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Claypole

Noob Woes!

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Not as dramatic as the the thread title might suggest, I’m guessing what I’m experiencing is fairly standard...

I recently completed building my first RC car, a Sand Viper. It ran great on its maiden run, for about half an hour until I jumped into an unseen puddle and drenched the receiver. I dried it all out and it appears to have survived. That was the first lesson learned.

Now, there’s a skate park near where I live, and I know full well that it would not be a good place to fully test the Sand Viper, far too much concrete. However, despite knowing all this, I just couldn’t help myself, and took it there. 
 

The car ran great at the skate park, for about ten minutes, until I managed to run it head first into concrete and snapped the front suspension tower. (and bent a steering rod...). I knew I shouldn’t have gone to the skate park, but I think I had to go through the process anyway...

I can order a new, part, for about £8, so not too costly, but is there a stronger replacement part available? If not, how about a support brace to beef up the standard plastic one? I see some discussion of this subject online, but it’s quite old.

Or should I just learn to not drive the car into concrete?
 

 

 

 

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There is a way of using a threaded rod to brace the suspension towers to each other with some plastic eyes/cups but would imagine if you hit something hard enough to break one you are likely to bring thevother one with it. So I would just start with the not driving into concrete thing. I think if you over brace it to prevent snapping and then drive into more concrete you will then also break any of the parts that your bracing is attached back to - ie the chassis tub, gearbox etc or something equally as expensive.

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hey dont worrie about it run the car where ever you want and if you break it the the parts are readly available for it that is part and parcel of this hobby if you come back with out a breakage then your lucky but the main thing is have fun with it if you break it hey so what .... replace the broken parts 

i did the same thing with my revo years back i ran into a gutter at full chat but it just bounced of and carried on so it happend again but the second it ended up replacing the complete front end plus wheels at a cost of £160  the faster/heaver the car/truck/buggy the more damage comes from i.

you can buy stronger parts but they tend to break what ever they attach to esp if it is plastic.

if you are just going to bash it then leave it standard 

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27 minutes ago, Claypole said:

Or should I just learn to not drive the car into concrete?
 

 

I've learned the apply the "First Rule of the Dept. of Defense":  Why buy one when you can buy two???

You've now seen that you can snap a piece, and spare parts are cheap...  Stock up on the few that you think you'll need, and then you don't have to wait for the Post to arrive...

Terry

 

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I agree with not-strengthening stuff. 

Bucky's arm looks cool in movies.... But to use a steel arm, your collarbone needs to be made out of steel, and the breast bone, and rib cage, and spine too.  It's just easier to replace the broken part.  

Q1ocRCN.jpg

Stocking up extra parts has its own problems. They can really pile up.  There are enough parts to build 2 Fast Attack Vehicles... wait... that's not a problem. That's a good thing!  (Except that I could have bought 3 FAVs with the money I spent here)  

I'd say, you are meant to break stuff.  You'll love your car more as you fix it.  I think that's just how this hobby works.  

1U0JGUB.jpg

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Cheers for the advice, I’ve just ordered the replacement parts tree and will see how it goes.

At first, I thought the silver can motor wasn’t fast enough for me, but I think I’ll hold off upgrading it for a while, and maybe stay away from the skate park until my skills improve...

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I think there's got to be a common ground between "learning not to break it" and "accepting that breakages will happen."

When I first started out I found I was breaking stuff a lot, mostly because my driving skills weren't all that good but also because I wasn't really sure what was an acceptable level of punishment.

Some people do just like to push things hard to see if they'll break.  If that's what you like then fair enough, it's your money, but if I was coming home with a breakage on every run I'd be looking at how and where I'm driving.

I would say that driving anywhere where you might run hard into a concrete barrier isn't great - so either run slowly or find somewhere else to run.  That said, Broxtowe's astro track has an outer wall made of concrete blocks and it's possible to drive a buggy up onto part of the wall and run full-throttle into a block.  I know because I've done it by accident during a race.  Amazingly my Hotshot survived with only a dislocated front suspension - a few seconds fiddling and it was running again.  I think that was more luck than sturdy design.

I also think a higher level of breakages / failures is acceptable if you're custom-modding stuff.  I like to do custom builds, and every run is a test-run, so it's normal that things will break more often.

And also, if you visit the skate park with the intention of "sending" or doing backflips or anything else that the DT-02 wasn't really designed for then you can probably expect to break a few parts that would survive the roughness of the race track without any issues.

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1st rule of Tamiya Club:

Always take more than one vehicle out with you, in case of breakage.

 

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1 hour ago, Bromley said:

1st rule of Tamiya Club:

Always take more than one vehicle out with you, in case of breakage.

 

Second rule: a wheelnut spanner!!!!:D

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12 hours ago, Busdriver said:

Second rule: a wheelnut spanner!!!!:D

Third rule: a hex wrench for the pinion grub screw

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