Clodbuster Super-Stocker build

[andymac0035]

This started at the beginning of 2013, after taking a year off from clodbusters. I had switched to an axial wraith based monster and even tried an e-maxx, but I guess my wife new better, and there was a new super clodbuster kit under the tree, so that was how I started the new year. This is going to show just how capable the stock chassis can be (if you like to tinker).

At the time (2013) I noticed it was packed a little differently than in the previous years with a mechanical speed controller, and the small box (with a top) with all the bags in it was gone. The bag with the motors was hidden under the body.....as I was unpacking it to look at the esc I was starting to think they were missing. This was the "new" super clod kit that comes with an esc, the TEU-103 BK. It's nothing special, no low-voltage cut off, so I'd have to be alert running my lipo's till I upgrade this. I will never understand Tamiya's logic for including this esc, as I'd rather buy a kit without one as it would lower the price-point.

I will say though.... that cleaning brush was brilliant! I still have and use that thing to this day.

Look at the tires! Nice and clean! No mold release. I'm thinking these must be from the new molds Tamiya had to get (back then). I wonder if the old one's were really "broken" or if they degraded somehow (over time) causing Tamiya to have to use more mold-release to make them work. That sure would explain a lot. Either that or they got tired of the complaints and cleaned the tires better before packing them into the kits.

[andymac0035]

Also seen here is one of my wife's presents to me, a Duratrax work matt. Typical start to building the kit, bearings right off (except for the little ones in the counter gears). I was still debating how stock I wanted to make it. I knew I'd have to cut reliefs in the chassis eventually, but wanted to hold off till I decided what direction to take things.

Axles assembled and getting ready to put the suspension on. I decided to run the stock steering for starters. I went with 4 e-maxx shocks with red (soft) springs. Looking back I think I should have put the stock pogo sticks in there, but I had a lot of traxxas shocks sitting in the parts bin. One thing I noticed is that the stock tamiya guide/tool for the pinion alignment is a little off.

I had forgotten just how poor chassis clearance was with the stock steering. I'd have fixed that, but I knew the stock steering was temporary. I just wanted to try going old-school for a few runs, I guess to establish some kind of base-line.

[andymac0035]

Here it is all together. Sorry, no square-body. Not really a chevy-fan, and my brother-in-law is, so he got the chevy body. It might be beat up, but I think that HPI E-savage body looks really good on there. Kinda' looks like a super-size wheely king.

Doing what clods do best, playing in the snow. This is running the stock esc and a weak 2S lipo. I really do find it amazing how "light" on their feet they are in the snow. Despite how slow this was (by my standards) I was really having a lot of fun with it. I had a brushless e-maxx with oversize tires at the same time, and this truck out-did it in the snow fields around here. (meaning it got stuck a lot less)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrRMWB9hBk0


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGSYjN7Cr4M

[andymac0035]

Steering set up was changed after a few runs. I'm an R/C pack-rat of sorts and I keep broken stuff for scrap material. The vertical servo mount was made from a broken piece of e-maxx skid plate. The short tie rod is threaded rod (covered in shrink wrap) with a dubro rod end and an ofna servo saver. The spacers between the mount and the gearcase are 5x11 bronze bushings.

The rear-steer lock-out is broken bits of old (stock) steering bell crank put in the hole upside down and using the same screw and brass spacer. I put one of the pivot balls from a broken dubro rod end into the clod rod end, and then ran the screw though the hole in the pivot ball. Very low-dollar, but very effective. I've got more clearance and suspension travel now, but I still need to cut a relief in the front chassis corner for the servo. It doesn't hit right now, but once I add softer springs and start jumping it more, I know it will hit. I may ditch the rear bumper as well, as that hits too.

The steering is better now. It's not that much (if any?) tighter, but the axle I want to do the steering.....is now doing the steering. It's still like an ocean liner turning under throttle......but if I let off or "jog" the throttle, I can turn fairly tightly....well for a stock clod anyways. It also appears that there is a small amount of throw to be gained from doing the steering stop mod. I'll just have to watch my EPA's, so I'm not hitting the ladder bars.

[andymac0035]

First mods to the chassis. I had held off doing any dremel work to the chassis during the initial kit build as I was not 100% sure what I was going to do. Now that I had picked a direction, it was time to get some clearance for the axle-mounted front servo.

Some black foam filled in the holes nicely.

Much better clearance.

I also did the steering stop mod while I was at it.

I had been told that you couldn't do the steering stop mod with the stock ladder bars, so when I did mine, I figured I would just turn up my dual-rate steering adjustment till the tires hit, and then back it off a little, so I kept adding steering.....
Well what do you know?.....cranked the knob to 100% and it still didn't hit.

Here's the 1st run with the new steering. I had also switched to stock clodbuster springs and 30wt shock oil.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnXusHOU37k

[andymac0035]

At this point the truck just seems so well-balanced......I'd hate to mess it up (much)....

So I started messing with the suspension. I wanted to soften it up and get more flex out of it. I took a screw out of each of the "wings" underneath, that helped a little, but something seemed off. I noticed the e-maxx shock collers were hitting against the axle braces. So I swapped in clodbuster lower shock ends and put stock clod ballstuds on the ladder bars to mount to. This moved the lower mounting position out slightly and lined the shock up properly with the cut-out on the axle support.

Another thing I did was break the forward "ear" off the ladder bar that sits next to the servo so it could pivot past it. I had to dremel it a little too. Now when the bar articulates it doesn't hit the servo anymore.

Articulation has improved.

[andymac0035]

A few more pics out in the snow:

Decided to crawl with it a bit first before settling in with my usual bashing, since the snow is kinda' melted and become more solid.
I never realized you could get the stock suspension this nice.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIgzaEo9Pqk




Here's another, with fresh powder this time. This would be the last run with stock power levels.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUf0x86j6W0

[andymac0035]

In my quest for more power, I went with a mamba max pro esc. I put it in brushed mode, and rigged up some Y-harnesses to the stock motors. I had heard the stock motors could take a lot more voltage, but at this point (Feb 2013) I had yet to try it. So I got a series connector and added a 2nd 2S lipo, which I tucked into the front of the chassis. Needless to say I was pleasantly surprised.

Yes, those tires are ballooning.

Loving the rooster tails it throws.

Here it is running on 4S lipo.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ES-ZpMnSdxk

[andymac0035]

Here's 2nd battery placement. I dremelled some openings for running a battery strap though and put foam under the battery. Holds everything firmly in place.

That's a series connector, so both 2S batts are combined for 4S total.

Surgical hairnets and booties make great covers for keeping snow off of non-waterproof electronics.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZkWXGLCRjIg



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5maAm_xldMM

[andymac0035]

Up till now I had been running the truck on a pair of older and weaker venom 2S lipo's, and decided to retire them in favor of using some of the newer gens ace packs I had. These had a lot more punch to them, and also started showing me the one downside to running 4S with the stock silver cans... and that is that you about 4 runs out of a set of motors, 5 if your lucky. Now in the racing I've watched (with people running 4S) they are pretty short runs, but I'm not racing, I like to run my batteries out and have fun. I even went so far as to try swapping motors front-to-back to even out the brush wear, but it didn't add the extra life I was hoping to get.

The new batteries were the round stick-shaped type, and I re-did the front tray with hard foam. All hard foam is attached with tire glue BTW.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JIJfyzSyoTE


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i4pT8cqgriY


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4U2YRVFgY8

[andymac0035]

When checking the truck over, I noticed the whole front axle wobbling and flexing on itself. Upon tear down, it turns out I bent the inner pin on the "long" axle shaft that goes into the "short" one. This made the diff wobble up and down flexing the whole assembly. I managed to straighten it and nothing else appears to be broken. That's the really weird part of all this.... nothing was broken. You'd think some plastic would have snapped... but nope. That at least, showed me that I was right about the stock ladder bar suspension being a lot more durable than a 4-link style for the stock chassis.

If you've watched any of my video's, you can see that I like to jump my trucks a lot. What was happening was that if the truck came down hard and the front end slapped the axle into the chassis, the plastic had enough flex to transfer the shock load to the steel axles, which don't like to flex......
So between that, and wanting a break from burning out motors, I switched to a single 3S lipo. The ones I had were a wider softcase, but they fit fine in the new front tray I had made. I had to add a 2nd strap, and all was good. The drop off in speed wasn't all that bad and the reduced weight lessened the chance of chassis-slap on the front axle.

[andymac0035]

The durability on this build so far was amazing. Other than breaking an older wheel on the V-spikes and wearing out some motors, not a single original part had failed yet.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SvTxINS8nbY&t=27s

Oh... and here's the bent axle that I straightened:

[andymac0035]

Despite pretty-much finding the sweet-spot with the stock motors running 3S... the 4S speed-bug kept biting and I gave in. It had warmed up and the snow was gone (May of 20013). I'd have to take it apart because I had bent that axle inside again, and also replace the motors, but a lot of fun was had that day.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZrnkWLj9peY

[andymac0035]

So there was an indoor R/C track nearby and I finally got over there to check it out. There was no class for me to run in, but I was allowed to run it during the practice time. Running on a single 3S lipo, it actually had okay speed for this (indoor clay) track, but my suspension was lacking big-time. All the issue's I had with chassis slap running on 4S re-surfaced even on 3S, due to all the jumps (especially the BIG one) at this track. I bent that axle again, but decided to give it another go and just had at it.......you won't believe this.....I hit it just right on another jump and bent it back!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LT---mdWCG8





So after this I got to work on the suspension. I used some of that tubing tamiya gives you for bump-stops to make a flexible upper joint on the shock. This works.....but it's a royal PITA to get it in there. If you try this, get the tubing onto the shock cap and in place BEFORE you cut it. I used a small washer to make sure things stay put once installed. The spacers used for the new mounting point are cut from a clod battery spacer. I also had to notch the ladder bars when I leaned the shocks that far forward.

The new locations were not done free-hand. It just so happens if you use a stock chassis brace (the smaller one) as a guide and place it into the corner of the chassis' inner fender, that is were the holes end up. There are washers on the backside of this and the bolts are double-nutted so that you don't have to over-tighten things, but you do have to make it fairly snug.

The wheels now have four vent holes (instead of one). This made the tires a lot softer, and it cuts down on some of the bouncy-ness.

Articulation is really off the charts. The tires are pretty close to hitting at full flex. I actually had to add some pre-load to the shocks.... and it's still leaning more than I would like. Time to figure out some sway-bars.

These were made from music wire if I remember right. Then tucked inside the ladder bars and added some rubber tubing (it's the bump-stops from the stock clod shocks). It was a little bit of a pain getting the pre-bent bar in place in the ladder bars, but it clears everything well and works.

[andymac0035]

As seen in the video below, what I did to fix the chassis slap, was to move the battery to the stock location. The problem was, I had to widen the slot, and change how the battery was held in. With that done, I proceeded to remove a LOT of chassis material and add bracing to make it all work.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZiKZtUDIWwk




This made for even more suspension travel.

At the local sand-pit:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HbWqgtMDAvQ





The bracing lasted a lot longer than I thought it would. I kept running it at the track during practice and added some tow-in to the rear axle to help it track straighter (that helped a lot). Eventually though, I finally had a crash+burn bad enough to break something.

I decided to repair the chassis vs replacing it. (probably because I didn't want to have to do all the dremel work again)

The motor wrap (flux ring) off of a titan motor it makes the prefect chassis brace once pounded flat and V-ed. In fact this chassis never broke again after this.

So all was well for a while, other than switching to aluminum anti-rotational brakets after breaking one. Then one weekend I was doing decent around the track for a while but it started to struggle as I pushed it harder (a large table-top jump had been added). This culminated in a "lawn-dart" landing into the bump at the bottom of the table-top down-ramp, which popped the LF shock....the "snap" was so sickening I thought I broke an axle. There were a lot of rough and tumble moments, but that one really stood out. I fixed the shock, and I finished the battery....OUTSIDE! I was done running clods on that track layout, as it was just too unforgiving. The chassis held up great though. Then, I'm going through the clod, as I've decided it's time to look into improvements and I see this (that has got to be a first).