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shpuck

Idiocy drove me to crash my vintage Grasshopper

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First time poster, looking for some advice. 

Yesterday, in a moment of brilliance, I was trying to adjust the throttle of my Tamiya Grasshopper II SuperG, in order to limit my two year old from jamming down on the throttle (I maintain control of steering and some throttle, so I'm not a horrible car owner). As I was adjusting, I ended up backing straight into a curb at a non-zero speed, and succeeded at completely trashing my gear box (see photo). 

I saw elsewhere that the Grasshopper II and GH2 SuperG share the same gearbox. Is this right? I don't have a lot of documentation from when we got this car a) because I found it in the garage and b) think it might have been my brothers, who I doubt kept documentation.

Any advice would be most welcome. 

 

DSC_0901_Resize.jpg

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Welcome! I must admit, I've never seen a Grasshopper gearbox break quite like that. The gearbox casing is indeed the same between the old Super G variant and the Grasshopper 2 that spawned it. The actually gearbox halves are shared between the current re-releases of the Grasshopper, Hornet, Grasshopper 2, Lunch Box and Midnight Pumpkin, so getting a replacement should be easy (there's some on Ebay right now). 

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Ouch!  Most of us have found our 30 year old cars have had the plastic get brittle. Time for a ReRe...

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Thanks, @Saito2...that confirms my assessment, and already put in a request on Ebay. Interesting to hear about the Hornet, Lunch Box and MP....I thought I saw there were incompatibilities there as well. At least it's a $20 no shipping repair. Glad to hear that I could rank near the top of catastrophic failures.  

@Frog Jumper: I was actually surprised to even get the car working when this whole COVID thing started...I didn't think I'd be able to get much out of it, and it only really required scratching the corrosion from the battery terminals that had been in there for decades. I did blow out a shock earlier, but found that tightening down fixed that up. 

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Glad to hear you were able to get new parts, I'm sure it'll be back on the road in no time! (I've also never seen one of those gearboxes break like that--impressive job!)

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Thanks, folks! Glad to know a noob like me can impress some vets...I received a replacement kit last week, and am in the process of rebuilding. Wish me luck.

 

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