friend's toolbox in his garage.

The first order of business when I got it home was to get it going again. It was setup with a Novak ESC (which I was surprised to see instead of a manual speed controller), a Futaba 27mhz tx/rx set, and a Futaba servo. The ESC had a Tamiya battery plug on it so that got removed and I installed Anderson Power Poles on it instead. I hate 27mhz with a passion simply because I'm really good at forgetting about the antenna and whacking it against things, so I pulled the old receiver out and installed a Traxxas 2.4ghz unit. Here's the setup, shown with a Traxxas battery adapter plugged into the ESC.

 

My friend also included an old halogen red light bar. I installed that as well. His father had installed an old halogen light kit at one point with headlights and rear off road lights. With the lights and the light bar running off the same 9v battery source, the flashing circuit wasn't getting enough voltage and only one side of the light bar was staying solidly illuminated. I pulled the old headlights out, disconnected the rear off road lights, and installed a generic LED kit that I got a while back into it. It came with two white LEDs that I put in the headlight buckets and two red LEDs that I put in the foglight buckets in the bumper. Pics are hard to get of the setup but this gives you the idea.

 

I ran it for a while like this but then decided to do something about the suspension. I pulled off the dual friction dampers from each corner and installed single oil filled ones. The shocks are Traxxas Slash rear length units. The front springs are some single rate springs that I had kicking around. The rears are stock Clod springs. The suspension could still use different springs and oil weight in the shocks, but it's better than the stock setup in my opinion. I also made a small notch in the chassis for suspension clearance so I have a little more travel and a little more articulation. I don't have any pictures of the suspension work in progress but I do have this shot that shows off the setup pretty well.

 

The HUGE flaw with the Clod is obviously steering, so I've got the Crawford Performance Engineering vertical servo mount kit on the way (technically two of them, one for each axle). With some slight modification to the 3 way toggle switch, the Traxxas 4 channel transmitter can be used to control rear steer. I've pulled the axle bumpers off in preparation for when the kits show up. For the time being, I'm going to use two Traxxas 2075 (water proof 125 oz servos) until I can upgrade to something better. As you guys can probably tell by now, I have a lot of Traxxas stuff laying around lol. Here's how the project looks as of yesterday when I did a Thanksgiving test crawl. It's no crawler and that's not the direction I'm going with the build, but I hadn't really had the chance to get it out and really use it off road since I got it and this was about as "off road" as I was going to get in my in-law's housing development.

 

I'll get some pictures of the CPE axle mount servo install when I do it. I'm also kicking around different ideas for motor/ESC combos that would work well for what I want to do with this. I'll update this thread when I make up my mind on that, too.

[jg009 82]

Here's a video I shot of my setup now with the CPE kit

 

I touch on the mods I had to do to my Traxxas 4 channel TQ transmitter to make this work, too.

[dabigbozz 5]

Looks really cool in yellow - you don't see many of those.

Mine is black - might have to change that color to yellow now

 

 

[berman 5315]

Yellow is quite a popular secondary colour for the bullhead, I have seen quite a few myself, look good too! Here is my old one before I restored it:

[jg009 82]

I'm a huge fan of the yellow look for these trucks. I'm actually surprised at how popular it is, too lol.

I made some more modifications today. I bought some all thread and some small screws and built real steering linkages. I also installed a shorter steering servo horn to cut back on how much steering angle the rear gets. Being non-proportional, the maximum steering angle was a bit much. It seems better now.

 

I also installed a trailer hitch that I made out of some flat steel and a spare ball/socket from the center steering servo setup

 

I modified the hitch on my trailer as well. For now, it's a car hauler but later on, I'll be motorizing a handheld fertilizer spreader and running it through its own ESC and into the Clod's receiver. It will get mounted on the trailer and a snow plow will be attached to the front of the Clod. Everything is still a work in progress and I'm working on getting materials still.

[jg009 82]

Excuse the poor cell phone quality pic, but I got a little bit crazy last weekend...

[jg009 82]

I also mounted a Traxxas Slash waterproof receiver box in where the old steering servo used to be and cleaned up the wiring. I hacked a couple inches off the front and rear of the chassis and mounted the old Brat hard body. In the pic, the body is very crooked. I've fixed the height for now but I need to come up with a new system when I get a new Brat body that isn't hacked to pieces already.

[jg009 82]

I did some more work on the Clod build last weekend and got it out for a test run for the first time since I started doing major mods. I pulled the rear axle apart and hot glue-locked the rear diff. I know that there are mixed opinions on diff locking the Clod and I can certainly see why. With the short wheelbase and huge tires, it really likes to resist turning, even with the rear diff locked. I would never do this to a Clod with the stock steering setup! With the CPE axle mount servos and independent rear steer, however, it's certainly manageable and well worth the gain in traction in my opinion. I'm using the rear steer a lot more and having to think ahead of the truck a little further to navigate but like I said, well worth it. This truck is far more usable in the terrain that I drive it over. It's not hardcore crawling so much as it's light trailing I guess you could say. Here are some pics I got this past weekend.

 

The next mods on the list are a BEC and some sort of steering servo relief. The Novak 610-RV ESC's internal BEC is capable of less than 1 amp of output, which is horrible on a dual 125 oz servo setup! I'm leaning toward installing the Castle Creations 20a BEC and getting rid of glitching and receiver "brown outs" for good. I'm also beating up the steering servos quite badly during rollovers, especially in the front. Several times after a rollover, I've had to retrieve the truck and pull the horn off and recenter the steering before continuing on. I know this can happen only so many times before parts become too worn or broken to be fixed.

EDIT: Forgot to add, I swapped to stock Clod springs in the front, as well. The Brat body is lighter than the Bullhead body and didn't need such stiff front springs to get the suspension to respond the way I want. In the current configuration, it sits about a third of the way into the down travel while it's in its neutral position so I still have down travel it can blow through but it has some up travel to help keep the tires on the ground when it goes over small bumps and other uneven portions of terrain.

[Percymon 2184]

I locked the rear diff on my Spider converted Clod, using the steel RC4WD locker gear, and with the extended wheelbase it makes navigating tight areas a bit of a disaster - open space running only.

Get that BEC installed and you'll have a much more responsive truck 

[jg009 82]

5 hours ago, Percymon said:

I locked the rear diff on my Spider converted Clod, using the steel RC4WD locker gear, and with the extended wheelbase it makes navigating tight areas a bit of a disaster - open space running only.

Get that BEC installed and you'll have a much more responsive truck 

I'm really getting tired of only getting a few trouble free minutes of run time from a 3000-3300 mAh battery before it starts acting up. The BEC will be a huge relief.

[jg009 82]

I think this will be my final variant of a body mounting system. All it needs is a linkage long enough to span the front of the chassis and connect the two end links so that the chassis stiffens back up. With the body on, it's not bad but extra reinforcement never hurts.

 

What's the best entertainment while working on a vintage RC monster truck? Vintage 1:1 monster trucks! Watching old monster truck racing with my daughter as I wrench on the Clod. This morning, we're watching the 1991 Penda series.

[jg009 82]

And a couple flex shots with the Brat body

[nowinaminute 2815]

On 12/7/2017 at 1:49 AM, jg009 said:

I also mounted a Traxxas Slash waterproof receiver box in where the old steering servo used to be and cleaned up the wiring. I hacked a couple inches off the front and rear of the chassis and mounted the old Brat hard body. In the pic, the body is very crooked. I've fixed the height for now but I need to come up with a new system when I get a new Brat body that isn't hacked to pieces already.

Interesting that you've chopped some material off the front and back. I have a Nikko Hilux shell that's just begging to go on my Bullhead chassis but I would need to trim the same bits back. Are you still able to fit the stock bullhead shell afterwards?

[jg009 82]

29 minutes ago, nowinaminute said:

Interesting that you've chopped some material off the front and back. I have a Nikko Hilux shell that's just begging to go on my Bullhead chassis but I would need to trim the same bits back. Are you still able to fit the stock bullhead shell afterwards?

The Bullhead body can still fit it. I'd have to go back to the factory body mounts but yes, it would be usable. The only difference is that you'd have to make custom bumper mount or mount the bumper directly to the body if you want that. Here's this setup with the Bullhead body attached.

 

If I wanted to really reinforce the stock plastic chassis, I could could away more at the bottom but at that point, I'd rather buy an aftermarket chassis than Swiss cheese the factory one lol

Is that Nikko body off a Scorpion by any chance?

[nowinaminute 2815]

2 hours ago, jg009 said:

The Bullhead body can still fit it. I'd have to go back to the factory body mounts but yes, it would be usable. The only difference is that you'd have to make custom bumper mount or mount the bumper directly to the body if you want that. Here's this setup with the Bullhead body attached.

 

If I wanted to really reinforce the stock plastic chassis, I could could away more at the bottom but at that point, I'd rather buy an aftermarket chassis than Swiss cheese the factory one lol

Is that Nikko body off a Scorpion by any chance?

Correct! A Scorpion III. The later one with a 380 and not a 540 (booo) but I soon fixed that problem with a brushless upgrade lol. I love the Nikko truck but for a sake of a couple of extra holes in the shell I might be tempted to let the Clod chassis share.



I have a couple of Nikko shells that look great on there actually. One of the others is the F150 shell from the later variants of the HAWG chassis with huge wheels. That shell fits right on but the Hilux is a little tight.



Not bad huh? Even better if I put some Bullhead or Clod decals on there.

I really love the Nikko truck it comes off too though. Nearly as big as a clod and packing twin 540s. Real good fun with hobby electronics.



I even tried the Bullhead shell on the Nikko body 

[nowinaminute 2815]

I also have this body from a random toy grade that might look pretty cool on there if I trimmed the chassis tub a little

[speedy_w_beans 4272]

I really like the BRAT shell on the Clod chassis!

[jg009 82]

18 hours ago, nowinaminute said:

Correct! A Scorpion III. The later one with a 380 and not a 540 (booo) but I soon fixed that problem with a brushless upgrade lol. I love the Nikko truck but for a sake of a couple of extra holes in the shell I might be tempted to let the Clod chassis share.

The truck that got me into RC was an old Nikko Scorpion! I thought it was cool but I wanted a crawler so I took the body off, re-radiused the fenders, made a mounting plate for it, and bolted it onto a Maisto Rock Crawler chassis. This creation was the star of my first RC YouTube video!

5 hours ago, speedy_w_beans said:

I really like the BRAT shell on the Clod chassis!

Thank you!

[jg009 82]

A few updates on this build:

Unfortunately, between my CC-01 and my Bruiser, I've robbed all the electronics off the Clod for now. I'm going to redo the setup and modify how the rear steer works. I'm leaning toward setting it up on a Y splitter in order to simplify things. I'm also working on a new body setup. The Clod will be bodied as a 1955 Chevy from Parma.

[jg009 82]

Enjoyed the truck with this body for a while:

 

Now, however, it's starting to show its use and abuse. That will still be my bashing/beater body. This one will be my shelf/display body:

[Kamikuza 48]

I like those alternate bodies on the Clod -- Parma is the brand?

I'd like to try a classic muscle car body on there, like a Challenger or 'Cuda

[jg009 82]

Yep, the yellow body is a Parma Fifty Five, the red one is Parma Hemi Vette body.

[Kamikuza 48]

On 12/29/2018 at 9:05 AM, jg009 said:

Yep, the yellow body is a Parma Fifty Five, the red one is Parma Hemi Vette body.

Hole and mount? No fooling about?

[Ashicar 4]

Any advice on stability mods for the clod? (To stop it pulling itself over and losing traction with the surface it's driving on)

[jg009 82]

On 12/29/2018 at 8:49 PM, Kamikuza said:

Hole and mount? No fooling about?

Yep, I used some Traxxas Slash body posts and just drilled and mounted.

20 hours ago, Ashicar said:

Any advice on stability mods for the clod? (To stop it pulling itself over and losing traction with the surface it's driving on)

There's not much you can do in stock from aside from running wheels with wider offset. Running thicker shock oil helped me a lot. I started with 60 wt which was a little overkill and just recently put in some 32.5 wt that I had laying around which turns out to be too thin. The shocks now have nearly zero dampening and allow for a lot of body roll which means less stability at high speeds. At low trail speeds, however, it does awesome.