HG-P407 "Bruiser Clone" Arrived Today!

[XLR8]

I agree 4WS is mainly a monster truck thing however Tamiya does offer this option on their High Lift series..

Turn down your audio, this is kinda loud.

[Basher67]

That engine sound does not match the truck. It almost sounds like a diesel. Nice paint job though.

[Dadio]

Another thing I'm tempted to do is get another set of wheels and cut the outside rim off back to the inner lip for the beading to make narrower wheels and fit some more scale looking narrower tyres .

[Dadio]

I finally found time to take it out trailing and crawling today and I'm really pleased with how it went , there's little in the way of rocky ground locally but we do have hills and ancient pathways that cut deeply into the ground like little canyons with steep sides and that's the type of area I took it to , it went way better than I expected ! The only thing that got on my nerves was the mirrors , I must admit I did roll it over a few times , the only problem was the mirrors coming loose and its a pain to tighten them so I've modified them .
I cut the mounting stem off the mirror , drilled into the bottom and screwed a ball stud in , I also filled the mirror housing with epoxy , then I cut short a track rod end and placed a small piece of rubber into the cup and popped the ball stud on the mirror into it so that the small piece of rubber gave it some friction , lastly I drilled the holes for the mirrors on the doors out to 3mm and screwed the modified mirrors back on . The up side of the mod is that the mirrors now pivot like real ones but should not come loose any more .

[Basher67]

Sounds like a cool idea. Any pics?

[Dadio]

Photo's showing how it looks and how it can be tucked in for driving just in case .



I also tried adding some lead weight to help it articulate , firstly 400g under the battery , this made it top heavy so next i tried in the bottom of the radio box on the lid that covers the servo's as this lower's it down as far as it can .

This still made it unstable and it was better without it , so in short don't bother as it didn't work

[Basher67]

Great idea with those mirrors. Very cool idea.
This is where you should add weight for better stability and articulation. Simple weights with foam tape on one side. Same ones we all use to add weight to our race cars or to balance planes. Cheap and very effective. These are 7 gram weights on the backside of my ascender wheels. 28 grams per wheel worked great on the ascender, but you can see I could have done 56 grams per wheel if I wanted, and these are only 1.9 wheels. I haven't done this to my HG yet since I'm still waiting on my tires to arrive but it looks like there's plenty of room to add as much weight as needed. The real reason the truck doesn't articulate is the shocks. I'm down to a single spring on all four corners and still have the stock shocks on the front until my new mounts arrive. With no shocks in the rear, this is how good it articulates now. It would be even better if the front shocks were removed.

[Dadio]

I have some of those weights coming so i'll give em a go . My articulation at the rear is pretty much like yours .

[Basher67]

Nice! You've got that suspension working real good. One of the downsides I see to removing all the leaf springs is that my truck sits lower now. By swapping in the HR shocks with the internal spring, it should raise my ride height back up. Now I'm just waiting while my tires and shock mounts slowly make their way here in the mail. I did end up locking the front and rear axles and started to replace all the factory screws with the stainless ones.

[Dadio]

My springs are as follows at the moment .
Front
Removed coil spring from shock and shortest leaf removed .
Rear
Removed coil spring from shock and the mid length leaf removed .
I've ground the leaf ends all round and opened up the bottom eyes on the shocks all round .
This is working quite well for me .

[Dadio]

Made up new U bolts and flipped them on the back axle today , ran out of studding so I'm waiting for more to do the front as well , just gives it less to hang up on .

[Basher67]

Fantastic mod there! Looks more scale too. What did you make the u bolts from?

[Dadio]

Zinc plated M3 studding , its just threaded rod that comes in long lengths that you can cut to the desired length , very cheap ,I use it to make track rods etc , in order to get the bend I had to heat it red hot with a propane torch and use vice grips to clamp it to a 10mm round bar then bend it round , I tried it cold but it just snapped , the heat process has ruined the zinc coating but that means it will rust and fits in nicely with this build so I don't mind , you can get it on ebay .
I tried to get a video of it running but YouTube won't upload it so I'll try again later , also put 40g weight into each wheel , I'm not sure I can tell the difference but I'm new to trailing/crawling .

[Dadio]

I finally managed to get some youtube footage , poor image quality , poor driving but hopefully a good suspension demonstration , its just in my garden on some old bricks and sticks .
[youtube]https://youtu.be/sz-NjOjR9QY[/youtube]

[Basher67]

Nice! looks like you have that suspension working great!