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So after much, much debating (let alone pester you guys with inane questions about Clods), I've bought myself a Clod Buster.

Yup! I've finally done it. One showed up for sale about an hour away, according to the seller a completely mint shelf queen with a flawless body shell. I'm a bit apprehensive about second-hand RC cars, especially older ones, but the price was right and on the pictures it did look fairly good.

Money was exchanged, and the biggest RC car I've ever owned came home with me. :D

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Seriously, it towers over everything I own. And I told the wife that I'd be buying no more RC cars this year, so obviously I've bought the biggest one I could find.

When I got it home the first thing I did was inspect it. The body was painted well, but lacked detail. That's okay though. I'm not great with painting hard bodies, but I've got a steady hand and a decent supply of paints. So I turned this....
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... into this!

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What I did to the body:
- Straighten out hood scoop decal. (Seriously, how do you even...)
- Painted the mat black window trim of the smoker windows
- Traced all the shut lines of all the doors (and the funky tilt nose) with a Parma detailing pen. That adds so much depth to the body!
- Repainted much of the silver trim around the windows (my hands are clearly a bit steadier than the PO's)
- Painted the chrome taillight bezels and added the white reversing lights
- Painted the front side lights / parking lights / whatever those things do on a squarebody Chevy.
- Added in the black bits in the grill.
- Painted the chrome front side marker bezels and added in the orange lights
- 'Relocated' the chrome dot indicating the door locks to the correct location (again, how do you... Luckily the old silver paint came off easily)
- Replaced a few missing screws here and there.
- Stuck the windshield wipers back on, though I hold little hope for their permanence on those little pins. Might have to devise a different solution.

The body seems to be closest to an '83-'85 squarebody Chevy C/K, and they came with a body-colored trim panel in the grill. I'm debating painting the one on there red to match the body, but I kinda dig the chrome look. Plus, the lack of Chevy emblem might indicate that it's an aftermarket panel.

Meanwhile, the chassis is in bits. I've ordered the metal parts bag from a Super Clod so I have the correct chassis braces, along with a screw bag (because I'm rapidly running out of M3 Tamiya bolts with this truck...) and some other odds and ends like steel pinions. I've also bought a Hobbywing Quicrun 860 (the dual-motor one) and a high-torque servo. There's an MSC in there right now. I'm not going to use that, obviously, but if space permits I might leave it in and connect it to a broken servo, just so it looks the part.

I'm planning to go fairly stock with it. It's an '80s monster truck, both in design and 1:1 truck it depicts. I'm not expecting Monster Jam-esque jumps and sky wheelies and such, but rather this slow and deliberate crawl over some old body sets.

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That's a really cool body you got there! I have a Super Clodbuster myself. I know you want to keep it stock, but here the upgrades I made on mine. FYI: CPE stands for Crawford Performance Engineering.com. It's a great website for Clod & Ground Pounder stuff, even though the website is kinda ugly (in my opinion). There are in order of how I upgraded them, I think.

-I installed these bearings.

- I replaced the weak and breakable stock anti-rotation brackets with these anti-rotation brackets.

-I bought this chassis brace, but I have not installed it, a because I need different ball joints to go through the brace and the stock chassis.

- I installed this suspension lift kit.

I love Clods because they aren't perfect, it allows so much room for upgrades. For you, I would definitely do what I did with the red upgrade. That part broke on me almost every battery pack. It was so annoying because I would have to wait for about ten days for a new one. That pair of upgrade parts saved me a lot of ughhhhhhhhhhhhhhhs. I probably will upgrade the steering to two wheel drive eventually. I did not realize how unresponsive the steering was until I got a Traxxas Stampede. I was like, "Whoah, it goes the way you turn it right away and returns back to driving straight after I release the wheel! And it still turns as sharply!"

Clods are awesome, stock or upgraded.

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It looks very good, GooneyBird. Nice job on the body.  Looking forward to seeing the chassis too!  

  

 

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1 hour ago, GooneyBird said:

Seriously, it towers over everything I own. And I told the wife that I'd be buying no more RC cars this year, so obviously I've bought the biggest one I could find.

When I got it home the first thing I did was inspect it. The body was painted well, but lacked detail. That's okay though. I'm not great with painting hard bodies, but I've got a steady hand and a decent supply of paints. So I turned this....
IMG-2864.jpg

... into this!

IMG-4653.jpg
What I did to the body:
- Added in the black bits in the grill.

 I've also bought a Hobbywing Quicrun 860 (the dual-motor one) and a high-torque servo. There's an MSC in there right now. I'm not going to use that, obviously.

First things first, pat on the back for you, it looks great, even better with that front grill detailed!

I'm in the same boat as you now, wife no more cars, just waiting delivery of the Clods ugly sister aka the Bullhead!

Like yours mine has a MSC in place and I'd be looking to swap it out for something new fangled so you've already helped me out by mentioning a new to me Hobbywing 860... off to research that now! ( Never had a dual motored RC so never looked into dual control ESC's)

I'll be watching this as they are essentially the same truck, although I think the Bullhead has some part of the chassis that was reinforced/upgraded over the original Clod ( and it was also fixed on the Superclod I think?)

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I love it!! The Clod Buster must be one of the best models ever made by Tamiya.

Hard to believe as it might seem, one curious thing about this particular model is the fact that Tamiya got the grill wrong. The orig manual state you should paint the lower front lamps orange, but all of the real vehicles (and variations of them) are clear. If you do a quick search for Chevrolet C-30 1985-1986 you will see that for yourself.

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9 hours ago, Super Clodbuster Junkie said:

-I installed these bearings.

- I replaced the weak and breakable stock anti-rotation brackets with these anti-rotation brackets.

-I bought this chassis brace, but I have not installed it, a because I need different ball joints to go through the brace and the stock chassis.

- I installed this suspension lift kit.

Thanks for the links! I've bought the metal brackets (Oh dear, I can feel the rabbit hole opening up beneath me now!) as one of the plastic brackets included did look a bit cracked. I've soldered it shut again and shored it up with a spacer distributing the load a bit, but I can see these becoming an issue, even on the silver cans and 2S.

Ball bearings: Check. The entire truck was ballraced already when I got it. Bonus!

Bracing: I'll see how it holds out with just the stock Super Clod/Bullhead braces. I'm not going to to any mad skate park-jumps with it or anything. If I wanted to do that I would have bought something like a Stampede or E-Revo.

Lift kit: What, it's not tall enough as is? :P

7 hours ago, Super Clodbuster Junkie said:

GooneyBird, you have a really cool and funny profile photo. I remember l looked at that same warning in my Clod manual. :lol:

Yup! That's why I'm rocking mine. It's even in the manuals of the high-end stuff like my TRF419.

5 hours ago, mongoose1983 said:

I love it!! The Clod Buster must be one of the best models ever made by Tamiya.

Hard to believe as it might seem, one curious thing about this particular model is the fact that Tamiya got the grill wrong. The orig manual state you should paint the lower front lamps orange, but all of the real vehicles (and variations of them) are clear. If you do a quick search for Chevrolet C-30 1985-1986 you will see that for yourself.

I noticed that, and actually looked at cutting out the chrome bits and replacing them with an actual light, but I decided that the orange marker-light just looks right for the Clod. Like I said, I'm going mostly box-art with this one.

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90% finished as she stands:

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I still need to fix a few things. Namely, the tracking. The front tracks straight, but the rear wheels are off slightly. Also, I need to mess with the steering arms so that both wheels get full lock at the same time. It does have a fairly tight turning radius, especially since I switched to using the bigger servo arm that came with the servo. (It's weird having external servo savers. I'm used to them being on the arm.)

Also, I'm working on a top deck. Due to the unique way the top deck is shaped, with a rather large dent for the receiver pack, it was difficult to cram everything on there, so I decided to stuff everything underneath, and create my own top deck out of a sheet of styrene.

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I have no idea if that fan is needed or not, but I had it kicking about. As soon as the weather gets a little better here I'll shoot some flat black on it.

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The chaos. There's a TT02 receiver box in the rear. I'll see about getting some better shots of the receiver box in the chassis.

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10 hours ago, Super Clodbuster Junkie said:

Hey, could you list all the electronics in your hot ride?:rolleyes: 

Sure!

The ESC is a Hobbywing 860, powered by a Corally 2S round pack lipo.  It provides juice to the two silver cans at each end. The steering servo is a PowerHD high-torque waterproof thing I got from HobbyKing. It should have about 16KG of pulling force @5V. It seems the be well up to the job, steering both axles even while at a standstill. 

In the rear is a TT02 receiver box (below the body post brace, where the MSC resistor used to be.) That houses an OrangeRX GR300 receiver talking to my Spektrum DX3S (an oldie, I know, but it works well). From that box come two leads going to the ESC and the servo, as well as a lead going to an on/off switch (in the original cutout in the side) controlling the headlights. The actual on/off switch is stuck above that. Also going from the receiver box is an extra extension lead plugged into the bind port of the receiver. If I ever need to re-bind the truck for any reason I can just plug it into that lead instead of having to take the battery box apart. (Which involves taking the rear body post brace off, and that requires the shocks off)

Lessee, am I forgetting something? Ah, the headlights. Those are just two warm white LEDs I soldered to an old servo lead and crimped a plug on. I like building custom light sets for my bodies. 

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Today I finished fabricating my own top deck. I'm not sure if it's needed, but it sure does look slick.

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There's a little fan in it, powered off of the lead coming from the receiver (the one plugged into the bind port). I have no idea if it's actually needed, but a bit of a breeze in the depths of the chassis can never be a bad thing. Also, I know the ESC has a Lipo cutoff, but I stuck a lipo alarm on there regardless. I can't set the cutoff voltage of the ESC, and I like to run mine at 3.4V per cell instead of the industry standard of 3.2V per cell. On the track cars that's not an issue, as they either have programmable ESCs (the TRF) or one tends to run out of concentration before the battery ever goes that low.

Beneath that plate we have...

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... a mess. :P Now do you see why the plate is on?

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This is the battery box in the rear. The left hole has the two leads for the ESC and servo, and the right side has the breakout lead for the bind port( you can see the curled fan wire plugged into it), the lead going to the switch for the headlights, and the antenna cable. The little yellow stub is the actual antenna, the long tube poking out of the body is 100% there for show.

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The rest of the pack is...intimidated. I mean, it's only slighty bigger than the rest, right?

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Honey any idea of the speed on 2s with the silver cans? What opinions are you running... actually what opinions does the Clod use ( pitch, teeth?)

Great looking too plate there too, and those lights look perfect.

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54 minutes ago, Jason1145 said:

Honey

Yes, darling?

54 minutes ago, Jason1145 said:

What opinions are you running..

I did not know Clods were that opinionated about matters. 

:p

Anyway, I’ve only had the thing out doing laps of the living room, and it certainly felt brisk. I haven’t had it outside yet, but I’ll be sure to report back once I do. 

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38 minutes ago, GooneyBird said:

Yes, darling?

I did not know Clods were that opinionated about matters. 

:p

Anyway, I’ve only had the thing out doing laps of the living room, and it certainly felt brisk. I haven’t had it outside yet, but I’ll be sure to report back once I do. 

Predictive text lol

How could it change Gooney to Honey?

I get the opionions from pinions,  but seriously... honey?!

I'm quitting RC to take up typing school... then I'll clean the house and make you some supper ;)

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8 hours ago, Super Clodbuster Junkie said:

You're not serious, are you? :(

No honey..... dammit again!!!!! ;)

 

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On 2/24/2019 at 7:18 PM, Jason1145 said:

Gooney any updates on your Clod?

Yes, quite a few actually. I just hadn't gotten around to posting them.

Firstly, I ran it! Like, outside in the back yard. But it runs! And it runs well. 2S seems to be just enough power for it. It'll do a wheelie, but not one of those over-the-top, dragging the rear bumper for yards wheelie. It'll just pop the front wheels up for 40 cms and put them down again. Perfect!

Also, I made a blanking plate for the Power/Economy switch. I originally wanted to put the on/off switch for the ESC there, but I found that it was a massive hole with oddly spaced mounting holes, so I couldn't really do anything with it.

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It's just a bit of scrap styrene glued together, but it plugs the hole neatly.

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(When the body shell is on the light doesn't shine through it anymore. My desk lamp was directly behind the truck in this shot.

I'm working on something which might improve steering quite a lot. On a stock clod the steering arms run a bit funny. The rear arm is nice and parallel, but the front arm angles up. This is because of how the servo arm is situated in the truck. Since I mounted a larger servo arm the effect is even worse. This causes the front steering to be a bit soft, and have less thrown than the rear steering.

But what if we flip the front ball socket around?
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It looks a bit bodged together because I didn't have a 6mm ball connector stud long enough to reach all the way through (since you lose the hole for the nut). From top to bottom: 20mm Tamiya screw, the original nut in the original cutout, a 1mm spacer, one of those push-through ball sockets you sometimes see in shocks, capped off by a lock nut.

This ensures that the steering arm to the front is now parallel with the ground (and more importantly, with the rear arm)IMG-2903.jpg

You can see how it doesn't angle upwards anymore (front is left side of picture). It works well, the front steering lock has increased a bit, but more importantly, it now steers at the same rate as the rear wheels. This means that when you go full-lock, it doesn't kick out the rear first before pulling the nose in. This makes it far more natural to drive, for as far as a 4 wheel-steering car will ever feel natural to drive to a on-road track rat like me. :P

I've got a few days off coming up, and it's surprisingly nice weather for February, so I might go down to a local bash spot and get some decent pictures of the Clod moving. 

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12 minutes ago, GooneyBird said:

But what if we flip the front ball socket around?

IMG-2902.jpg

Worked for me :)

DSC_2527.JPG

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I quite like the look of the rear kicking out first but that might just be a novelty thing I will see how mine drives once the servo arrives... which I'm having to now chase through Evilbay as it's past due!

Nice update Gooney hope the weather does hold for you, a picture says a thousand words but avideo never shuts up ;) 

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On 2/25/2019 at 8:36 PM, GooneyBird said:

I'm working on something which might improve steering quite a lot. On a stock clod the steering arms run a bit funny. The rear arm is nice and parallel, but the front arm angles up. This is because of how the servo arm is situated in the truck. Since I mounted a larger servo arm the effect is even worse. This causes the front steering to be a bit soft, and have less thrown than the rear steering.

But what if we flip the front ball socket around?
IMG-2902.jpg

It looks a bit bodged together because I didn't have a 6mm ball connector stud long enough to reach all the way through (since you lose the hole for the nut). From top to bottom: 20mm Tamiya screw, the original nut in the original cutout, a 1mm spacer, one of those push-through ball sockets you sometimes see in shocks, capped off by a lock nut.

This ensures that the steering arm to the front is now parallel with the ground (and more importantly, with the rear arm)IMG-2903.jpg

You can see how it doesn't angle upwards anymore (front is left side of picture). It works well, the front steering lock has increased a bit, but more importantly, it now steers at the same rate as the rear wheels. This means that when you go full-lock, it doesn't kick out the rear first before pulling the nose in. This makes it far more natural to drive, for as far as a 4 wheel-steering car will ever feel natural to drive to a on-road track rat like me. :P

I quoted too much, but that's a great idea with the steering.

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On ‎2‎/‎25‎/‎2019 at 9:36 PM, GooneyBird said:

Also, I made a blanking plate for the Power/Economy switch. I originally wanted to put the on/off switch for the ESC there, but I found that it was a massive hole with oddly spaced mounting holes, so I couldn't really do anything with it.

It's just a bit of scrap styrene glued together, but it plugs the hole neatly.

 

As I also wanted the holes for this switch and the battery closed on my bullhead, I have made 3D models for these patches.

If you have access to a 3D printer, I can send them.

 

 

On ‎2‎/‎25‎/‎2019 at 9:36 PM, GooneyBird said:

I'm working on something which might improve steering quite a lot. On a stock clod the steering arms run a bit funny. The rear arm is nice and parallel, but the front arm angles up. This is because of how the servo arm is situated in the truck. Since I mounted a larger servo arm the effect is even worse. This causes the front steering to be a bit soft, and have less thrown than the rear steering.

But what if we flip the front ball socket around?
IMG-2902.jpg

It looks a bit bodged together because I didn't have a 6mm ball connector stud long enough to reach all the way through (since you lose the hole for the nut). From top to bottom: 20mm Tamiya screw, the original nut in the original cutout, a 1mm spacer, one of those push-through ball sockets you sometimes see in shocks, capped off by a lock nut.

This ensures that the steering arm to the front is now parallel with the ground (and more importantly, with the rear arm)

You can see how it doesn't angle upwards anymore (front is left side of picture). It works well, the front steering lock has increased a bit, but more importantly, it now steers at the same rate as the rear wheels. This means that when you go full-lock, it doesn't kick out the rear first before pulling the nose in. This makes it far more natural to drive, for as far as a 4 wheel-steering car will ever feel natural to drive to a on-road track rat like me.

Interesting information. I also found the  steering on the Bullhead a but 'unnatural' because I'm used to front wheel steering only. And my bullhead has equal steering front and rear with its 2-servo mod.

But if you say the problem is that the rear steers more compared to front, another mod to try may also be to swap the positions of the front and rear steering arms at the servo side, and put the servo in reverse turning (switch on transmitter). Then the front has more steer compared to rear, should make it more natural. Something to try when I have my Clod in running order, which will also have the standard steering setup.

 

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It's weird how it's February but it sorta feels like May. So I took full advantage of the weather and went to a local beach to give the Clod a proper outing yesterday. All pics courtesy of my wife, who somehow not only tolerates my faffing about with toy monster trucks but is also willing to figure out how the camera works so I can share these with you.

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This picture reminds me a bit of the Lunch Box box art.

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(Yes, it got dirty. Running through the puddles looked amazing, and it was a lot of fun, but Wow the sand got everywhere!)

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Today I drove out to the car wash and gave the thing a good blast from the air line, and it's all clean now. The gearboxes sound fine, so I don't think any sand got in there. Remarkably well-suited to the beach this truck is.
 

2 hours ago, Ray_ve said:

But if you say the problem is that the rear steers more compared to front, another mod to try may also be to swap the positions of the front and rear steering arms at the servo side, and put the servo in reverse turning (switch on transmitter). Then the front has more steer compared to rear, should make it more natural. Something to try when I have my Clod in running order, which will also have the standard steering setup.

Unfortunately I don't have access to a 3D printer. If the designs are simple enough you could try to put them on Shapeways and make a few bucks off of them.

I want to try to reverse the steering arms on the servo, but I'll do that the next time I'm doing a full teardown, as it's a little difficult to get to with everything that's installed on top of it. But I like the idea! :)

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