Ryuz FF

[TViz]

Anybody ever own one of these? From what I could find on the net (not much), it was a very limited production car that had a stealth tranny in front! Crazy! Anyway, check it out. Pretty cool. I'd love to try and re-create this thing.

[Halgar]

Boy, that sure is a freaky little beast!

[purpletimbo]

A quick search will reveal a few threads on here about it and other FWD buggies

[littleVETTE]

the car was never in production. it was a custom car. there were a few others made from the same builder. if you look at this thread you could see other people's ff buggies as well.

http://www.rc10talk.com/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=13192

[Diggley]

It looks more like a frog than...well, the Frog...

I can appreciate the effort that was put into it, but wow, that's one weird looking thing.

It looks like it would have some monster rear suspension travel!

[Jay Dub]

Looks like a frog, jumps like a turtle...

[AYKBOBCAT]

I would also love to own one of these.... They're neat!

[BloodClod]

Hi guys,

This car and a bunch of others like it inspired me to recently build one of my own.

I've wanted to build something like this for a while now.

Here's a post I made on this project on another forum...

Inspiration...
The project was inspired by buggies like these...






Always thought they looked extremely unusual in a cool way and according to what little information there is on the internet they didn't run too badly either. FWD supposedly offered advantages on loose tracks as they didn't spin out. Kyosho produced the Maxxum FF buggy and while I never drove one of those many didn't consider that a "race-inspired" design like some of these purpose built buggies.

Unlikely to ever get a chance to buy one of these so I decided to try my hand at building my own.

The plan...

When designing the car I wanted to do a few things differently though...

CG : Most of these cars I researched mounted the battery on a lower deck and all the electronics went on an upper deck. Possibly electronics were bigger back then... but with today's smaller electronics (and availability of saddle pack batteries) I wanted to try to position the electronics all on one deck for a lower center of gravity.

Steering : Many of the buggies also used direct steering setups like on cars like the Frog / M03. I suspect probably this was also because of space constraints. With about half length of the car being the rear wishbones, everything else needs to fit in the remaining space... we're talking gearbox, steering assembly, servo, esc, rx and battery! However, such steering setups typically result in a lot of bump steer, so I wanted to try to use a more established bellcrank type steering in this buggy.

Donor parts : I like the RB5/RT5 transmission so I knew that'd be my gearbox of choice. For the front suspension I decided to try to adopt something from a current 4WD buggy. The Tamiya DB01/501 suspension was chosen as I had significant spares for that and it was also metric. These arms have also earned a reputation of being strong so it seemed like a good choice. All the parts to mate the two together and the rest of the car would have to be scratchbuilt.

The Result

The whole buggy took about 2 weeks to design and build... and after all that it's still just a prototype. G10 was used for the main chassis to try ideas as I could always redesign and reproduce them in CF later. Some parts that needed more rigidity were cut from CF straight away while shocktowers, rear wishbones and other little odds and ends were made with Delrin.

I tried to incorporate as many tuning options as possible in my design as I really have NO IDEA what would work and what wouldn't - so for example the rear wheels alone have full camber and toe adjustment available, there are a variety of shock mounting positions, even the transmission height is adjustable...

Enough text though... here are some pics.

Oh... the shell is a donor too until I can decide on something nicer to use... but I don't think it looks half bad.












Testing at the Local Track

































Car might look wierd, but man can it carve a tight line around our technical track.

Now I need a name for the car... any suggestions?

[Halgar]

Very nice work, as always BC.

Now I need a name for the car... any suggestions?

Mud Frog?
Cricket?
Singapore Slingshot ...

[i crash cars]

I'll go ahead and say it....













They look retarded.

[civilguy]

Coming from the guy with the Nikko logo as his avatar?


Very cool btw.... I always thought the Nichimo was a cool buggy bitd.

[i crash cars]

The avatar is in jest, perhaps I should change it to a picture of one of these abominations.

[BloodClod]

I'll go ahead and say it....













They look retarded.

lol... well one man's meat...

One local racer dropped by the track while I was testing the buggy and he drove it for a couple of laps. Later when we were chatting he commented "this buggy is very special... when I first saw pictures of it I thought 'this car is going to handle like crap!' but I am extremely surprised." Later he posts on rctech that he thought this car would give today's modern buggies a run for their money.

Many find these cars ugly and hey I'd admit they ain't pretty but man are they a hoot to drive.

[THEYTOOKMYTHUMB]

I'll go ahead and say it....













They look retarded.

You're crazy dude. That looks awesome in my opinion. Nice work!

[badhoopty]

The avatar is in jest, perhaps I should change it to a picture of one of these abominations.

since when is a custom rig somebody hand-built an abomination?