Tamiya Gravel Hound DF-02 Forum [Archive] - Page 12

timie1

09-28-2006, 09:04 PM

Hi timie1,

I purchased Tamiya's dish wheel set directly from their website, and put Pro-Line Holeshots on them. The set is $9.75, assuming you don't purchase anything else it will work out to about $16.50 or so with shipping IIRC. I purchased a few other things with the wheels for spare parts, so the cost ended up being less. I might buy a few more sets since they work with any Tamiya buggy that uses the 12mm hexes.

http://www.tamiyausa.com/product/item.php?product-id=53728

You might also want to check out the wheels section of the DF-02 FAQ:

http://xyzzy.dyn.dhs.org/df02/index.php?action=show&cat=3

Have fun! :)

Hi Bakabaka
Thanks for that info. I was looking at those wheels and they too look like great value for money. I was just a bit worried that they are the same size as the star dish wheels and therefore the same problem of 2.2 tires on them. But if you say they fit, that's excellent.

While looking at the towerhobbies site, I came across the Sand Viper http://www2.towerhobbies.com/cgi-bin/wti0001p?&I=LXMVP3&P=PU That looks as though the rear wheels on that might be good for the df02. they say the wheels are 2.4" diameter, and being tamiya they are bound to have the 12mm hex. Possibly Tamiya have finally made a 2.2" (tire size) wheel, and the 2.4" size is the overall diameter size from outside of lip. If you could be kind enough as to measure the wheel set you bought from Tamiya, maybe they are the actual wheels that are on the Sand Viper............it's just a thought.

Thanks everyone for your help

bakabaka

09-29-2006, 02:49 AM

Hi timie1,

I'm using Losi tire glue on the wheels, everything seems to fit fine. The Dirt Hawg tires seemed to fit the Tamiya wheels ok, although they would have required tire glue. I decided on the holeshots instead, since they look a lot like the wheels on my Dark Impact and I wanted the two buggies to have relatively similar configurations. The Sand Viper is 2WD so only the rear tires are useable, but it should have the same size wheels as the DF-02 based on what I've seen.

Have fun! :)

aglsteven

10-02-2006, 12:05 AM

Hi guys,

Some advice please. I've fitted Yeah Racing shocks to my Gravel Hound, but after a gruelling session at the track, I find that most of the oil has leaked out of the little hole on the top. Does this mean that the seal at the top isn't sitting right? Should the seal come out of the lid, and be placed on top of the damper before I tighten the lid?

What are your experiences?

cheers

djahughes

10-02-2006, 06:05 PM

Hi

I've just fitted Yeah alloy shock towers to my Gravel Hound and sadly on the first run I collided with my friends Frog and snapped off one of the stand offs (?) at the front.

It's a piece of alloy that screws into the shock tower and then the ball screws into that.

I've checked Yeah's site and couldn't see them as a spare. I've emailed Yeah but had no response.

Does anybody know where I can order spare ones? Preferably in the UK?

Or do I actually need them? The ball screw seems to screw into shock tower fine - the shock leans back slightly would that affect anything?

Many thanks in advance for your help.

Fenris

10-03-2006, 09:18 AM

I decided I wanted to put some drift PVC wheels on my RS so I took a wheel down to Bunnings to check out the pipe selection. I found 50mm pipe joiners were the exact fit and about 3 times thicker than the plain pipe, I guess those rims are spot on 50mm. AANyway I had to saw the joiners in half to get 2 wheels per joiner, and at $2.50 each I was happy that something so cheap and cheerfull could be so much fun. I had to crank up the steering bias on my controller to 125% to get better countersteer for the drift and it worked great, although I don't know anything other than my RS so I cant compare it to anything. It was a bit too slippery on the tarmac road and didn't have enough grip but put it on carpet and it is great although I live in a tiny rental and there is not enough room for full sized fun and I am constantly sliding sideways into the tv cabinet. It might work well on the lawn bowls lawn down the road but Id rather not risk it.

JDT

10-03-2006, 02:52 PM

Last night I finally got a chance to run the rs, after the initial blast down the driveway the car started to act really weird, like the front tires were not pulling, I tore it down and changed the diff, no help, took it back apart and turned the rear wheels, everything worked fine? I then put the front tires up against the work bench and turned the rear wheels, the shaft spun and front wheels did not more, seems I had somehow broken the plastic driveshaft cup and it was spinning on the steel rod the pinion gear mounts on, sad part is I have a set of the tobee hardened steel joints but they are in the "big tire" chassis with the spur gear adapter lol. Just wanted to pass this along as it was very frustrating as assembled and under hand power everything seemed to work fine.

timie1

10-05-2006, 01:27 PM

mo679

10-05-2006, 06:05 PM

hello brushless experts
I'm trying to manage a big Feigao 540s to fit the chassis, but I think I will have to dremel a lot :D, do you have experience with these big motors?
cheers
Moe

JDT

10-05-2006, 10:26 PM

hello brushless experts
I'm trying to manage a big Feigao 540s to fit the chassis, but I think I will have to dremel a lot :D, do you have experience with these big motors?
cheers
Moe

Its not a c series finned can is it? if so it will be alot of cutting, if not you will be fine you should just have to remove the edge of the spur coverplate that sticks down between the shaft tunnel and the motor, a friends kid just got a genesis sport and 8s for $100 so we just did it a couple weeks ago, it was fine at 70/17 gearing but moving the motor closer for 70/16 gearing made it rub some so we filed off a little bit of the coverplate edge by hand with a normal file. Look at the coverplate head on, you will see how the edge goes down in between the motor and the tunnel, file that off if you have any clearance issues, keep us updated with your setup and results.

JDT

10-05-2006, 10:46 PM

I know it's been talked about before in this forum, but what would be some good turnbuckle shafts for the gh to replace the upper suspension arm both front and rear? I really like these ones http://www.tamiyausa.com/product/item.php?product-id=53788 but I don't need the toe in/out adjustment rod so I don't see the point of paying for bits that aren't needed. I don't mind what brand they are whether they are chinese or japanese, just so long as they work and are at least as strong as the plastic arms on the kit.

Oh and also I need a new front shock tower. This has been talked about a lot, but everyone has different opinions on what's good and strong. I like the idea of the yeah racing part http://www.rcmart.com/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=595_744_712&products_id=15437 with the 3 holes it give a lot more options on suspension setup. Is this any good? Do people actually use any hole other than the original position or is it just a gimmick and makes it less robust?

Thankyou in advance

The yeah racing one is stronger than the plastic for sure, the gpm about the same, the square carbon one lasted me the longest of any manufactured one, but of course it costs as much as 3 or the other two. I had much better results with homemade ones, they however look crappy, I am now going to get another square one and use it in conjunction with a yeah one running the yeah in its place and putting the square one on the frontside of the mount with spacers in between, I have tried this numerous times with the stock plastic and a homemade in front, someone else here reported good results by running the sqaure carbon fibre ones on both front and rear of the mount with spacers in between, I am sick of looking at the homemade stuff so I am going to try some the above and may eventually end up with another square to try doubling them up. I had always hoped a heavy duty version would come out, doubtful now of course.

bakabaka

10-10-2006, 03:29 AM

Hi JDT,

Yup, I did eventually bend my Yeah shock towers with a rather large end-over-end. The Yeah towers are nice for their additional damper positions, but it couldn't hurt for them to be made of a stronger material especially at the base. That being said, I'm still using them. The Square CF tower is good, but only has two mounting positions and doesn't brace against the chassis quite as well as the other shock towers. I found that this can cause issues with the damper mount area bending on the chassis.

Probably the strongest towers overall at this time are from GPM, but they only have one damper mounting hole. Hopefully Yeah will come out with a stronger version of their shock towers. I let them know that we'd like to see one whenever I send or reply to email from them.

Have fun! :)

sportsracer-5

10-12-2006, 06:56 PM

Does anyone know where I can get either the Tamiya or Square universals? I'm having problems finding anyone who has them in stock. No luck at RC Mart or RC Adviser Champ.

JDT

10-12-2006, 09:32 PM

rainbowten shows them on todays stock list 53791, they will not cut you a break like rcchamp however so it will be the 2400 yen, don't forget to use the tamiya ones you need the 53790 cup joints also, they are 900 yen. They are also on todays stock list. I would have thought that rcchamp would have them, hopefully the are just sold out and will get them back soon. I have used these for nearly a year now and think they are the best available but I have not tried the gpm or Option 1 versions.

sportsracer-5

10-12-2006, 10:37 PM

Cool thanks! Do the Tamiya cup joints come in a pair, or just one per pack?

Actually Champ may have the Tamiya units, I only asked them about the Square ones.

JDT

10-13-2006, 08:45 AM

It is two joints per pack and two outdrive cups per pack, I did all the way around so I needed two packs of each. Depending on what motor you are running you may be able to just do the front but with mod or brushless you might as well get them all the way around as the dog bones like to eject and then you loose outdrive cups way to often, the good thing about the 53790 outdrives is that they actually slide together inside the diff so even if you break something allowing the cv to pop out or worse case the wheel to come off you are less likely to loose the outdrive cup.

szan

10-13-2006, 09:01 AM

Does anyone know where I can get either the Tamiya or Square universals? I'm having problems finding anyone who has them in stock. No luck at RC Mart or RC Adviser Champ.
Jason's store have some in stock :
http://cgi.ebay.fr/43060-Tobee-Craft-Universal-Shaft-f-Tamiya-DF02-DF-02_W0QQitemZ250011689462QQihZ015QQcategoryZ34063QQ cmdZViewItem

They are cheaper than Tamiya ones, but 3 of mine broke on my car, so I'm a little desappointed about the quality.
Some people on this list had no issue with them, so....

Bye

sportsracer-5

10-13-2006, 10:55 AM

Jason's store have some in stock :
http://cgi.ebay.fr/43060-Tobee-Craft-Universal-Shaft-f-Tamiya-DF02-DF-02_W0QQitemZ250011689462QQihZ015QQcategoryZ34063QQ cmdZViewItem

They are cheaper than Tamiya ones, but 3 of mine broke on my car, so I'm a little desappointed about the quality.
Some people on this list had no issue with them, so....

Bye
Cool thanks. I think I'll stay away from the Tobee ones though. Good thing I speak a little French, non?

Champ says they can get the Square universals in about a week or so.

Thanks everyone for your help!

barnes77

10-13-2006, 07:31 PM

Hi guys long time no post :P i can't decide weather to get dirt hawg 1s all round or get slicks and a new pair of stock tires so i can just change the wheels around due to were i'm driving. i run the car both in car parks and on the road in my street and stuff but i also run it in loose gravle roads and grass and other harsh terrian at my cousins farm. How do the dirt hawgs compare to the stock tires off road? and also how do the dirt hawgs perform on road against some hpi slicks?

sportsracer-5

10-13-2006, 07:41 PM

I'll let you know in a week or so... I bought some Dirt Hawg 1s and some HPI slicks from Tower, they arrived a few days ago (along with 2 sets of HPI wheels). Just waiting for a new front strut tower to arrive and I'll be back in business.

JDT

10-13-2006, 09:30 PM

I have run both and can testify to really get the use out of the slicks you will need the full turnbuckle kit and cvds as chassis flex will be enough to spit out dogbones you need very aggressive steering settings and super hard shocks which is a really twitchy off road set up. The dirt hawgs will turn amazingly well on the pavement, they have some roll which will allow the wheel to hit the pavement sometimes but that comes along with the increase in ride height which is a benefit off road on everything except a real track where the hawgs are only a little better than the slick and worse that the stock tires. I eventually gave up on with the slicks and such as this chassis is a little sloppy for on road high speed action and such plus my buddy now is up to 4 ta05s and has pretty much given me one to race when I am ready, thats if I ever get ready, on road is much more precise and I continue to stuggle to master the power. my bashing is point and shoot and that don't work so hot on road lol.

barnes77

10-14-2006, 12:34 AM

thanks guys i've decided i'm gonna go with the dirt hawgs :D

bakabaka

10-14-2006, 01:02 AM

I eventually gave up on with the slicks and such as this chassis is a little sloppy for on road high speed action and such plus my buddy now is up to 4 ta05s and has pretty much given me one to race when I am ready, thats if I ever get ready, on road is much more precise and I continue to stuggle to master the power. my bashing is point and shoot and that don't work so hot on road lol.

Hi JDT,

Pretty much the same thoughts here, the DF-02 chassis is durable at least partially due to the flex. I had a TT-01 for a little while, and it's quite similar to the DF-02 in many respects. It struck me that many of the attributes that made the DF-02 a lot of fun offroad, while shared with the TT-01, didn't work quite so well on-road. It's apparently good for drifting though, and no doubt the DF-02 would be too.

Have fun! :)

silent Knight

10-17-2006, 04:12 PM

I have a DF-02 running a 14t motor and have just ordered a 10t motor for it. I also have all the pinion and crown gears available for the DF-02. What would be a good conbination to match these motors?

JDT

10-18-2006, 09:52 AM

SK, it depends on your tires, you will need ultra low profile tires(slicks) and 70/16 gearing for the 10 turn and it will still get pretty hot, the 14 turn you should be able to go 70/17 or maybe even 70/18 if you use the stock tires, with some slicks the 14 turn could probably even go 70/19 but it may be a little sluggish down low. I prefer to have the xtra punch so I always ran my 14 turn at 70/17 with stock tires and 70/16 with buggy hawgs, I don't recall ever running the 14 turn on slicks however, I melted a 10 turn at 70/16 with stock tires so its not enough unless you run the slicks and it still got a little to hot to touch, the 10 turn was better with the spur conversion and 84/17 gearing, I tried 81/16 and couldn't really tell a difference with the buggy hawgs and it was a beast either way with the 10 turn and stock tires. I am a basher though so if you are playing nice you may be able to get away with a little higher gearing.

raytracer

10-18-2006, 10:17 AM

barnes77

10-19-2006, 06:12 AM

Ey guys, long time no post. Anyway I've been using the platinum lipo with my dfo2 as well as my onroad tc and I highly recommend it to those looking for a new set of batts. Just use an ice charger and you'll never go back to sub c again. :D

Koolies :D i might convert to lipo batts when/if the price comes down :P

JDT

10-22-2006, 11:48 AM

I got my dinball stuff yesterday and the yeah front shock tower looks to have a redesign, the first yeah I had was about the same thickness as the rear and had holes under the shock mounting holes in a triangle shape, the new ones that arrived are twice as thick as the rear and solid, more like an aluminum version of the stock piece. I think this will be much stronger than the original design. Just wanted to let everyone know it had been redone, seems much stronger but no bash test yet.

Aluma

10-23-2006, 01:21 PM

Ey guys, long time no post. Anyway I've been using the platinum lipo with my dfo2 as well as my onroad tc and I highly recommend it to those looking for a new set of batts. Just use an ice charger and you'll never go back to sub c again. :D

I know, just waiting for the new 3200 from Orion to be available. I have a maxamps 6000, and I got tired of bashing after something like an eternity...only used 3500mah of the battery. lol.

raytracer

10-24-2006, 03:38 AM

I know, just waiting for the new 3200 from Orion to be available. I have a maxamps 6000, and I got tired of bashing after something like an eternity...only used 3500mah of the battery. lol.

Hehe. Lipo is the future..hopefully. I'm seeing the move to 4 cell cars and this rules out lipo.

Here's my very first run in the QCRCCC offroad track. This is the pre race practice. A lot of different cars, even a dfo3 did ok against cars twice the cost. Sorry no dfo2. Some people tried it before but it can't handle a 10 turn or brushless in racing conditions. I joined the rally class just for fun but my set up was completely off. I need softer suspension so I could punch it. I used a tto1 with df02 tires and platinum lipo. Qualified 5th and finished 6th out of 8 veteran offroad racers. The convenience of lipo was that I didnt do anything but sit back and chat with pit mates while others were doing the nimh vodoo routine. :D

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9TdJMvdK34

mo679

10-25-2006, 02:14 PM

Hello everybody, just got back in the hobby after a while and I bought some new stuff for the Df-2 rising storm: a turnbuckle se, deans connectors and a new Lrp AI reverse rated for 13T, it works much better with the tamiya superstock rz than the stock esc, but I'm thinking of changing motor for more speed, wich 13T or 14T motor would fit the chassis the best? and by the way what is the best 14T motor on the market?
Thanks a lot for your help!
Have fun
Moe

JDT

10-26-2006, 09:06 AM

I have run trinity speed gems, epic intense and orion sv 2 pro bb in 14x2 configuration, if I had to pick I would say get the sv2, its probably a couple bucks more but the orions seem to work really well and lasted longer than the trinity or epic in my experience. If you got the money try and go brushless, the normal 5800 setup from novak can be had for $165 and will last longer than 20 of the above brushed motors with better power also.

sportsracer-5

10-26-2006, 04:05 PM

I have a set of Dirt Hawgs and a set of HPI racing slicks that I'm going to start using on my GH. What's the line on glueing the tires to the wheels? I'm a noob about this aspect of R/C... should I not glue because the GH has no slipper clutch? Or does it not matter? At least for the Dirt Hawgs, I can't seem them staying on for long if I don't glue. Thoughts?
:confused:

sportsracer-5

10-27-2006, 02:55 AM

JDT

10-27-2006, 09:41 AM

It seems novak has taken the plain 5800 off the site, it was the non super sport plus version of the controller with the 5800 for $164.94, I guess you better go mamba then, I sold my 5700 to a fool with a bunch of money so I preordered another one from Bishop power products
http://www.b-p-p.com/products.php?cat=40
I know it shows $212.49 but I ordered over the phone and got if for $187.99, if you put it in the cart it shows in at $184.87, so I'm not to sure on that one but I got in on the free shipping which I think is still going on, I actually ordered the mm5700 and an LBA10 hyperion balancer which is $42.95 or something but he gave me so love on that to so I got the mm and the balancer for $220 to my door(well when they come in)
Sorry for the bad info I just saw that on novaks site within the last month but they don't even mention the old style esc now. I originally thought about the novak 5800(pre ss days) as everyone on here had good results but I decided to get a medium esc and mid level mod motor and wait for a more powerful brushless system, I have went through 8 motors at this point as I don't see the point of spending $20 to rebuild a $30 motor, thats about $240, $70 for the esc(lrp ai digital 10+) thats $310, so after two or so years you can see its definetely cheaper to just go brushless in the first place.

sportsracer-5

10-27-2006, 11:36 AM

Mamba Max... hadn't considered that, thanks for the tip. One question though... what is a "balancer"?

JDT

10-27-2006, 12:09 PM

Mamba Max... hadn't considered that, thanks for the tip. One question though... what is a "balancer"?

A balancer is for lipo batteries, for long life and the best performance lipo batteries need to be kept at the same voltage(within .05 volts I believe) between the cells, several companies make them, the one I got is a new style that will allow me to charge the batteries through it so they constantly stay in balance, balanced charging is kind of a new concept for me, I am convinced its the future as you don't have to run the balancer after you charge the pack, I have very little experience with lipo but my buddy has done alot of testing and he thinks this is the best choice so I will defer to him.

raytracer

10-27-2006, 10:09 PM

JDT

10-29-2006, 11:06 AM

so far there is no need to balance platinum lipos. some people have been using them in racing conditions for a year and have yet to balance them. they are also the same performance as they were bought a year ago. :D

I wouldn't say that.

Integrated balancing tube. “Balancing” refers to the process by which a pack’s individual cells are charged to identical capacities so that they will discharge and recharge to the same levels. It’s basically the same as using a discharge tray to match the cells in a sub-C pack. Team Orion says you don’t have to balance the cells in the Platinum pack until you’ve used it at least 30 times, and balancing affects only run times.

Above: on the Platinum’s underside, there’s a third tube that’s used to balance the pack. According to Orion, balancing a Li-poly pack will not affect punch, but it will affect run times.

taken from rcca article

http://www.rccaraction.com/articles/orion_battry.asp

JDT

11-01-2006, 08:44 AM

I have been gathering parts for my conversion to a truck body, how have you guys done the front body posts? I fabricated(hacked) a bracket for the back but don't want to have to do something like this for the front. The masher 2000 tires are going to look good with the rc10gt body I got, I got all stainless screws coming but otherwise I know have all the stuff so I need to get it done. Let me know your ideas for mounting truck bodies.

raytracer

11-01-2006, 10:05 PM

I wouldn't say that.

Integrated balancing tube. “Balancing” refers to the process by which a pack’s individual cells are charged to identical capacities so that they will discharge and recharge to the same levels. It’s basically the same as using a discharge tray to match the cells in a sub-C pack. Team Orion says you don’t have to balance the cells in the Platinum pack until you’ve used it at least 30 times, and balancing affects only run times.

Above: on the Platinum’s underside, there’s a third tube that’s used to balance the pack. According to Orion, balancing a Li-poly pack will not affect punch, but it will affect run times.

taken from rcca article

http://www.rccaraction.com/articles/orion_battry.asp

I fly elec heli and it is true that their 3 cell lipo batts need to be balanced otherwise performance goes down significantly.
I have yet to balance the platinum though but I've had it for only 3 months. I already asked some people at rctech who had it for a year and they also dont balance. In anycase team orion made that port at the bottom so you can charge each cell individually at half the rate so you wont need to buy a balancer. Just adjust the charger setting on the ice. :D

JDT

11-02-2006, 09:38 AM

Good to know, the platinums are just to expensive at this time, it seems that most good lipo batteries are costly but they push it, maybe the integrated balance tube is what drives the costs up, maxamps offers nearly twice the capacity and amps for less money.The plastic case seems like a good idea but not at twice the cost of similar capacity and amps. Its funny how the costs have come down in recent years, they will only continue to get better which is definetely good for us. The sub c market keeps fighting back but I think its only a matter of time now as cell chemistry gets better, the new high amp cells can do things sub c batteries can only dream of.

JDT

11-04-2006, 01:52 PM

I cut a piece of aluminum angle in the shape of the yeah shock towers, then bolted two year towers together to make a hopefully bash proof rear as I have bent the yeah shock towers before, the second benefit of this angle is I was able to run two bolts up from the inside of the diff case, I had done one bolt into the stock tower for a while now after seeing in posted here, I used an old yeah spacer(for the rear shock tower)filed out wide enough to go on the opposite side of the diff case now the horizontal bolts go through two towers a spacer, the stock plastic diff case into another spacer, the spacer facing the wrong way is hard to see as it was scratched up alot by the filing so it was painted black when I did the angle. I intend to mount body posts on the outer edges and will use the center of the angle to mount my receiver to get it away from the esc and it will be in an easy location for waterproofing come winter. Its a heavy sob, but the tires and wheels that are going to end up on this thing weigh as much as the car without electronics, mm5700 with deep gearing it should be okay. Let me know what you think

JDT

11-04-2006, 01:57 PM

oh yeah I forgot to mention the wing mounting bolts hold the two towers to the angle, of course I used bolt and nut on the shock mounts so thats through all three pieces also, from the top of the diff case up the three pieces of aluminum together are nearly 10mm, better not bend lol. The bottom half of the towers are "just" two layers thick but once I get the balls studs bolting them together I hope I won's have any issues.

sim600

11-06-2006, 10:02 PM

It looks like you really don't want this tower to bend. Haha. Nice job.

scoob

11-07-2006, 03:25 PM

www.starluckrc.com has a deal on a BL system for $140. Look under October specials link. The Mtroniks sport and 380c 8t combo would be plenty fast too. It will require some soldering Vs the Novak or Mamba though.

Just a heads up for sportracer or anyone else looking to go BL for cheap. That's as cheap as it gets. If you have questions about that setup, post questions on the BL forum, I think it would work great in the df02.

JDT

11-09-2006, 05:07 PM

I always had problems breaking the lower suspension mounting points off the chassis, I had experimented and found that zip ties worked amazingly well so I tried some sheet metal and had excellent results, this time I did them out of aluminum angle, its thin but has increased the strength tenfold at least, since the front tire will now stick out past the bumper I used one of the front side of the arm as well as the rear, this required some dremel work on the arm but I have never had any issues with these arms so thats why I skipped the aluminum. If I have a problem with the bolts backing out I may have to dremel out a small area of the steering pivot brace to get a nut on there, in the back I just used one brace but ran the bolt all the way through into the cavity for the spur gear, once again I may have to put a nut in here if I have horrible problems with the threads stripping or coming loose all the time.

JDT

11-09-2006, 05:17 PM

Boy saving the pictures to the best for web size really makes them ugly. Hope you can even see anything, the first picture is to show the bolts in the spur cavity(small white dot straight back from the motor mount slot), the second shows the head on from the front, the last shows three braces and the bottom of the chassis. The one on the rear side of the front arms will make the bumper mount a little lower but only 1/16 inch or so. The front one will be also be held with the two bumper mounting bolts, the rear will be held by the rearmost bumper bolt/diff case bolthole. $3 worth of aluminum and a little time is all it took to make these, test runs with thinner sheetmetal have been awesome (no arms ripped off since) so I anticipate really good things from this setup.

sim600

11-10-2006, 12:04 AM

I don't understand what you wrote but I think I see from the 2nd picture.
You made a brace for the inner hingepins out of angled aluminium because a straight aluminium plate wouldn't have fit. Cool.

JDT

11-10-2006, 04:08 PM

I looked at this pictures on my work computer today and had to laugh, very bad, here is a photo of a couple of the homemade hinge pin holders in rough form

JDT

11-10-2006, 04:10 PM

mounting the square carbon fibre shock tower onto the front side of the diff case, you can't even see the yead tower behind from the front view

JDT

11-10-2006, 04:13 PM

Here is a side angle view of the assembly, the new yeah shock tower is much thicker than the old style and does not have the holes in the upright part, you can see the sqaure carbon fibre one mounted on the front is like 1/16 or 1/8 inch bigger all the way around, the cat at least likes it :D

JDT

11-10-2006, 04:19 PM

Okay too dark you can't really see the square tower next

JDT

11-10-2006, 04:20 PM

and a better side view

JDT

11-10-2006, 04:24 PM

Hopefully the yeah towers are much better, hopeing with the square bracing two bolts in the front and the the improved yeah design it will finally be bash proof lol. I copied the Square pattern onto some 3 mm aluminum and will try that with the extra yeah I got if this breaks, I made it a little longer so both bolts will go through both towers but it is rather ugly so I would rather have the carbon one on there.

sim600

11-11-2006, 11:29 AM

What shocks are those you've got JDT. Are they losi style bottom fillers? do they work well?

JDT

11-12-2006, 04:12 PM

The fronts are evader bx fronts with losi springs but I am using the stock spring retainer and shock end so I can have some pop off protection with ball studs. They do fill from the bottom, I planned on getting the blue versions as my truck version will have some blue on it but never did, the chromes are like $16.99 from tower, blue ones are like $25, these chrome ones come with a white spring that is pretty soft for these cars but they will take any standard losi or associated spring as well as duratrax so tuning options are endless, good adjustable shock for the money. I had problems with the stock duratrax bottom ends breaking but other guys here have reported no problems so it depends on speeds and use apparently.

JDT

11-20-2006, 06:00 PM

Can anyone confirm for me that a TT 01 battery strap is the same length(holes) as a DF 02 battery strap? I think some of you guy have both cars. I see square has a carbon strap for the tt now just wondering if they are the same.

raytracer

11-21-2006, 01:02 AM

sim600

11-21-2006, 11:55 AM

You guys are going to love this one...

Tamiya World Championship in Shizuoka this past weekend (http://www.tamiya.com/english/rc/twc2006/index.htm)

The top 3 finishers...
http://www.tamiya.com/english/rc/twc2006/buggy.JPG

Okay, the top 2 guys ran DF-03 Dark Impacts, but check out what the third guy is holding.

:D

english matt

11-27-2006, 03:34 PM

JDT

12-08-2006, 06:41 PM

got the truck version of the df 02 nearly done today, with the tobee 42880 adapter its geared at 84/15 so 14.46 final drive ratio, I tested the big tired buggy with moads which are slightly taller than the mashers and the mm 5700 with 2s and six cells both seemed fine gearing wise but I will eventually at least try a 3s and maybe drop the gearing back a little bit. Its locked in the rear and open in the front, homemade hinge pin braces, its a little heavy but its not a racer its a basher, or at least will be tommorrow as high of 50 expected, 32 today...cold. Need to set the camber and toe otherwise she is good to go.

JDT

12-08-2006, 06:45 PM

Thats a full size bic lighter, hello ground clearance

RC_Freak

12-10-2006, 04:32 AM

raytracer

12-12-2006, 01:58 AM

Hi guys, anybody use the df03 shocks? I never bought alum shocks for my df02 but since the df03 seems longer and threaded shocks it seems like a better deal. Also anyone try to replace the gears with plastic ones to make this car lighter? Its identical to the tt01 bevel and gear diffs.

raytracer

12-12-2006, 09:30 PM

Which brand you guys recommend?
GPM
http://www.rcmart.com/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=595_744_712&products_id=15020&osCsid=3aec7aa3082e8533ff36cf7a12f4813c

Yeah
http://www.rcmart.com/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=595_744_712&products_id=20086&osCsid=3aec7aa3082e8533ff36cf7a12f4813c

3racing
http://www.rcmart.com/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=595_744_923&products_id=20589&osCsid=3aec7aa3082e8533ff36cf7a12f4813c

3racing is listed under df03 though. But its already a set for such a low price.

cds_uk

12-13-2006, 05:19 AM

I am really thinking about getting one of these and racing it down at my local club, just to be a little bit different from the Losi`s and Yoks and the rest of them, i doubt i will be winning but it would be cool to get it somewhere near the pace, my only question is what do you guys do to keep the weather out, i live in sunny England so there is going to be plenty of rain and mud about, i saw a link for an undertray in another part of the thread but it was all in japanese, still i know at least that they are out there, can any of you help me out here or is it just a case of shoe horning something like a top force undertray onto the car, any help really appreciated here guys.

JDT

12-13-2006, 10:46 AM

You can make an undertray yourself, thats what I did, Parma sells sheeets of .060 lexan which you can lay on the bottom of the car and melt with a heat gun, if you can't find it check around locally as I was able to get both .020 and .030 sheets from a local plastic packager that vacuum forms commercial product packages, he wanted $5000 to do a mold and make them right so I will just keep doing the heat gun homemade thing when mine get torn up.

JDT

12-13-2006, 10:54 AM

Hi
I bought a gravel hound for my birthday and racing it less than a week does any 1 know if there r any rims and race tires that would suit a gravel hound coz the shop in my town says tamiya doesnt make any race tires or rims but i have seen them but not seperate i would greatly appericate any help thanks ps i live in australia

Check out
http://xyzzy.dyn.dhs.org/df02/index.php?
some info on wheels, Since you are in austrailia I would tell you to check Dinball

http://www.rcmart.com/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=35_899&products_id=13182

http://www.rcmart.com/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=35_899&products_id=13183

first one is fronts, the second is rears, these will allow you to run any brand of 2.2 racing tires, if you want a little fatter tire all the way around order 2 sets of rears, Losi, proline and panther all make racing tires for 4wd buggies in skinny front and fat rear configuration but many people like the look of 4 the same. Dinball has lots of hop up parts for the df 02, if you want square racing parts try rc champ advisor in Japan, all the sqaure stuff is top notch IMO. Dinball even has some cheapy 2.2 tires but I would stike with one of the big three.

RC_Freak

12-16-2006, 08:47 PM

Thanks for your help I raced the gravel hound last night it went very well but was well off the pace but it managed to keep up with the b4 rc cars does any one have any idea how to make the gravel hound faster without changing the 540 stock motor because its not very competitive with the b4 any help would be greatly appericated

Fenris

12-17-2006, 08:04 PM

I got my mamba 4600 package in the post last thursday (Jamie from Starluckrc provides excellent service), spent friday morning soldering up the deans connectors at work, and installed the system in my Rising Storm saturday afternoon with a killer hangover after friday evenings work christmas function.
It took me a while to get things right with the calibration on the esc because I was taking far too long from full throttle to brake to neutral, it took me ages to realise the whole process only takes about 3 seconds.
I ended up with everything out of whack, foreward/reverse was all wrong and motor wires were switched to compensate but I was only running at about half the expected speed and there was no grass ripping acceleration.
I took the dog for a walk and thought about it and realised I had been running the ecs in reverse at 50% power but with the car going foreward.
I reset everything, started from scratch recalibrated and pulled the trigger :D :D :D
There was the grass ripping acceleration. I don't think the spikey tyres will last the week. I am using the standard gearing that came with the car, 19/70, and I think it could probably cope fine with the 67t.
I have been modding the buggy for robustness since I got it so it is fairly tough. I have only run it on the grass so far because the roads seem too narrow at that speed, a clip of the curb and the arms will surely be ripped out of the chassis.
I am looking foreward to some gravel action.

JDT

12-18-2006, 04:05 PM

The mm 5700 must have been a little much for the spur conversion as it ended up grenading within one packs time, I switched back to the stock spur and geared 70/16 for now with the 4.9 inch tall masher 2000's I got some cogging, took off the mashers and put on the buggy dirt hawgs, even with rear sized hawgs all the way around it was nearly uncontrollable as it would spin the tires at any time full throttle was applied no matter if I was on gravel, cement or grass, I need to get another set of truck hawgs or dirt works which are 4 or 4.1 inches tall, I think at 70/16 it will be perfect for them. Its been cold here so my temps never got over 125 on esc or motor even severly undergeared with the mashers.

Fenris

12-18-2006, 06:58 PM

I ripped half of the rear arm mount out of the chassis last night :( it didn't take long. I flipped it and hit a wooden posts, fortunately it wasn't at full tilt but still I was not impressed.
I have an old chassis where nothing was ripped or torn but there was slight damage on all the hinge mounts, you know when the plastic goes white from stress on the inside of where the diff housing sits. I am not sure whether to try to glue the current one or move everything to the old one and try and beef it up as per the JDT mod, at least until I get another chassis.
As for cogging, the 4600 is my first brushless setup and I still don't know what cogging looks like, its smooth as .
Just out of interest where are people putting their controller and receiver? There is not much room to choose from under the RS shell and my Esc, Rx, motor and wires are all next to each other, there doesn't seem to be any glitching but when I run the buggy about 50 meters away I sometimes loose steering and throttle control. That never happened with the brushed motor.
I use a JR XS3.

JDT

12-19-2006, 09:51 AM

I also run JR but mines the pro with rs310 receiver, since I am running the truck body now it has plenty of room and I put the reciever on the battery bar for normal usage and up on the shelf for the body mounts when its wet or snowing, but my buggy version I run the esc on top of the table attached to the servo mounting table in the middle of the chassis, then I mounted the receiver with velcro or "dual lock" to the top of the spur gear cover right in the center of the chassis, not sure if you would have room for the rs300 receiver as its a little larger, I ran the motor wires to the left and zip tied them to the servo table leg, the receiver is actually upside down to get the antenna to exit on the right and go to the normal antenna location, the battery wire comes back towards it but then loops to the front to connect so I haven't had any problems but have since went back to brushed esc and motor for the buggy as the mm is in the truck.
I keep a few chassis around but have not broken an arm mount off since doing the ugly homemade hinge pin braces, you should try them out, I used a dremel and some hand files to make mine so they ain't pretty but its survived at least 20 hits that would have broken the chassis for sure, I think I am on my eight chassis lol, took me long enough to address the weak point.

Fenris

12-19-2006, 07:08 PM

I also have the rs310 receiver. I had some spare parts lying around so I got out the hack saw and cut the back end of the servo cage away so it only uses 2 screws now, the receiver fits in front of the motor and behind the servo, with the max on the tabletop it helped tidy things up but I have not run it to see what the range is yet or if it will glitch.
I usually like to fit the body pretty low so I try to fit the electronics in the hump, I might have to re think my strategy.
I would love to direct solder the motor to the esc to tidy up all the wires, but I just cant bring myself to do it and I know it would all end in tears.
I glued the rear chassis hinge last night. I don't know how strong Tarzans Grip is but it was all I had at the time. I am thinking of making a small cutout at the very back that the hinge pin can move foreward into, and also drill a bit into the rear of the gear case so as the 2 pin ends can fit into the case. It won't be as strong as a metal brace but it will get me going this evening.
Thanks for the ideas.

JDT

12-20-2006, 10:44 AM

lol, I did the same mod to the servo table but I wanted to get the antenna as far away from the motor and the esc with the brushless, my range is better than my eyesight with the receiver on the battery strap with the truck body, I do think I picked a bad location for the antenna tube to exit as so far I have been averaging one antenna tube per run. I had several 35+mph crashes on concrete yesterday, the chassis held up great, I did however bust off both front body mounts and stripped the threads from one of the rears but overall it was a pretty good high speed day, with the buggy hawgs the car was very fast on 6 cells, the temperature was a little cold so it had a really hard time hooking up with the 2s, one nasty wipe out ended up with the truck on its lid sliding backwards for 40 or so feet, it was really probably only 1-2 seconds but it seems like an eternity watching it slide backwards upside down away from me, body got some road rash from the deal but survived intact. I think I may try to turn my start power up to high and test with the mashers again, the esc and motor did not get hot but it was only 40 degrees out and I did get some cogging at 70/16 gearing. I was just thinking yesterday by removing the wires from the esc and the connectors from the motor the motor wires would be perfect lenght for the df 02 but I have yet to talk myself into unsoldering the esc wires and this would make changing motors later a PITA so I will probably just shorten both sets of wires if it really starts to bother me.

Fenris

12-20-2006, 06:57 PM

:D Im not so worried about road rash these days as my dog has already chewed up the shell in a number of places. He loves chasing the storm and my front upper suspension arms are all chewed and covered in dog slobber from where he grabs the car while on the run. Its not so easy for him to catch it now, funny thing is if I leave the house with the buggy he will sit at the front door and cry and whine. I cant even work on the car without him sitting with his nose a foot away from it, watching me intently.
My receiver in the servo well didn't work at all, maybe 10 to 20 meters before problems started, so I relocated the receiver to under the rear wing which is made out of aluminium sheet and protects everything in a tumble.
I cut an angle out of the table top and now the esc sits in between the motor and the servo.
I didn't have time to run it in the new configuration yet but it has to be an improvement.

fijisan

12-20-2006, 08:12 PM

hello fellas,

I just picked up a DF02 (Rising Storm) and I'm looking forward to getting this put together when it arrives.
I've had a chance to read thru this thread and it's been very helpful in assisting me to figure out what hopups I'll be adding on.

One question I presently have is regarding the hopup steering links.
Tamiya has the alumimum one and GPM has an alloy one.
Can anyone tell me the difference between these 2 parts other than pricing?
As these really necessary if you're just bashing around?

Thanks.

Fenris

12-21-2006, 01:51 AM

Hi fijisan
Im still using the standard steering links that came with the kit so I cant really comment on how much better the metal ones might be, but for bashing the plastic ones haven't shown up as a weak spot yet.

JDT

12-21-2006, 09:42 AM

Bakabaka had reported good results with the yeah racing steering so this is what I bought, it allows 4x8 bearings which can be had at most hobby shops, it did improve the feeling of the steering by taking away a little of the slop the plastic has but its not critical. Maybe some other gusy can chime in but my hop up order would be
1. Front shock tower
a. yeah racing has recently improved there design to be much stronger, its
main weekness now is the small extensions used to mount the ball stud to,
by drilling through these extensions and upgrading the front shock to
the evader bx as detailed on this forum allow a bolt to run all the way
through the shock bushing and tower for a nut on the back.

JDT

12-21-2006, 10:11 AM

continued
2. Evader BX front shocks for the front which would allow you to drill out the extensions and do the above mod.
3. CVD's-I prefer the tamiya, # 53790, they require you to use a different diff cup joint #53791, they are steel, priced in the middle of the four brands available, tobee is the cheapest, then tamiya, then gpm titanium and then sqaure. You will want to do these eventually anyway as even with the stock can you can bend and distort the stock dogbones
4. Tires, your stock spikes will only stay good if you run on only dirt, one good battery pack and the stock motor you can ruin a set of stock spikes driving around on cement or gravel, I would suggest dirt hawgs, the buggy sized hawgs are okay but the truck dirt hawgs by proline are 4 inches tall, wear great and with a stock motor or even down to 19 turns you can easliy run with the optional 70/16 gearing available. If you mainly play on the street you can get some tt 01 tires and then gear it up quite a bit on the stock or higher turn motors.
5. Aluminum steering setup-tightens the steering up and eliminates breakage
6. square tt01 diff locker, nothing like locking the rear end to help with traction
7. square steering brace to further tighten up the steering
8. make some homemade hinge pin braces in prepartion for a better esc and faster motor
9. best motor and esc you can afford, I am slightly jaded so I will go ahead and recommend the mamba max here.
10. Front 1/8 scale buggy shocks on the rear of this car, I still have not tried this one but some guys got good results, I have tried the tamiya shocks, the gpm shocks and some old kyosho units and they all still bottom out, I of course and trying to convert to truggy so the larger tires really help the bottoming out issue.

Good luck, left us know if you have any problems or questions we'll try to help, I don't want to give you the wrong impression about this car, with the stock motor they are mega durable, the faster you go the more you need to modify, I am not a racer just a retard basher who pushes faster, higher and further just to see what brakes as I have little regard for damage as I can get a whole new car kit for $105 from tower lol. I have over $500(motor esc receiver tires and hop ups) in a $100 car, gotta love rc :D

fijisan

12-21-2006, 02:51 PM

JDT,

Thanks for the tips.
Also, I read here on this thread that the evader BX and ST rear shock assembly are the same? So I would assume that is what would be recommended for the rear shocks?

JDT

12-21-2006, 04:30 PM

Yes the rear shocks for an evader st and an evader bx rear shocks are the same, they are okay but will still allow the car to bottom out unless you run a very heavy oil which makes it very hard to drive, I learned to live with the bottoming out as its only on big jumps that cause nearly all 10th scales to bottom out. Some guys used 1/8 buggy front shocks on the rear and have had good results but I still haven't found an adjustable set at a price I like, If you are willing to live with preload clips rather than screw type preload adjusters they can be had pretty cheap on ebay.

fijisan

12-21-2006, 09:49 PM

I dont plan on doing many big jumps - mostly bashing around the local park and school grounds (asphalt). I also plan on running a novak 4300BL.
Any recommendations on the gearing?

JDT

12-22-2006, 09:11 AM

You will be able to get away with alot on the brushless, many guys run the ss5800 at stock 19/70 or even 19/67 with buggy hawgs so you should not have any problem, if you decide to change out the spur to a 67 you can get up to 22 on the pinion, Like I said I like the ground clearance so I would run it 19/70 until the stock tires are gone and then order some wheels and the truck dirt hawgs and a 16 pinion, 16/70 spinning a four inch tire should be no problem, you can get pinions from 16-22 to fit the car so gearing is pretty good but you have to tear the entire car apart to change the spur so its not so easy to change from 70 to 67 tooth spurs and back again. Duratrax has a $30 flashpoint temp gun, its what I use, if you are going to drop the money on a brushless its a good investment just to monitor temps after a few minutes and at the end of the run everytime you change setups, plus you could post your info here for the benefit of the group. Lots of guys have novak setups but not to many have posted data about how hot they get and such although 19/67 on buggy hawgs with the ss 5800 has been said to run hot in some peoples cars(driving style differrence I assume)

fijisan

12-23-2006, 04:16 AM

JDT,

Thanks for your input.
Ive got a temp gun - It'll come in handy when I get it setup.

Also, do you kow if a set of the RC10GT shocks will fit and do the job? I found these in a parts box and got these in a bulk trade I did awhile back.

JDT

12-27-2006, 09:57 AM

not sure on the rc10gt shocks, is they are between 100-110mm open they should be fine for the rear, front is around 80mm open and get pretty bouncy if you try and get much above 85mm.
temp guns are a great idea with any electric but crucial with brushless as the gearing can be pushed farther which makes more heat. Keep us updated on how everything works out.
On a side note I had a nasty wipeout sunday and sheared off the cvd end flush with the wheel, stock dog bones lasted for two full throttle pulls before one spit out so my df 02 is out of action until I get an order in from Japan, put the mm 5700 in my old t4 for some speed runs and lost control and hit a fire hydrant, massive carnage. no big loss it had a couple of the old superglue and cotton ball repairs as well as four or five different size screws and bolts due to stripping, time to take off the turnbuckles and electronics and toss it out lol.

timie1

01-04-2007, 06:50 PM

Hi all. I am the proud new owner of a set of these
http://www.tamiyausa.com/product/item.php?product-id=53788 turnbuckle shaft set. I'm curious now to experiment with playing around with the settings of camber and also the steering linkage connector tie rod etc. Has anyone else got these parts? If so, what settings have you used? I realise the settings used are dependent on the tires and wheels used, and the suspension and shocks, and track conditions.........but I just want an idea what people are using for generally good results. For what it's worth, I use the dirt hawgs all round and the star dish wheels with the original shocks. I like the idea of changing the camber on the rear wheels for a few reasons, it looks better with negative camber, and less wear on the tires. But how can I can make it handle better? I don't do a lot, if any jumps. It's winter here now so there isn't much chance of getting out to test my new settings, but I'm anxious to fiddle with it so I need help. Maybe when there is no snow around I'll test it.

Thanks

JDT

01-05-2007, 01:03 PM

I would suggest you start at as close to the stock lengths as possible and adjust to your liking, I usually try to set my car up with a battery in the chassis, you will definetely want to set it up on its tires meaning if you have a stand take the car off as you will want to have the suspension loaded by the weight of the chassis for set up, your driving style will affect how much camber you want, I run negative camber on the front and rear, some guys like negative on the front and static (0) on the rear, the toe is what will really wake up the handling, the more you crank it up the faster the car will turn, as long as the front tires aren't so toed in that the tires scrub you will be fine. Sorry I could not give measurements as I have converted to normal ball studs with rpm ball caps and lundsford titatium turnbuckles so my measurements wouldn't even make sense with the tamiya turnbuckles.

fijisan

01-05-2007, 05:01 PM

Any good tire recommendations for these Tamiya diash wheels? -
http://www.tamiyausa.com/product/item.php?product-id=53728

I'll be running mainly thru grass and asphalt.

Thanks!

timie1

01-06-2007, 12:38 AM

Thanks JDT. Yet again you are quick to offer helpful advice. Yeah I've had the turnbuckles to adjust toe since I got the kit. I haven't experimented too much with it cos the standard kit ones are a right pain in the arse to adjust. These new ones are much easier to adjust.
Do you know what benefits the steering linkage rod (the linkage that replaces the plastic piece that connects to the servo saver) has over the plastic one? I'm thinking maybe it will help to increase or decrease the throw of the steering sort of like EPA on the control? Maybe it's more so that if it turns more of either left or right (not getting confused with tracking left or right), you can adjust it so it's throw is equal for both left and right? :confused:

Thanks

JDT

01-08-2007, 08:54 AM

The adjustable steering linkage is only needed if you can't get your servo saver centered up right, these cars are known to have a problem with this, one chassis I had I ground off the chassis to use a regular servo saver but have since used one of the old gpm turnbuckles I had to make an adjustable one to use the stock servo saver, all the stock ones I have are off just a bit, they are either slightly left or right which causes the car to pull that way so by adjusting that turnbuckle I can make the car run straighter.

JDT

01-08-2007, 09:11 AM

Any good tire recommendations for these Tamiya diash wheels? -
http://www.tamiyausa.com/product/item.php?product-id=53728

I'll be running mainly thru grass and asphalt.

Thanks!

Are you in the USA? I have a set of pro line buggy hawgs I could get rid of, I had got the IIIs for the front
http://www2.towerhobbies.com/cgi-bin/wti0001p?&I=LXDU14&P=7
and the normal for the rear
http://www2.towerhobbies.com/cgi-bin/wti0001p?&I=LXDU13&P=ML
but later ended up buying hpi dish wheels and rears all around, I don't really need two sets of tires this size so I never glued these up, alot of guys on here run them and they are a little bigger than the stock tires to allow more clearance and such. $20 shipped to your door in the USA, it would only save you about $5 over tower however so feel free to get some new ones as these are out of the package and been put on a set of stock wheels but as indicated never glued up.

fijisan

01-08-2007, 06:21 PM

Are you in the USA? I have a set of pro line buggy hawgs I could get rid of, I had got the IIIs for the front
http://www2.towerhobbies.com/cgi-bin/wti0001p?&I=LXDU14&P=7
and the normal for the rear
http://www2.towerhobbies.com/cgi-bin/wti0001p?&I=LXDU13&P=ML
but later ended up buying hpi dish wheels and rears all around, I don't really need two sets of tires this size so I never glued these up, alot of guys on here run them and they are a little bigger than the stock tires to allow more clearance and such. $20 shipped to your door in the USA, it would only save you about $5 over tower however so feel free to get some new ones as these are out of the package and been put on a set of stock wheels but as indicated never glued up.

I have a set of the tamiyas coming in. These will fit the tamiya dish wheels?

JDT

01-09-2007, 02:01 PM

I have a set of the tamiyas coming in. These will fit the tamiya dish wheels?

Yes, these will also fit the stock wheels, the fronts are a slightly different tread pattern than the rears which is said to offer a little benefit over four rears all around but I think it has more to do with a skinny tire on the front turns easier/faster rather than the tread pattern, no reason to debate it here lol. I have a set of four rears on hpi star wheels and it will easily give enough traction to flip the car on cement or asphalt, the tires roll enough that it will grind the edges off your wheel so traction is pretty decent.

timie1

01-10-2007, 03:19 AM

Yes, these will also fit the stock wheels, the fronts are a slightly different tread pattern than the rears which is said to offer a little benefit over four rears all around but I think it has more to do with a skinny tire on the front turns easier/faster rather than the tread pattern, no reason to debate it here lol. I have a set of four rears on hpi star wheels and it will easily give enough traction to flip the car on cement or asphalt, the tires roll enough that it will grind the edges off your wheel so traction is pretty decent.

If I may add my few cents worth. For what it's worth, I agree with JDT. i have these dirt hawgs (the skinny ones on front and wide on back). In my opinion, putting the wide tires on the front narrow wheels would stretch the tire too much, losing a lot of lateral sidewall support making it worse during a turn. Unless there was some way of putting the wider wheels from the back on the front (without modifying anything), then it would be best to stick with a skinnier tire on a skinnier wheel. Granted I haven't tried any other brand of wheel on my car, but the offset of the rear wheel of the star dish wheels is too great to fit on the front and rotate freely. The inside grinds against the steering mechanisms.
That was rather wordy and confusing............I'll simplify. Stick with the skinnier wheels and tires on front, and wider on back.

fijisan

01-10-2007, 03:53 AM

timie1,
Thanks for your feedback.

JDT,
PMd you.

JDT

01-10-2007, 02:48 PM

pm back

fijisan

01-10-2007, 03:00 PM

Thanks JDT. :)

JDT

01-10-2007, 05:58 PM

If I may add my few cents worth. For what it's worth, I agree with JDT. i have these dirt hawgs (the skinny ones on front and wide on back). In my opinion, putting the wide tires on the front narrow wheels would stretch the tire too much, losing a lot of lateral sidewall support making it worse during a turn. Unless there was some way of putting the wider wheels from the back on the front (without modifying anything), then it would be best to stick with a skinnier tire on a skinnier wheel. Granted I haven't tried any other brand of wheel on my car, but the offset of the rear wheel of the star dish wheels is too great to fit on the front and rotate freely. The inside grinds against the steering mechanisms.
That was rather wordy and confusing............I'll simplify. Stick with the skinnier wheels and tires on front, and wider on back.

I agree you would not want to try and put a set of the rear buggy tires on the front rims, if you could get them to fit they would look a little silly and the tire/body roll would bottom the car out lol, I'll go look at the dish star wheels after supper, I am sure I ran four stock rear tires all the way around on the bmx track before, don't remember modifying anything.

JDT

01-10-2007, 10:30 PM

I had switched to normal sized ball studs(losi, ae and duratrax at least) with rpm caps so I get no interference with the stock rear sized wheel on the front, the stock setup is more of a ring than a cap so it must be just a hair big. I switched all my ball studs over except the four lower shock mounts, and the two for the wiper arm for the steering. the rpm caps are much better IMO, they suck to get on but don't pop off so easily.

JDT

01-12-2007, 12:09 PM

fijisan

01-12-2007, 03:16 PM

fijisan-forgot to mention, that envelope I sent the tires in was recycled/reused, it had come ems airmail from Osaka Japan, by the time you get it I would guess it will have traveled somewhere in excess of 12,000 miles lol.

awesome.
I'll reuse it and "pass it forward"!
funny you should mention this - I have an ol' schoolmate living in New Zealand and we've reused the SAME Christmas greeting card (he originally sent it to me first..) for the last 12 years. We just keep sending it back and forth... :D

matter

01-13-2007, 03:44 PM

JDT

01-16-2007, 10:46 PM

Hi guys,

will DF02 suspension arm will fit on TA02 chassis?

i have ta02 hummer and wants to widen it and wants aluminum suspension
available at http://www.yeahracing.com/catalog/index.php?cPath=29_55_70

will it fit with ta02 chassis?

thanks

the df 02 arms are 25mm at the chassis side and 17mm at the c hub side, you will need df 02dog bones or cvds for the longer arms, if your knuckles are to small you can always get aluminum c hubs and knuckles to match the df 02 arms you are buying, if you have a local tamiya dealer you could always order a set of stock arms to try it out first as they are only like $6 for the set, you would probably need to mock it up and figure out what size turnbuckles you need to make upper arms as the mounting points may not be the same for the two cars.

JDT

01-16-2007, 10:52 PM

Not sure if any of the big tire guys are still around this board but I wanted to update I have been running the 4.9 inch tall masher 2000s trying the spur adapter again with the 84 tooth spur and 15 tooth pinion, this time I tried the 11 and 5 clock positions and the mesh looks perfect after more than 10 packs, we got 4 inches of snow over the weekend so today I put a serious beating on it burning across the snow full throttle, the mm 5700 sure can throw some snow lol, it was fine either really slow or really fast otherwise it would sink and high center on the snow, it was a really good time.

Miedin

01-24-2007, 06:11 PM

What's the turn limit on the stock ESC for the rising storm? My father want's a cheap RTR 4WD buggy but wants to put in a 19 turn motor. Can the stock ESC handle that?

Thanks.

dropzone

01-24-2007, 09:09 PM

I Don't Think The Stock Esc Will Be Able To Handle It. Those Esc's Were Good Up To A Sport Tuned Motor.not Sure On The Turns Of The Motor ,not Very Low. Hope It Helps.

JDT

01-25-2007, 09:42 AM

I think some guys ran the stock esc on 19 turn motors but eventually it killed them, I was always told it was only listed down to 23 turn motors.

Miedin

01-25-2007, 12:17 PM

Thanks for the info guys. I figured it couldn't handle it but I wanted to make sure.

houndog

01-27-2007, 05:24 PM

JDT

01-29-2007, 10:48 AM

Hi all,
bought my first RC car for a few years a couple of weeks back (maybe more than a few years, not been into this since my Monster Beetle and Super Sabre!!) and i've spent the last part of my life reading this great DF-02 forum. I'm still baffled by the gearing thing though.... I'm currently running my hound with a 67 spur and a 17 pinion and it runs pretty rapidly, i've bought 20, 19, 17 and 16 pinions. Whats the best combo with either the 67 or stock 70 spur??? I'm more into the top speed than the acceleration. Any opinions would be good.
Spec so far: BBs all round, Ripmax Quake esc, Dragon 12x2 motor (soldered onto esc) deans battery connectors and a few other alu bits.

Thanks for reading.

What really makes a difference is tire size, I started off with a 12 turn and 67/19 and it was very hot after a run so I would bet you are getting pretty hot, I actually melted an endbell off it got so hot(borrowed lipo 25 minutes straight running) I would say 70/16 with anything under a 14 turn is your best bet for longevity of the motor, esc and battery, this of course will slow you down some so you may just want to live with it as is, I know guys have run down to 10 turns on 70/16 but for me this resulted in a ruined $65 orion v2 10 turn even with the stock sized tires. Of course ambient air temperature and other things(traction, driving style etc) play into it to, the old saying about hold for finger on it for five seconds to see if its to hot is an okay method but $25 for a temp gauge will keep you from getting a burnt thumb, if you are running anything larger than the stock tires you should be 70/16 for sure once again IMO, I pushed my luck alot with bigger tires and ruined several $30 motors from heat before I went the route of the spur adapter for 84/15 gearing and bigger tires. When I was still searching for the limits of the df02 I actually borrowed a pair a slick and had it geared to 67/19 with a 12 turn and it was fine as the slicks were close to a half inch shorter than the stock tires. Guys have got on this board before and said they had 67/22 with a 12 turn and stock tires and not had issues so I guess it depends on who is driving mainly. Boy that is pretty wishy washy huh, just wanted to give my opinion.

houndog

01-29-2007, 04:41 PM

Cool, thanks for that jdt. Just to clear it up though (i just cant get my head round it) is the 16t or the 20t pinnion faster with the 67t spur? I know one has quicker acceleration and one has higher top speed but i'm a bit tardy and cant work it out :confused: .
Oh yeah, i'm using Proline Dirthawgs on stock 5 stars. Tamiya alu shocks and springs are on the way!
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v229/2olds442/ClaphamCommon004.jpg
Couple of vids, ones a car cam and the other is a ramp i made in the back garden, overshot the landing grass a bit though, man that hound can fly! Filmed by my 7yr old son.
http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v229/2olds442/?action=view&current=MOV00017.flv?t=1170106692
http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v229/2olds442/?action=view&current=MOV00012.flv?t=1170106728

JDT

01-30-2007, 08:46 AM

The onboard is super cool, car looks good, the bigger the pinion number the higher the top speed so the 20t would be faster top end than the 16t would be, are you having heat issues? this is really what you have to watch out for as to much can fry your esc, motor or battery, my brushed esc and the batteries I use are pretty good so the motor was the weak point and eventually would melt if the gearing was off.

JDT

01-30-2007, 08:49 AM

that should have read "off by to much" lol.

JDT

01-31-2007, 03:28 PM

I occassionally look on ebay for the Hot Wheels Flashfire as the white and purple one is based on the df 02 chassis, today I searched google to see what I could find and holy smoley, with radio $49.99 shipped in the USA.

http://www.cssdeals.com/main.php?act=plist&bact=pdet&ofrm=shopin&pid=2183

I may order one just to have a loaner car sitting around lol, needless to say I allready have the spairs.

houndog

02-18-2007, 08:15 AM

errrrrrrrrrr, yeah, heat problems occured today! Took the car off roading, all was going well until i was half way through the second battery pack. It was the first time that i tried 21/67 gearing and i think that might have been the problem. All of a sudden the car coughed to a stop and smoke started to appear, i ran over and one of the wires had come off the motor. Thinking that was all it was i returned home and soldered it back on. I just tried running it again and it sounds bad, runs very slow and gets very hot very quickly!!!! What have i done? The brush wires that came out the end bell have gone a funny colour? I guess the Ripmax Quake esc can handle it otherwise it would have cut out, its got some heat protection thing so it must be the dragon motor that was the weak link? It was a new battery aswell, 4300. The motor is a 12 double.... i just ordered a Reedy PT 9 turn double that should be here mid week, am i safe using that or should i drop back to a 19 or 20 tooth pinion? Is the drgon fixable or should i just bin it?
HELP! :( :( :eek: :confused:

szan

02-18-2007, 09:58 AM

Hi,

I think your ratio is not adapted for such motors. You should use 70t spur and 16t with motor under than 12t. And it may not be sufficient. In the past, I burned a 10t and a 12t, I had always heat pb. And then I decided to never go less that 14t, and no more pb.
You will experience some heat pb with your 9t for sure.
For more power, you can also choose a brushless, but more expensive...

Bye

JDT

02-18-2007, 11:54 AM

I agree with szan, if you are running the stock tires 12 turns is pushing your luck at 70/16 heat wise, with the 21/67 you are probably in the 17 or 19 turn range, 15 turn would be pushing it IMO, I to have melted endbells off motors with 70/16 gearing with a 10 turn motor so I wouldn't advise on the nine turn, maybe with conservative driving and switching back to 70/16 it may be okay but I probably wouldn't risk it.

houndog

02-18-2007, 02:57 PM

So is the Reedy gonna be safe if i run it at a lower gearing? Its costing me more than twice the price of the dragon and i'd hate to see it go up in smoke like the dragon did, until today i thought that was just hokum pokum but i think i just learnt my lesson!? DOH!
Whats the best ratio gearing for my new motor when it turns up?
19/67 i guess? Or 20/70? I just don't know?
Top speed is the game but frying motors is NOT the game, and as my last experiance was a monster beetle that my Dad built (god rest his soul) sometime in the 80s, i really need help. That smell of burning motors is not the nicest smell in the world!! Somebody just shout the optimum setup for what i'm running and i'll take it as gospell!!
Am i better off buying the next level up, Dark impact / Keen Hawk? Or should i just keep pushing the DF-02? Brushless is more $£$£ but do'es it make the difference in the heat department? Yey again, HELP.........

houndog

02-18-2007, 04:51 PM

So 16/70 is the only way forward? (be it on my own head if it melts, leave 5 mins between each pack?) What difference does a brushless setup make, the motor does'nt get hot? If i get a better ESC will it ease the load off the motor? I know if i go for a Novak motor i need a Novak ESC but do i have the option of sticking to my Reedy if i go for a Nosram Dominator ESC?
ALL THE GEAR BUT NO IDEA, lol........at my expense. :)

Fenris

02-18-2007, 07:01 PM

I put a Mamba Max 4600 in my Rising Storm and I think it is an awesome setup. The gearing is 19/70 and the car is definately fast enough.
The controller is always cool as are the batteries, the motor gets a bit hot (not as hot as my superstock RZ 23t) but only when the temp outside is above 30 Deg C (86F).

JDT

02-19-2007, 09:17 AM

IMO with stock tires
70/16-11 turn and below=no no
12 and 13 turn=I've done it but gets hot, pushing your luck in warm weather
14 or 15 turn=good, but gets hot when its very hot outside or long bashes
bl 5700 mm=fine could gear up 70/19 no problem
with the 3.7 in tall dirt hawgs
70/16 I've run as low as 12 turn but gets hot-stinking burning hot on warm days, nice orion with v2 endbells live but touchy with speedgems and other plastic endbell motors, I think a 15 is about the best bet with the dirt hawg buggy tires.
The mm 5700 is once again fine at 70/16 and the buggy hawgs it could probably gear up a tooth or two without much issues.
The reason the brushless have so much less heat is simple, drag and efficiency, there is no brush dragging on the rotor to cause mechanical friction type heat, the efficiency comes into play when you look at the ratings of the motors, I'm not sure about exact number here but lets say the mamba bl motors are 75-80% efficient, the average 12 turn is probably in the 60-65% range, the average 9 turn is probably in the 50-55% range, this affects heat of the motor in that only 20-25% of the mambas battery draw is "waisted" away as heat, with the brushed motor its possible to loose half the power as heat.
I think your motor and esc are getting hot because the motor is struggling to get to its rpm, I don't want to sound like a jerk but I doubt you are getting to your top speed as it is, the motor is struggling very hard to get up to speed, I would be willing to bet a 12 turn at 70/16 gearing would outperform the same 12 turn geared 67/20 as the motor is in its sweat spot so to say, instead of wasting a ton of battery power bogging the motor down and such, think of it as starting off in you real car for a one block drag race, you have to start in third gear with a stick, you can do it but the car takes so long to get up to speed the guy that started in first and topped out is allready to far out for your theoretical top speed to come into play. Hope this helps. 70/16 with a good 12 turn should be in the low to mid thirties, depending on the bl and battery you can go nutty, the mm 4600 and 3s could handle the 67/20 gearing I am sure but the 75mph top speed would destroy the car with the slightest error, a cigarette but become a huge bump in the road at 650 scale mph lol, it would be like hitting a one foot diameter tree in your car at 65, remember the faster you go the harder you wreck, telephone poles and firehydrants I never had any problem with seem to jump out in front of my car now usually at 40+ mph, one 3s wreck (50+mph) actually sheared off the end of my cvd, 5mm of steel busted flush.

szan

02-19-2007, 09:30 AM

My actual setup is a novak brushless 5800 with 67t/19t gear and it's fast enough and full of torque.
houndog, I guess, you'll experience heat pb with your new 9 turns.
JDT summary is good, you should respect that.
Bye

JDT

02-19-2007, 10:43 AM

I must have misread, I was thinking a 9 turn, with a 19 turn and the stock tires you should be good at 67/19, I had a nice 19 turn orion element in mine geared 70/19 with the buggy hawgs and it was fine, I am sure I could have gone up to 67/19 but never tried it.

szan

02-19-2007, 12:34 PM

no sorry JDT it's me, we were talking about a 9t and not 19t.
I've corrected my last post...
bye

JDT

02-19-2007, 02:12 PM

no problem, I think everyone will agree the nine turn is to much for this car even geared 70/16 with very short slicks (hpi slicks are 2.9 inches) it would still get very hot and more than likely cook the motor, I wouldn't risk it. I know $200 (bishoppowerproducts sell the mamba combos for $185) sounds like alot for a brushless setup but most people agree that once a comm has been turned four or five times on a brushed motor they start to loose power, I do not own a com lathe so I just bought the $30 speedgems and sv2 pro bb and ran them until they died, within a year or so I was wishing I had just spent the money on the novak system as I had $180 or more worth of worn out mod motors, of course by then the mm was being beta tested so I just waited until it was available, I still run my LRP esc and brushed mod motors in my df 02 buggy but once this last motor goes I will get another mm system, funny how I haven't played with the buggy alot since I got the truggy with the mm done lol.

szan

02-19-2007, 02:35 PM

Hi,

Just a question about slick tires, a friend of mine would like to test some on his df-02, do you have a reference or a link on tire and wheel that would fit well ? And what about drift ? is it possible to find tires too ?

Bye

houndog

02-19-2007, 03:04 PM

Thanks for all of this, just quickly though, whats an mm 4600 and mm 5700? Is that battery power or some kind of motor?

houndog

02-19-2007, 03:17 PM

Anybody know the limits of the Ripmax Quake esc, theres a guy on ebay selling one and he says theres no motor limit! Sounds too good to be true but if thats so i could go brushless with it?!?!
On the other hand people say white is black to sell things on thEbay.........

houndog

02-19-2007, 03:22 PM

Just found a link, can this be true?
http://www.howesmodels.co.uk/RadioControl/viewProduct.php?ProdID=1606

JDT

02-19-2007, 03:33 PM

mm is mamba max, the 4600 and 5700 is the kv, 5700 and 3S is crazy fast but will build alot of heat, I have only run my mm5700 and 3s a couple times as its so much power it flexes the chassis some so I mainly use 2s or six cell packs, 8 cells is good but chassis balance is way off and car flips to the left way to easy due to out of balance situation.

The slicks I used were

http://www2.towerhobbies.com/cgi-bin/WTI0001P?&I=LXLV91&P=V

mounted on

http://www2.towerhobbies.com/cgi-bin/wti0001p?&I=LXCEA1&P=ML

You should be fine with these as I have used them with 4, 5 and 6mm wide hex hubs without any interferance on the hubs but I use rpm caps instead of the stock for the steering so I would say you would want to have the 6mm (stock size) hex hubs to assured they would fit. I run these same rims with buggy dirt hawgs without issues on the 4mm hexes right now. You can get different compounds in the HPI slicks thats why I always liked them. I was only bashing and determined they did not give enough handling benefit to sacrifice the ground clearance. Alot of quys are using 2 inch pvc and touring car wheels to drift with, otherwise there are lots of choices, some are even shorter in height than the slicks but would be a little scary at speed as these are meant to be breaking loose, not a good thing at speed unless you are alone in a parking lot. Here are some pre mounted on wheels with the 12mm hex.

http://www2.towerhobbies.com/cgi-bin/wti0001p?&I=LXCEA1&P=ML

http://www2.towerhobbies.com/cgi-bin/wti0001p?&I=LXMRD4&P=ML

check around for a drifting forum, I'm sure someone is selling the pvc mounted on a 12mm hex wheel that will work, nearly if not all the tt 01 wheels fit the df 02, the ferarri fxx is the only one I can think of with a wierd offset on the rear wheels which won't work. I even tried a set of foams for some carpet running but it was a handful to try and run with touring cars and they only had 19 turn Money motors and I had the mm 5700 so the chassis is not really cut out to be an onroader for sure. Drifting however I think this car could do fine, I have driven mine enough on loose terrain and in the snow to know the car has very predictable slides and such.

houndog

02-19-2007, 04:51 PM

Turns out it won't work with a brushless setup but it can still handle any turn brushed motor. We shall see.

All-Or-Nothing

02-21-2007, 04:52 AM

Man this is a long thread............

Anyways, I just picked up a Rising Storm 4wd and although I didn't read every page I did get some very good tips. So here is what I have purchased so far

Complete hop-up kit from Yeah Racing
*Front and rear arms
*Front and rear shock towers
*Front and rear body posts
*Alloy driveshaft
*Rear uprights
*Front hubs, turnbuckles, Hex adapters (also rear)
*Rear alloy wing post
*Mamba Maxx 5700 with ESC
*Aluminum shocks all around (going to use my old Rustler springs)
and some HPI wheels and tires

Where can I get ball diffs and do they make a one-way for the Rising Storm.

JDT

02-21-2007, 08:58 AM

ball diff for tt 01 Tamiya 53663

http://www2.towerhobbies.com/cgi-bin/wti0001p?&I=LXFSE4&P=7

one way tamiya 53671

http://www2.towerhobbies.com/cgi-bin/wti0001p?&I=LXFSF0&P=7

my favorite the spool from square racing for the tt01

http://forums.radiocontrolzone.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=65171

I've had both, the one way and the ball diff, I can't be 100% sure but I think the ball diff and one way use a smaller drive cup so I had to get the 53791 tamiya cvds, this worked out in the end anyway as I feel the tamiya cvds are the best anyway, very precise, to use them with the stock diffs or the spool you will need 53790 tamiya outdrive cups. The spool can be had from rcchamp in japan for $18 retail, no problems with mine, I would estimate 100 hours on the spool without an issue, one way lasted about 20 hours maybe never fixed sold for $20, ball diff burned out due to lack of maintenance and after fixing it was sold it in a roller to a guy I know, not sure if he still runs it or not. If you do a search for the member Bakabaka the info is in this thread somewhere and I'm fairly sure it came from him initially.

szan

02-25-2007, 12:35 PM

Hi,

I've painted a new body in black like houndog, it's cool.
If you want to see some recent photos of my df-02, check here :
http://szan74.free.fr/modelisme/modelisme.html

Bye

All-Or-Nothing

02-25-2007, 03:06 PM

Quick question.....will the stock pinion fit on the MM7700kv shaft. I believe the shaft is 1/8".

JDT

02-26-2007, 09:02 AM

yeah the stock pinion will fit the mm shafts.

All-Or-Nothing

02-28-2007, 10:35 PM

My Rising Storm just got here. I will put the 5700 in it tomorrow and see how she runs. Here's a few Pics.

http://i55.photobucket.com/albums/g122/chrselmore/RisingStorm007.jpg

http://i55.photobucket.com/albums/g122/chrselmore/RisingStorm008.jpg

http://i55.photobucket.com/albums/g122/chrselmore/RisingStorm009.jpg

http://i55.photobucket.com/albums/g122/chrselmore/RisingStorm016.jpg

JDT

03-01-2007, 08:33 AM

I would really be suprised if the stock dogbones will take the mm 5700, let us know, with the mm 5700 if you drive the stock tires on the cement they will be worn out in a packs time I am sure of that

All-Or-Nothing

03-01-2007, 10:59 AM

Don't have to worry about cement out here in Iraq. Plenty of wide open sand...

xxxfactor1987

03-03-2007, 03:05 PM

i have a tt-01 and the plastic bevel gears aren't holding up so well (mostly due to the large truck tires i ran on it). i heard the the tt-01's diff's are identical compared to a df-02's so i was just wondering if i can find one made out of metal? thnx

JDT

03-03-2007, 04:04 PM

the tt01 and df 02 do use the same diff cups, if you are running truck tires you may want the spool from sqaure racing, its a solid chunk of aluminum, there is a link four of five posts up for squares homepage, if you don't want the spool you just need

http://www2.towerhobbies.com/cgi-bin/wti0001p?&I=LXETJ3&P=7

if you are referring to the diff cup itself no aluminum is available, they are a littler harder to track down part #0555104 so check around if you need them.

xxxfactor1987

03-03-2007, 08:07 PM

this is what i'm looking for http://www2.towerhobbies.com/cgi-bin/wti0001p?&I=LXGHP9&P=
It's the bevel gear that drives the diff. i wonder if that's what come with a df-02?

JDT

03-04-2007, 08:14 PM

I can't say if the df 02 ones will work or not, you may have to change the diff ring gear also, it will cost you a couple bucks to find out, in the past I have seen these two together on ebay for $5. Let us know if they are the same, the ring gear will bolt onto the case but weather it will fit in the chassis I am not sure, it also may change your gear ration so count the teeth to make sure its the same.

Ring Gear #3454029
Bevel Pinion Gear #5455040

JDT

03-05-2007, 09:50 AM

I mocked up my df 02 truck version 2.0 over the weekend, its going to be rear df 02 arms on the front and hpi mt2 rear arms on the rear, will gain about an inch of track width, going to have to mod some hpi diff cups to make it all work and track down another set of the hpi mt2 rear cvds and get some 1/8th buggy shocks for the rear as the stock shocks are maxed out just to get the mounting point when the arms are flat, made some homemade turnbuckles for mock up but will need to spend another $30 on some more titanium ones so these free mt2 parts are going to end up costing me a $100 or more lol.

Badmuthatrucker

03-08-2007, 03:35 AM

Hi all.
I'm guessing the answers are here, in last 119 pages, but I'm gonna annoy you all by asking newbish questions, because I ain't got a spare year to study it all.... :p

Has anyone club raced their DF-02 for an extended period of time?...

Is there any repeat offending bits, that are fragile?.... Gears, hubs, etc

Do they run enough ground clearance, and suspension travel, or are they limited like a TL-01B?.

...and finally, how do they stack up against the DF-03?.

To me, they look lower, stronger and more efficient transition, stouter arms, but limited travel....

Basically, I can get a dirt cheap build up kit Rising Storm from my local hs, or for 30 bucks more, get a Dark Impact from Ebay. I already have a TT motor mount and shaft in alloy, about the place, so that cost is null and void, but, for having a shot in 4WD stock, honestly, what's my better choice?.

JDT

03-08-2007, 08:51 AM

the Df 02 is known for having weak front shock towers, you can replace with carbon fibre and pretty much solve that, the steering arms caused me problems so the aluminum ones make some sense also, the rear shocks bottom out on the larger jumps but so do most other 10th scale buggies, the rear shock tower is good and I don't think I ever broke a hub or knuckle until well after I was running modified motors, granted a good stock motor will be much faster than the tamiya silver can but I think the stock parts held up well into the 19 turn mod motor stage, as a df 02 lover and builder/hackjob modifier its hard for me to say but racing wise the df 03 is much better, the df 03 is lighter and handles rough tracks alot better and I think in a stock class where weight is a big factor it would be hard to hang with a df 02 against the graphite buggies, my buddy loves his DI, he mainly races but has bashed it a few times with us, you really need to keep an eye on the ball diffs from what I hear, he adjusts his every week as he has allready had two fail, he blew a set of the plastic gears but getting the slipper setup seems to have helped that, he is running the sphere comp esc with a novak 5.5 motor so its pretty fast and depending on him can win against much higher dollars losi and kyosho buggies. I read the df 03 thread on here its good to, its a long thread also but lots of good info in there.

Badmuthatrucker

03-09-2007, 02:14 AM

Thanks JDT.
The guys at my LHS warned me about the ball diffs, too. I have only heard of rock crawlers popping the now "standard" tamiya diff center, so I'd be sticking with them, plus a little Blu-tac, or something else to slow the action...

Yeah.... I see too many plus's and negatives canceling out my choice , either way... I see he DF-03's encased battery well being no good for keeping cells cool, and so many gears, reminds me of the Thundershot!... Where the 02 is so simple and efficient... Agh.. head hurts. STILL :huh: !....

Thanks heaps, mate!.

Metla

03-09-2007, 11:44 PM

uh......The DF03 is the better kit in every way, The ball diff's are not an issue, Nor is anything else for that matter.

If you have a choice between a DF02 and DF03 and you chose the DF02...well, You would only do that if you were mad keen on a DF02 and were happy to get the lesser of the two.

That aside, I caned the death out of my DF02, To the point where its only a shadow of its former self, Totally enjoyed it, But its not in the same league as the DF03.

Badmuthatrucker

03-10-2007, 02:34 AM

Thank you. Formal off road racing died in my state, about 10 years ago, along with the introduction of the Playstation generation, where it's easier to restart, if you don't like the way things are going. There are a few of us who trail bash, and crawl, but there is no racing to observe racing vehicles in competition, and see the truths. Mind you, on road is strong here, but... boring.

I'm moving interstate, in a few months, and in New South Wales off road is king,exactly what it deserves to be, and I visited there, last week, I dropped in on a club, 10 minutes from my girlfriend's place, and 4WD classes were all Kyosho Lazer 5's, J-Concepts and Yokes, and one lonely Dark Impact.

Basically, I want to get a buggy, to be ready to bog in, when I get there, as I miss my off road, and can't wait to get back into it.

fijisan

03-13-2007, 06:06 PM

Hey fellas,
Has anyone used the parma beetle buggy body (PAR10340) on this chassis? Any photos anyone can link or post?
I think the WB on this body is 235mm?
Thanks. :)

SteveAndBelle

03-14-2007, 07:20 AM

Well, I've had my DF-02 absolutely hammering around the backyard for the last month or so and I've loved every second of it. This is my first 'real' RC car ever (and I'm 32) and I'm well and truley hooked but I need some help to go to the 'next level' and was hoping someone might be able to steer me in the right direction.

I don't really care for racing my car on the road or the park or whatever but get heaps of enjoyment bashing it to death in the backyard with a beer or two. Problem is that I think I've easily blown more than the original purchase price on Tamiya parts, non-standard parts and hop-ups to make this beast go harder and harder in the rough off-road conditions of my backyard track I've named 'The Punisher'. It's nothing flash but it seems to really hurt the DF-02 or maybe that's just because I have no idea how to keep the car in a straight line ;) I'm kinda thinking that I should probably look at getting something a little tougher before I waste too much more cash on beefing the DF-02 up. I've already gone through a couple of front shock mounts, front hubs & king pins and now I'm looking at having to get a heap more parts just to get it back up and running after todays bash session. Add to that the new suspension oil & springs, the 2.2 wheels and the stadium truck tyres to try to get the 'Hound up off the ground' and bingo I've blown quite a bit of cash on this little fella already. Oh, and I've also made up a couple of my own high capacity battery packs which seem to get the stock motor so hot I can literally boil water on it after running two packs back to back. By the way, should I be seeing faint whisps of smoke coming out of the motor after a long bash ? Time to 'step up' methinks.

See, I bashed it into the ground again this afternoon as soon as I got home from work and cracked the chassis where the rear lower swing arm attaches to the gear casing. I was in a big slide entering & setting up for a corner and whacked the left-rear wheel really hard into a downpipe attached to the house. The chassis cracked, the driveshaft flew out along with it's cup-drive thingy and strangely enough the car really didn't want to perform very well after that ... but man, what an awesomely tough beast these DF-02's are !! Such great fun !

Sooooo, where to from here you reckon ? DF-03 Dark Impact or do you think I should be looking more at getting more of a 'truck' type thing with huge monster wheels and beefy suspension etc. ? I want something that will be able to handle the punishment but as I'm still only new to all this I don't want it to cost a fortune ... oh, and I don't want gas powered stuff 'cause it's backyard work and I still like our neighbours :) Associated maybe ? I dunno.

Suggestions ? Bring 'em on !

JDT

03-14-2007, 11:24 AM

Well the df 02 is an entry level car, I made the homemade hinge pin braces and this solved the frame breaking problem, the front shock tower from yeah racing or gpm can be had for $10 US from dinball in Hong kong and has so far fixed that issue for me. Since you are running the stock silver can you can get away with crazy gearing, I ran four inch tall proline truck dirthawgs with the car geared 70/16 with the stock silver can it was a little slower than stock but it went across the grass and such much better but was very hot at the end of a run so you would want to restrict this to the stock motor or very cheap replacements as it may cause them to wear out faster, a far as just getting something else its hard to say as being an aussie you know better whats available, the Traxxas stampede is a very popular truck, IMO it is much tougher than the associated t4, I gave up on losi years back so my last losi truck was a xx-t which was about the same as my last t4 durability wise, both would easily outrun the stampede on the track but neither would take wipeouts nearly as good. The stampede has big tires stock and the newer style with the 12 t motor are pretty darn fast for a stock truck, the extra ground clearence makes up for the 2 wheel drive and a stock stampede will get stuck alot less than a stock df 02 as least in the grassy yards around here.

SteveAndBelle

03-14-2007, 05:09 PM

Great JDT, thanks for that !

I'm interested in the 4" Proline truck dirthawgs. Do you have a link or an exact model number for them or if I just went to my LHS and asked for "4-inch Proline truck Dirthawgs" would they know exactly what I meant ?

If I was to get these monster wheels & tyres (or tires) and still keep the speed and performance of using the standard size ones as much as possible what would you recommend I do about upgrading the motor and gearing as cheaply as possible but good enough not to keep costing me money over and over again ?

I'm thinking I might spend a bit on this to get it running really well offroad once I get my new chassis but then cap it at that and only buy the bare essentials from then on. I can then start saving up for the bigger truck.

Thanks for the advice and keep it coming !

Jayboy

03-14-2007, 05:54 PM

I remember when i fitted 4 inch dirt hawgs on my tamiya buggy. It lasted about 10 bash sessions before both my 3300mAh packs burnt up....but this was only because i was running a 23turn motor, and didnt gear down!

JDT

03-15-2007, 10:37 AM

here is a tower link
pro line part number is 1070-00
http://www2.towerhobbies.com/cgi-bin/wti0001p?&I=LXDU11&P=ML

the dirt works are the same height and only a little different
pro line part number is 1072-00
http://www2.towerhobbies.com/cgi-bin/wti0001p?&I=LXUM92&P=ML

the trac ta gator is also another 4 inch tall tire, its good for grass and dirt/mud but is much worse than these 2 other tires on gravel or pavement
pro line part number is 1045-00
http://www2.towerhobbies.com/cgi-bin/wti0001p?&I=LXDT93&P=7

not sure if you can get pro line in Australia, if you got an HPI dealer nearby these are also 4 inch
HPI part number 4456
http://www2.towerhobbies.com/cgi-bin/wti0001p?&I=LXEXA3&P=M

I used the hpi universal wheels #2140 (2 sets, 4 rear wheels to keep the offset the same) you can get black, white, chrome, smoke chrome in some cases even gold.
http://www2.towerhobbies.com/cgi-bin/wti0001p?&I=LXM875&P=7

but several styles are available
http://www2.towerhobbies.com/cgi-bin/wti0001p?&I=LXRD76&P=7
http://www2.towerhobbies.com/cgi-bin/wti0001p?&I=LXWX53&P=7

You will need to order the tamiya metric 16 tooth .6 module pinoin or get the robinson racing #1116
http://www2.towerhobbies.com/cgi-bin/wti0001p?&I=LXWX53&P=7

use this with the stock 70 tooth spur, I ran alot of packs with the stock silver can before it burnt up, what esc do you have, if you have an aftermarket esc you can try a 19 turn, I ran this alot and while it got hot but didn't fail until the brushes were bad, the 17 turn was pushing my luck to much and ended up melting the rear endbell off the motor so 19 would be the extreme max, the traxxas 23t 550 titan has a fan in the rear and it stayed the coolest but was only slightly faster than stock and less than the 19 turn.
traxxas part #3975
http://www2.towerhobbies.com/cgi-bin/wti0001p?&I=LXXF54&P=ML
if you are running the stock speed controller teu 101 bk this will work fine
if you have a low turn esc you could always try the new 12 turn titan as it has a fan in the rear, I HAVE NOT tried this so I can't say if it would work or not. It would be much faster but may have heat issues due to being a low turn motor and way overgeared.
I used the LRP 83250 or 8325(package difference) esc it worked great but not really a super cheap esc
http://www2.towerhobbies.com/cgi-bin/wti0001p?&I=LXHSV7&P=7
the 83200 or 8320is a little cheaper
http://www2.towerhobbies.com/cgi-bin/wti0001p?&I=LXHSV8&P=7
but it will only go down to 14 turns so it wouldn't work with the 12t titan above.
I would recommend you switch out to deans plugs or power poles on the battery as even geared 70/16 you will get the battery a little hot also so no need to run the risk of melting the terminals together.
Hope this helps, don't try the tires with the stock gearing as it will get the motor so hot it will literally start to smoke, I only did it once and the motor got so hot the body got a worbly spot from the heat, you got to run the 16tooth pinion or even the stock motor won't last long.

SteveAndBelle

03-16-2007, 08:46 AM

JDT, you're a gentleman (assuming that you are male of course) !

Thank you so much for all that info. That's exactly the info I and I think many other noobies need to get into the DF-02 working better off-road. Brilliant !

I went to my LHS and much to my surprise the replacement DF-02 chassis was only Au$15 (about US$12) so I was very happy with that :) I'm actually tearing the car down right now and thought it would be a good opportunity to strip it right back and clean every single part to re-grease it and put it all back together again. Everything was filthy including the grease and I've probably only run it for about 10 hours all up ! All the metal parts are being thrown into a glass jar of turps and the plastic parts into a small bucket of warm-hot water with mild dishwashing detergent. I put the lid on the glass jar and shake it for a bout a minute and the plastic parts just get a general quick brush & rub down with a cloth. I've already done all the front-end parts and after drying them all off they've come out a treat ... just like new in fact ! Click here to have a looksie. (http://i175.photobucket.com/albums/w159/SteveAndBelle/CleanDry.jpg) Too much time on my hands I know ... the wife's outta town you see :)

The LHS carries a HUGE range of Proline stuff and in fact my 2.2 wheels are actually Proline but I only just realised it. No wonder they were so expensive ! The problem is however that Proline distribution isn't the best out here so just as the LHS gets a big stock of all the good stuff the RC phreaks quickly dive in and buy them out :( I'm running 'Eagle' tyres at the moment but they're not good enough because they're all rolling to one side thanks to the circuit I run in the backyard. They still work fine however the expensive rims are now getting damaged because the tyres aren't overhanging anymore. I think the Proline tyres are much more 'square' edged and shouldn't roll as much as these Eagle tyres. The Eagle tyres were nice & cheap though and seem to work pretty well for 'backyard beer bashing' :)

While I was at the LHS I asked about 'the next step' with regars to a tougher car. The sales person pointed me straight to the Traxxas E-Maxx as I want to stay with electric power. WOW, what a beast ! It's huge and has two motors & two batteries .. but I'd imagine you'd all know that by now. I'm now saving my pennies for the $699 (approx US$556) price tag but the beauty of it is that it includes everything but the batteries and going by what I saw of the salespersons own E-Maxx it seems the sky's the limit with hop-ups & DIY mods etc. You can even modify the suspension and run them ultra-low & flat for hardcore speedy street work ! Amazing. I think I'm sold 100%.

Thanks again for your help. I'd better get back into stripping & rebuilding this Gravel Hound now :) It's 9:45pm already ! Another late one for me ;)

Seeyuz.

JDT

03-16-2007, 10:45 AM

man they rape you aussies, my lhs has an emaxx sitting on the shelf at $299.99 US. They are fun, I have had two over the years, big and heavy so high speed handling is tricky but the ground clearance and tourqe is awesome for bashing, sounds like you got a pretty good hobby shop there, I would agree the emaxx is good, I had recommended the stampede as you talked about not wanting to spend alot of money but if you are willing to save up the e maxx is a great choice. I hope you can enjoy your df 02 until you get your money saved up, to bad the shippers charge so damn much you could just order one from here, my friend used to spend about $400 US to send her christmas gifts home to Perth(she went back now), do you know anyone coming over here anytime soon? you could always try to get someone to drag it back for you, go to church that would be your best bet to find a kind soul willing to drag a 13lb box 10000 miles or so. My wife and I have talked several times about coming over for a vacation someday, seeing the pictures sold me, of course my friend loves to send pictures of her on the beach in January when we are -15 degrees and covered in snow, the wild parrots and stuff in her back yard, this of course will have to be combined to catch the V 8 supercar races or maybe even the Rally, it really is such a big country, the ancient rainforest is clear in the northeast and perth is clear in the southwest so I guess it will be quite a few years as I think I will need at least a month of vacation, austrailia is one of the few places they don't totally hate americans at this point so they will get my tourism $ long before the europeans.

SteveAndBelle

03-16-2007, 11:15 AM

Yeah, we don't hate you guys ... yet ;) I've been to a few places around the globe now however I'm putting off going to the 'easy' places like the US because I'd rather have language difficulties and strange cultural experiences while I'm still 'young'. It's also a cost thing as doing Europe etc. properly costs a heck of a lot more than travelling to the US as we're just so far away ! I can afford it now while I've got a good job but later on when the money's not as good we can start going to the places a bit further down the list if you know what I mean.

Saying that though I think we'll be visiting friends in New York & San Fran about this time next year but we're only really going to see the friends, not to soak up the 'atmos' as we usually like to do when we travel. We hate doing the Contiki type lightning tours of places and much prefer to just 'live' in a place for as long as we can afford to really get a feel for it.

Australia is superb. I'm biased I know however whenever we go OS we love it sure but there's nothing like hearing that Aussie accent again and getting back to all the silly Aussie-isms that make this country and its people so 'raw' and 'real'.

Try to come out as soon as you can before it gets even more crowded. I'm in Brisbane and even in my lifetime I've seen crazy amounts of population growth and it's getting more and more crazy as the months go by ! This city is literally bursting at its seams and so are the other capitals but not as much as Brisneyland ;)

Tasmania is my favourite place closely followed by Melbourne. Tassie for the sheer simple beauty & isolation and Melbourne for the bustling multicultural coolness it has. Sydney is pretty and all but not a patch on Melbourne in my opinion ... and house prices in Melbourne are still reasonable ;)

Anyhoo, this is a DF-02 forum ... so I'll shutup now. Be sure to bring me an E-Max when you come over OK ;)

PS. My hound is about a third of the way through being rebuilt. Nice & clean now !

JDT

03-23-2007, 01:28 PM

went to drag race a buggies nirto mt2 yesterday and blew the modified spur gear on the adapter when I hit a big bump and the df 02 was full throttle on one wheel so I switched it back to the stock buggy spur, I beat the df 02 like a redheaded stepchild, went to the bmx track, with buggy dirt hawgs and 70/18 gearing with the mamba 5700, very fast top end, its been a while since I ran the little tires so it was hard to balance the car in the air over the massive jumps, 10 feet high was common, there was one section that is mogels for a bmx but looked to be the extreme limit of a double to me, tried at least 15 times to get it, poor traction and ruts resulted in only 2 "makes" the other dozen or so tries were from mild to wild on the wreck scale, the finally was jumping off the 16 foot tall starter stand at about 35 mph, sailed for at least 30 feet in the air and had a nasty bounce and cartwheel session with no breakage, the homemade hinge pin holder was a little twisted so I tore it down to check the chassis and everything is fine so I hammered the hinge pin holder straight and called it good.

SteveAndBelle

03-23-2007, 09:49 PM

Whoa, my Hound is hammering like never before :)

Apart from the full stripdown & rebuild recent upgrades include a couple of fully repacked battery packs using all 'Deans' parts (bars, wire & connectors), full rewire of pack-to-ESC and ESC-to-Motor high current wiring using Deans 'Wet Noodle' wire, new Venom 21t motor, heatsinks glued to motor (after lablel was removed of course) and top of ESC using a heatsink compound with adhesive included, new 16t pinion and a few holes cut into my dodgy 'bash' shell to keep the air moving over the motor & ESC heatsinks.

The absolutely FLIES now and after a 7+ minute continuous donut session on a shiny floor I managed to get the motor up to 105 degrees (221F), the ESC up to 60 (140F) and the batteries up to 57 (134.5F) but they all still seem perfectly OK as I've had a few bash sessions since :)

The last bash session saw me lose a rear drive shaft and drive cup thingy in a big cartwheel crash and after finding the parts and putting it back together the rear diff doesn't feel as smooth as it used to.

Two questions I hope to get answers to ... how did you make your hingpin holder or is it somewhere in the last hundred or so pages and is it true I can fit universal joints from a TT-01 chassis onto the DF-02 ? If not what can I do to the DF-02's drivetrain to firm it up and stop it from falling apart when it gets bruised in an accident ??

Please help me to continue my 'destructive testing 'of the DF-02 chassis :)

Thanks guys !

JDT

03-23-2007, 11:59 PM

page 113 shows my second aluminum version of the hingepin holders, I didn't want to spend the time to make them until I tested so I orignally bent what we call 12 gauge sheet metal into an L and drilled up the holes, it worked so good I cut the aluminum ones from 3/4" x 3/4" x 1/16 stock, maybe 15mm x 15mm x 2mm for you aussies, I should have taken pictures before painting so you can't really see them on the car, look down the page and you will see a rough version, very easy to do, 15 minutes tops, I used two on the front, one in front of the arms bolted with the two bumper bolts for the chassis and the second is behind the arms not bolted just run through, this required me to file the arms a bit but nothing excessive as the factory setup has some slop in this location, I used a drill bit to go through the arm mounting holes to drill a little bit into the chassis, the bolt runs through the brace, then the arm, the chassis, the arm again and the second brace and it just 1/16" 1 or 2 mm into the chassis, it sticks up just a touch so the front bumper don't fit flush to the chassis anymore but no problems so far, on the back of the car I only used one on the back side of the arms and drilled all the way into the chassis to empty into the spur area and ran the bolts through the brace, the arm, the chassis and the arm again and through the chassis. Hope that makes sense.
The tt 01 cvds are far to short, tamiya 53791 is the cvd you want but it requires tt01 drive cups 53790
sqaure, gpm, option one, tobee craft racing all make cvds that will work with the stock outdrive cups. Check out champrc in japan for any tamiya parts you might want, its cheaper for me to get there normal price and pay $38 US in shipping than to order parts from tamiya usa in california, scary part is from osaka japan to iowa in the US in four days, tamiyausa would take at least a week. Another really good source for parts is dinball also known as rcmart, the stock 100+ df 02 items, I wouldn't waist money on the aluminum arms as I have beat the heck out of the plastics with no issue, the yeah front shock tower is a must IMO, the rear not so much, the c hubs and knuckles would be a good idea if you can swing the cost but not really needed until you get real nutty, champrc is awesome like 17% off tamiya list cost so a chassis is $5.15 US from them, $9.25 from tamiya usa, they also stock tobee and sqaure racing parts, you will need to go to dinball for gpm or yeah racing, check them both out.

SteveAndBelle

03-27-2007, 10:44 AM

Hey JDT, those purple & white Hot Wheels FlashFires you mentioned a few pages ago ... what's 'wrong' with them and if they're so closely based on the DF-02 Gravel Hound why aren't people buying a couple of them to use for parts or to use as their 'test rigs' for crazy mods etc. ??

There's gotta be something wrong with them apart from the somewhat cheap & cheerful radio gear, right ? If not I think I might get myself one.

JDT

03-27-2007, 12:30 PM

I personally have not got one, it was relayed to me the radio is only good for about 35 feet or 13 meters in your case, not much fun there so I never got one.

SteveAndBelle

03-31-2007, 09:19 PM

I took on a mate of mine with a big associated RC-10 truck in the park yesterday and the Gravel Hound didn't stand a chance against its mighty 2WD speed ... however my hound could go up the slippery slide and his truck couldn't. Great fun nevertheless.

During a backyard bash session after the race in the park I managed to crack the yellow plastic rod end thingy of one of my front GPM alloy shockies. It's got a metal ball sleeve thingy inside it to allow it to twist around on its mounting screw and that wont fit inside any of the spare (Tamiya) rod ends I've got in my parts collection.

Does anyone know if you can buy these separately or have I just rendered my nice alloy shocks useless just because the 1c plastic rod end has cracked ?

SteveAndBelle

04-01-2007, 11:01 AM

Well, there's no need to replace the yellow plastic rod end on my GPM shockie now because after a quick bash session this afternoon I managed to write off the front end and completely destroy the faulty GPM in the process along with busting the steering, putting a fat tear in my new chassis (same place as last time mind you) and getting my Venom 21t motor up to 130 degrees (that's 266F) !!

Check out the attached pix ...

1. Hot motor - Yep, this is REAL and it was in fact slightly hotter than this before I could run to get my camera (up to 133 degrees)
2. Busted GPM - Yep, the whole thing exploded and although I managed to find the spring the blue aluminium cap is somewhere in my lawn :(
3. Busted Steering - The Tamiya stock steering is OK but not good enough for my rough handling.
4. Cracked Chassis - Is that the diff I can see ? Yep, sure is !
5. Cracked Chassis - I wondered why after the crash the car just wouldn't handle properly. Hmmm, this might have something to do with it.

Well, it's back to the drawing board for me and my Hound :( I've got a huge batch of alloy parts on it's way over from Dinball so I was probably going to strip the Hound down (again) to rebuild it with all the new parts however there are now a few more questions I have before I do this :

1. Now that I've destroyed my steering what would be a good replacement that will be able to handle the rough handling better ?
2. Is it normal for a 21t motor to get to these amazingly high temperatures and will it do itself damage if this keeps up ?
3. What would anyone recommend to use to clean dust & muck out of motors ? I've seen a spray around the traps but I'm not sure what it is or what it does.
4. Does anyone know if I can get single GPM shocks from anyone or will I have to buy a new set ? If I have to buy a new set can anyone recommend a stronger brand to go with as I found these were weaker than the stock Tamiya plastic ones !

I drive my Hound very hard indeed and I know all this damage is because I do this. I don't mind fixing it up all the time but I'd like the toughest parts possible so I don't have to keep doing this as often. One of the first things I'm going to do is strengthen up the chassis around the hinges as per JDT but is there anything else anyone can recommend doing ?

Thanks for all your help !

Combatcm

04-01-2007, 09:52 PM

Venom motors suck, all the ones I've used desoldered their terminals they got so hot. Stick with speed gems or use a 19T spec motor and run 16/70.

Does anyone know a US supplier that stock the ring gears. I'm looking to rebuild my tranny and it seems like every other country besides the US stocks them.

I drive it with a Novak SS and use 16/70 gearing. It has massive acceleration and top speed. I can do backflips off of pretty large jumps. I run it against truggies and the little truck can hang with them, sometimes beat most of them.

Maybe I'll put in the mamba, how many minutes are you guys getting on your mambas. I'd like it to last more than 10 minutes on one pack.

sim600

04-02-2007, 12:47 AM

From what I've read on the net, GPM is quite famous for using quite a soft alloy for their parts. 3-Racing seems to be the better brand for DF-02 parts. I would agree with strengthening the hingepin areas but I wouldn't worry too much about replacing other parts of the buggy with metal parts. The heavier it gets, the harder it crashes.

SteveAndBelle

04-02-2007, 12:50 AM

From what I've read on the net, GPM is quite famous for using quite a soft alloy for their parts. 3-Racing seems to be the better brand for DF-03 parts.

That's more like the info I'm after ! Thanks SIM600.

JDT, what shocks did you use on your DF-02. Were they hybrids built from a few different brands/types ?

JDT

04-02-2007, 10:13 AM

first off on the alloy, my steering, c hubs and rear hubs are gpm and I never had any problems, I run alloy steering, c hubs, knuckles(hubs) front and rear and the front yeah shock tower , I have run the alloy rear towers in the past but currently have gone back to stock plastic as with the truck body it needs a little flex, it was tearing the top off the diff cases with the body mount post and double thickness alloy rear tower set up I was using, I will try the double tower again without the body mount bracket once I get some more spair diff cases. I don't see any point in the arms, before the hinge pin braces I hit stuff hard enough to rip the arm mounts clear off the chassis and the arms were fine, I only broke a couple c hubs and knuckles but decided alloy would be of benefit there, I think you will want to get the Yeah racing front shock tower, it don't have the lightening holes the gpm one does, they used to but refined the product to be solid, I posted pictures of it before page 111 or 112 probably, its much stronger, I never ran the revised yeah one plain so I can't advise on that but it ain't broke since I added the square on the front but between the two its got my bashproof seal of approval but this might be the truck body protecting it also.
My shocks Duratrax evader BX front on the front
old kyosho rears but the evader BX or ST rear shocks(same thing) will work on the back of the df 02, like $16.99 a set from tower here in the US, for a little more you can get blue or hard anodized if you prefer something other than shinny, I also have the tamiya option shocks but they are smaller in the front and won't allow AE, losi or kysoho springs like the evader shocks will
I also had problems with breaking off the lower shock mount, I solved this by switching the lower shock end to the stock tamiya piece with the tamiya spring retainer and using the ball like stock, this seems much stronger and gives a little pop off potential which is preferable to breakage, what sucks is the factory front shocks are smaller so you need to order the parts tree for the rear shocks to have enough spring retainers to do the car, I keep a spair tree around because the big jumps have popped the retainer loose and lost it once of twice before.
hope this helps

quori

04-03-2007, 11:15 AM

Question for someone...I have the Rising Storm. I hopped it all up with aluminum parts (hubs, turnbuckles, towers, arms, etc). It is very very solid.

That being said I also slapped in a 10T double with the Traxxas XL10 ESC. The power seems to rattle the entire buggy so much I think it may break into a million pieces. I have even noticed the right from wheel will slip away from the dogbone (the one thing I didn't upgrade is the dog bones - so expensive ugh!).

Should I not put so much power into the little bad boy? Or is there something I'm missing here.

JDT

04-03-2007, 11:55 AM

I wouldn't worry about the chassis flex, its okay, I can't beleive the 10t didn't spit the dogbone clean out and lose your diff cup, this was a common problem for me running 12t motors until I got the cvds, I would be more worried about the 10t getting hot, watch the temperature as I melted a 10t in the past, gearing wise 12t is about the limit IMO with the stock tires, maybe 14t with buggy hawgs and the lowest possible 70/16 gearing. As far as the chassis flex you should see it with the mamba 5700 combo on 3s, I can literally see the chassis flex but haven't had any problems other than scary fast, tried to run a little with the buggy hawgs at 70/18 gearing and a cheapy 3s yesterday, way to much power, had to roll on gently and with the little tires the bumps in my street were a wipeout waiting to happen at 50 or more mph, it didn't flex as bad as it did with the masher 2000s and 84/15 gearing but I think that was due to the lack of traction as the buggy hawgs are half the width of the mashers.

SteveAndBelle

04-11-2007, 10:02 AM

Right, can anyone help me out with a couple of things ? I need some REAL info on the TT-01 ball-diffs & 'one-ways'.

I've been told that the ball diffs are great because they run a lot smoother and they also allow you to lock them for more power-to-ground when required and I've been told 'one-ways' are great as they allow the front & rear wheels to spin at different speeds which in turn allows you to turn better ... but these things are both friggin' ultra-expensive !!

Can anyone justify their expense for on-road and/or off-road racing & bashing use ?

PS. Can I put any more hyphens in to a single post ?

JDT

04-11-2007, 11:13 AM

I run the Sqaure racing # STD 50H spool in the rear of mine, totally locked now, the ball diffs get loose and burn up if you don't fiddle with them and keep them tight, I had one and sold it once I got the spool (and after fixing it) the one way is really more for racing, I found that bashing with it caused alot more stucks on deeper grass and such as I could not gas it and "saw" the wheels back and forth to get unstuck, it would simply burn one front tire, then the other depending on which way the wheel was turned, it was sold to a tt 01 buddy at a loss as I saw no need for it but as I said I am not a real racer. I run the stock setup in the front and the spool in the rear of both my primary truck and secondary buggy df 02s. I knew from real world jeeping experience spools on both ends would be pushy but I tried it once just to make sure and the turning radius nearly doubled and handling was horrible, the car wanted to traction roll all the time so it was a one pack and out type of thing. There are several accounts on the last 120 pages of both one way and ball diff failures so if you get one be cautious as I agree they are kind of pricey, the square spool was about $18 US from champrc in japan, they have most of the sqaure stuff and give a good discount on Tamiya factory parts so if you decide to go one way or ball diff give them a chance, they use EMS shipping, a little expensive but from Osaka Japan to Iowa(middle of the US) in just four days average, great customer service and one of the few Japanese firms with english speaking reps for us not proficient in Japanese lol. I just email what I am interested in they will send back an email with price including the paypal charge and shipping. I got five frames, two a parts trees, one b parts tree, some small parts all in one box approximately 20cm x 40cm x 80 cm for $37 US shipping, small bags with small parts for $12 US shipping.
Use google type in champ rc, pick the translate this page feature and then pick the overseas mail order page for info on email and such, you will need to know your part numbers in advance but you have the tamiya numbers in your manual, they sell tobee as well as the sqaure so any of the options you see on dinball they can get you. Let me know if you have any problems and I will try and help walk you through it. Big long post be damned lol.

juntom10

04-14-2007, 06:43 PM

nice looking buggy..

i heard df-02 has metal diff gears...which is really nice..

:D

SteveAndBelle

04-15-2007, 07:06 AM

Well, I've had a HUGE week of RC-ness even though my Hound has been completely out of action. I've received my first BIG batch of 'hop-up' parts from Dinball and parts from other places around the globe to get my GH back up and running better than ever. I didn't take any chances this time and ordered TWO chassis (as I've already gone through three) and this time I'm going to do some serious modifications to reinforce those swing arm hinges ... front and back.

I had originally planned to copy JDT's swing arm braces on the front however I didn't want the modification to effect any of the other parts (mainly the lowering of the front bumper skid plate) so I decided to 'reinvent the wheel' and try nutting out something myself. I tried a couple of ways of doing it but they basically all used the same theory and that was to insert a metal rod through the rear bottom corner of the front diff housing, flatten the ends and tap a thread in them so lengths of 3mm threaded stainless steel rod could be used to mount the swing arms instead of that dodgy 'U' brace thingy Tamiya supplies with the kit. The following pictures hopefully explain it better.

Here's the rod cut to length and pushed through holes drilled into the bottom corner of diff housing (rod = 51.5mm long and 5mm dia):
Click here to see the image (http://i175.photobucket.com/albums/w159/SteveAndBelle/A-51.jpg)

The 5mm rod fits very snugly and manages to miss the main diff gear by a couple of mm but you've got to be very careful when drilling the holes in the sides of the housing as you have the make sure the rod is pushed as far back as possible ... in fact I had to channel out some of the rear wall of the housing to get the rod to go through ! It is critical you get this right otherwise your front diff gear will grind away at the rod. Note however that although it's as far back as it can be it's not actually touching the bottom of the diff housing due to the fact that the rod has to line up with where the lower arms need support. It's a couple of mm off the floor but it's best to measure this up to get it absolutely perfect before drilling anything.
Click here to see the image (http://i175.photobucket.com/albums/w159/SteveAndBelle/B-Fitswithabout2mmclearancefromDiff.jpg)

Here's a picture of the rod after I filed 8.5mm of each end down so it was flat and carefully lined up and drilled a 2.5mm hole in each to then tap with a 3mm thread. This too has to be fairly accurate so take your time and be sure to keep checking everything all the way through the process so you can be assured the end result will be spot on.
Click here to see the image (http://i175.photobucket.com/albums/w159/SteveAndBelle/C-8.jpg)

After cleaning out the threads and deburring bits off the rod from the tapping process the rod was slid into place and the two 3mm threaded rods were screwed in for their first test assembly. Bingo, worked perfectly ! I also drilled 2.5mm holes approx. 4mm deep into the plastic of the main chassis section and then hand-screwed the 3mm threaded rod into these holes too. The plastic has whitened a little here as you can see however it still seems very strong ... time will tell ;)
Click here to see the image (http://i175.photobucket.com/albums/w159/SteveAndBelle/E-3mmthreadedrodthroughsteelrodandt.jpg)

The next step was to test it all with the Yeah V2 (stronger) lower arms and as you can see it all went together very well without any rubbing or friction. I'd imagine the stock Tamiya plastic arms could also be used but as I basically ordered every other alloy part for the DH-02 I decided I may as well get these too :) I've seen the Yeah V1 lower arms and the GPM Lower Arms in alloy but they're nothing compared to thickness of these bad boys. Again, time will tell as to how strong they really are.
Click here to see the image (http://i175.photobucket.com/albums/w159/SteveAndBelle/G-Alloyarmsfittedwithfreemovement.jpg)

Here's a view of both arms from underneath. Note how neatly the 3mm threaded rod passes all the way through from the front, through the arms and the chassis hinge mount and then through the steel rod thread and finally into the plastic of the chassis.
Click here to see the image (http://i175.photobucket.com/albums/w159/SteveAndBelle/I-Alloyarmsfitted-BottomView.jpg)

Originally I didn't think the steel rod would need any extra bracing as it would basically just hold itself together on the threaded rods however I decided to take it to the extreme by tapping another 3mm thread into the centre so I could stick a screw into it from the prop shaft side of the diff housing. This was tricky because this hole wasn't perpendicular to the threaded holes in the ends of the 5mm steel rod due to the arms not actually being parallel to the base of the chassis. If you make one of these yourself you'll know what I mean so just be careful OK !
Click here to see the image (http://i175.photobucket.com/albums/w159/SteveAndBelle/J-3mmtappedintocenterofbarholedrill.jpg)

The flash in the last image makes my work look awful, and maybe it is but here's what it all looks like put together ... much nicer ;)
Click here to see the image (http://i175.photobucket.com/albums/w159/SteveAndBelle/K-Anchorscrewthroughfrompropshafttu.jpg)

A hole was then drilled into the front box section of the prop shaft cover to accept the screw head. This now means that the prop shaft cover has to be manouvered into place (even more than usual ;))
Click here to see the image (http://i175.photobucket.com/albums/w159/SteveAndBelle/L-Holedrilledinpropshaftcovertoacce.jpg)

That's it done.
Click here to see the image (http://i175.photobucket.com/albums/w159/SteveAndBelle/M-Alldone.jpg)

The only extra thing I'll do when assembling the car for the final time is smear a tiny bit of clear silicone around where the rod goes into the diff housing to stop any dirt, dust or moisture from entering ... in fact now that I've introduced the screw into the design I could do that now and just make the rod an integral part of the chassis so I can build the car whenever I've got everything else done.

It took me a good few hours to complete and even though I haven't finished building the Hound or even the front swing arms for that matter I can honestly say that this mod has greatly improved the strength of the lower swing arm hinge already. I'm yet to figure out a way to brace the front of the threaded rods together however I'm tempted to do a similar thing to this as it wasn't that difficult ... just time consuming :)

All up this mod cost me next to nix. The 5mm steel rod was sourced from the middle section of a Dynabolt (thread and flange cut off), the 3mm screw in the middle is one of the million Computer case screws I have lying around and the 3mm stainless steel threaded rod cost me $7.00 for a metre length and as I should only need 100mm of this the entire mod has only cost me $0.70c so far ... but it did take a while to do.

I will post more photos when I get the front brace done so if you're keen please keep an eye out for them. The rear swing arm hinge brace wont be anywhere near as difficult as it will basically be a direct rip-off of JDT's design on page 113 (thanks JDT) using more of the 3mm stainless threaded rod starting in the gear housing with a couple of Nylock nuts and running through the hinge & swing arms to the rear where I will use the bracket that comes with the 'Square' carbon skidplate kit. I'll probably just put another couple of Nylock nuts on the back to keep it simple.

OK, I think I get the award for the longest ever thread ... so I'll shutup now :)

SteveAndBelle

04-15-2007, 03:55 PM

... I can honestly say that this mod has greatly improved the strength of the lower swing arm hinge already.

My only concern of course is that I've just weakened the entire front-end and although the swing hinges will now survive anything I put them through there's a high chance that I'm gonna split the chassis in half after the first couple of big hits.

Oh well, it's all a learning experience so we'll just have to wait and see :)

Seeya.

JDT

04-16-2007, 09:03 AM

Great work, no point in loosing the ground clearance if you don't have to, guys give me crap for trying to modify these low end cars, but for me its about cheap clean reliable fun, since I did the pin holder mod I have not broken a chassis, one shot broke the stub axle off my cvd and spun the car around about 5 times in the air after one wheel caught the edge of the curb, I thought for sure the entire arm was ripped off as I saw the wheel go rolling away, busted the 5 mm stub off clean with the aluminum 12mm hex drive hub so you can tell it was a heck of a shot but no damage to chassis, once again great work, keep us posted but I really think you will be fine.

SteveAndBelle

04-16-2007, 09:50 AM

Thanks JDT. You are my unofficial DF-02 mentor so anything I do to my GH is probably all due to something you've done anyway :) The credit is all yours ! I wouldn't have been bothered to do it without you ... sob, sob :)

Thanks for the ideas & theories though and yes I will keep posting my progress during the rebuild of my GH and of course the on & off road trials once it's done too !

I'll hopefully be stepping up to an E-Maxx in a few months (only my 2nd ever 'real' RC car) so I think this huge effort on the GH will be as far as I push it for a while as I'm sure I'll be concentrating on modding & hacking the E-Maxx to hell & back :)

I'll hopefully throw another post up after next weekends efforts on the GH which will hopefully see the whole front end reinforcement finished ... hopefully ! I'll then start on the rear and then start rebuilding it from the ground up. So within a few weeks from today the GH should be back better than ever.

JDT

04-16-2007, 02:55 PM

cool, I'm in the same boat lol, I am going to convert an HPI MT2 over from gas to electric and use that as my primary from now on but the df 02 will be kept in running order with my old LRP brushed esc and a mod motor just for bashing
as far as the emaxx goes no need to make parts for it unless you want to do it for fun as everyone and there brother makes parts for them, my buddy has close to $1400 US in his, runs brushless neu motor and schultze 18.97 esc on 5s lipo, 60+ mph, will nearly flips itself doing full throttle launches, I had one before and IMO just putting deans and getting some 7 cell batteries made it a wonderful basher, it will help keep from beating the df 02 as much as with a bigger truck you will want to test it on the bigger jumps lol.

juntom10

04-16-2007, 09:01 PM

what esc are you guys using?????

SteveAndBelle

04-16-2007, 10:25 PM

what esc are you guys using?????

Ha ... yeah, here's the funny bit :)

I never really wanted to go crazy with my Gravel Hound so I wasn't really planning to upgrade the ESC however as it's turned out I have blown so much on the car but still haven't replaced the stock ESC. it's running everything quite well at the moment I really have no reason to upgrade it yet.

Saying that though, once I built my own 3600mAh NiMH battery ladder packs, replaced all the internal wiring with custom length Deans 'Wet Noodle', used a Deans plug for the battery but directly soldered the wires to the motor and upgraded the motor to a 21T Venom Fireball in the process the ESC started getting warmer than usual so I whacked on a small transistor heatsink to help get rid of the extra heat it was producing. It seems to run quite happily now with the heatsink reaching temperatures of about 60 degrees while the motor reaching temps of over 130 (as per the pix on the previous page).

I'm not going to be too worried if I blow the stock ESC but I think it's still got heaps left in it and I'm even considering trying a 7-cell pack on it even though I know it will probably kill it straight away (however I can't find any rock solid evidence of this anywhere on the 'net .. does anyone out there know?).

If I do end up blowing the stock ESC I will probably seriously look into going straight to a MM Brushless setup ... so maybe I should build up a 7-cell pack sooner rather than later ;) That's the perfect reason to tell the wife I need to blow more cash on the car !

Why do you ask anyway Juntom10 ? You thinking of upgrading ??

JDT

04-17-2007, 11:03 AM

My truck version runs the mamba max 5700 combo, the buggy has the old brushed setup in it right now, that esc is an LRP 83250

http://cgi.ebay.com/LRP-83250-A-I-Automatic-Pro-Reverse-Digital-ESC_W0QQitemZ110114545952QQihZ001QQcategoryZ34063Q QssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

pretty good esc, abused alot running overgeared with failure, it pulled out the power wire one time when I crashed hard, I popped it apart and fixed it and its worked fine ever since, it will take a 7 cell pack and is waterproof/water resistent also, but for the money I would just get the mamba esc from bishop

http://www.b-p-p.com/products.php?cat=40

it will run your brushed motors now and you can get a brushless motor later, at $113 for the esc or $179.95 for the combo if you can scrape up the money its well worth it

SteveAndBelle

04-18-2007, 06:01 PM

Hey JDT,

I can't seem to find any detailed info on the MambaMax combos ... but what are the differences between the different models ?

Why should I just blindly go out and buy a 5700 combo when there are other models available for similar money and why is the 5700 the best to fit into my 'Hound ?

Their prices are so good at the moment, I'm VERY tempted to just bite the bullet and get a set ... but your input would be appreciated (as it always is).

JDT

04-19-2007, 10:11 AM

The best place to get the mamba combos I have found is Bishop Power Products

http://www.b-p-p.com/products.php?cat=40

its $180 for any of the kits, free shipping for us in the US, they are awesome to work with, I had decided that I wanted to get a LBA 10 lipo balancer throught them when I got my latest mm system, since I was buying multiple items he gave me $10 off, the best price, fast free shipping and bonus deals=great vendor, not sure what they could do for you in Aussie land as shipping is costly but they are definetely worth the couple bucks for the phone call or you could email for free.

As far as the mamba systems I will give my impression of the three I have played with, the 4600, the 5700 and the 7700, I have not been around a 6900 version yet so I can't advise on that one

IMO

The 4600 is comparable to nearly the best brushed setups I have ever driven down to about a 12 turn, fast and powerful on six cells even moderately priced stick packs, some improvement going nice stick matched stick or side by sides or 2s, on 8 cells its about what I think the 5700 is on six cells, on 3s its close to the limits of what the car can handle and can be geared up alot. run times are very good and heat is really a non issue in my experience.

the 5700 feels stronger and faster than any brushed setup I have driven, on the normal stick packs its fast, it really shines however once you go to good cells or 2s, 8 cells is really to much as is 3s, 3s is retarded fast kind of scary to tell the truth, I have not even tried it on a good 3s just some cheapy fairly low amp(42 continuoue and 63 burst) rated batteries and its still to much. Run times are about what I used to get from a good 12 turn and heat is only a problem on more than six cells or extremely long bashes on 2s lipo but never get above 185 if the car is geared right, on 3s I have thermaled the controller once so I don't really push the issue alot.

the 7700 seems to only like the very best batteries, normal stick packs don't even let this thing loose and cause more glitching than the system usually has, on 4 good matched 4200s its nearly as fast as the 5700 on a cheap stick pack, on six good cells or 2s its only slightly less than the 5700 on 8 cells, the reported limit is 8 cells with the 7700 and its very fast and way more than the poor little chassis and tires can handle, only tried once in the df 02 and it was like the 5700 and 3s way to much, car would spin out anytime the throttle was pinned, 20mph rolling burnoffs/spins/crashes. The biggest issue for me with the 7700 is its a battery hog, running normal cells you can only get 6-8 minutes out of a set of 4200s if you are running close to full out

I got the 5700 because it offered the best of both worlds, fast on 2s with the ability to run 3s for extreme speed sometimes.
If I had to say pick one it would be the 4600 or the 5700, maybe my ignorance of the 6900 is showing some. I guess its hard to explain but I would liken the 5700 to nearly enough which in my big fat american mind is just slight overkill, the car will burn the tires with the 5700 and a stick pack, you will learn throttle control weather you want to or not, imagine being able to "roll out" and at 2-3 mph being able to mash the throttle and have the tires balloon and spin the car out of control, you can get that from any old 12 turn brushed setup, the mamba has the power to spin the car out like this at 10 ? 15? mph, I think I read you are running the stock esc and a mild motor, it will be four to six times that power level on good batteries, seven to nine times that power on 3s
The 6900 might be your best bet if you are sure you only want to run six cells but I can't advise on its hunger for battery juice but I would advise the runtimes will be shorter for sure and the amp draw may be slightly higher than the 5700 which MAY require very good cells or lipos to really get the bang out of it.
I would estimate the 4600 will be nearly twice the speed you have now, with more torque and more top end power overall so it would be a "safe" bet with better run times than the 5700
I know thats a little wishy washy but I just want to advise not recommend lol, I can't imagine how anyone can think the 5700 is not enough for one of these cars but hey get the system you think will work best for you, anyone else can chime in I know we have the 4600 and 7700 systems on df 02s belonging to people on this board.

JDT

04-19-2007, 10:13 AM

did you see this tuning guide?

http://www.castlecreations.com/support/max_tuning_guide.html

SteveAndBelle

04-19-2007, 07:28 PM

Thanks for all that JDT. That's exactly the info I was looking for and I'd imagine lots of others would benefit from it too. I have read the tuning guide previously and found it to give me heaps of info however your notes filled in the gaps for sure.

The great news for us 'Internationals' is that Troy from Bishop Power replied to my email asking if the free shipping extended to International orders with this reply:

Hello Steve, it sure does. This includes free shipping via USPS Air Mail
for international customers. GP Mail and EMS Express are extra however
if you prefer those services. Thank you again

You bewdy !!

I'm going to have a think about it over the weekend and make sure there's nothing else I need to spend money on at the moment and if everything's clear I think I might take the plunge early next week.

Thinking about it though ... if I was to go to my LHS and buy a semi-decent ESC (AU$80+) and then a semi-decent motor (AU$80+) I'd be looking at AU$160 or more. Thanks to the current exhange rate I can pickup the 5700 for only $214 which includes the free shipping which is only AU$54 more than the semi-decent brushed system !!

With that kinda logic it all adds up to me but I've just gotta scrape up the pennies and make sure I'm not going to over-extend myself :)

By the way, what do they sound like ? Can you tell a BL from a brushed system by the way they sound ??

Thanks again for the info, much appreciated yet again !

Fenris

04-19-2007, 09:25 PM

:)
I used to run my Rising Storm on a Tamiya superstock RZ which I believe is fairly comparable to the venom 21t, I think the RZ might have the edge though. It was great fun and pretty quick to boot. I used to love doing burn outs on the kitchen floor, the only problem was the black streaks all over the lino after I had finished.
I put in a MM4600 on the stock gearing and it flew. I noticed that the battery was cold, the controller was cold and the motor was a bit hot (too much time at max rpm) so I geared up to 19/67 and the motor seems happier and the batteries are now warm and it is even faster. I run a LRP 4000mah stick pack and I have never run it dry, there is so much playtime its rediculous (maybe 15 minutes). I usually stop playing when the dog can't run any more. The dog (Harry) is a spaniel X labrador, is 2.5 yrs old, weighs 22 kg and cant keep up with the car, the car pulls away from him, the car also has plenty of teeth marks and drool all over it.
Driving along in a gravel carpark, every bump sends the car into the air and there are numerous cart wheels every time I take it out. I think the speed on the 4600 is great but controlling the car with skill is dificult especially with my point and shoot abilities. On a large grass playing field I think I could handle a bit more speed, off road with gravel and sand and bumps its probably too fast. If I was driving in a nice large smooth carpark some more speed would be good too. I shudder to think how fast this would be on 3s but Im no speed freak (Im starting to show my age now).
Note:- No tyre smoking or wheel balooning has been noticed yet, its not quite that powerful.

JDT

04-19-2007, 09:37 PM

good deal on the free shipping, I honestly think you can't go wrong with either the 4600 or 5700 as indicated earlier, keep us posted and let us know what the first trigger pull is like, for me it was holy ....

juntom10

04-20-2007, 09:36 AM

free shipping to international?
omg

JDT

04-20-2007, 12:50 PM

I forgot to mention the sound, I like it, its a little different than the sound of a normal brushed, I run a steel pinion so its a little loader than the tamiya alloy pinions but nothing excessive, found a vid on you tube that will give you a sound bite

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XLVC8M1Wss&mode=related&search=

Stormbasher3100

04-20-2007, 02:17 PM

Hey guys, its been awhile since ive posted here. What gearing would you recommend for an Epic 19turn motor.

JDT

04-20-2007, 02:33 PM

Hey guys, its been awhile since ive posted here. What gearing would you recommend for an Epic 19turn motor.

with the stock tires you should be able to use the stock 70/19 gearing or the 67/19 gearing, I wouldn't go much higher than that. If you are running dirt hawg buggy tires I would go ahead and stay at 70/19 or even go down to 70/18 to be on the safe side, some guys have reported running 70/21 with 19 turns and stock tires but they admitted it was a little hot after a run.

houndog

04-20-2007, 03:30 PM

Hey all, just got my Mamba Max 5700 installed. I knew i wouldnt be dissapointed and i'm not............ This thing flys! Makes me wonder why i bothered with brushed at all.
JDT, what gearing can i go up to with it? I've been running stock but i'd love to see it at 67/20.
I got the 5700 package from my local model shop but i also won a brand new 7700 without ESC from ebay the other day, it'll be good to see the difference.
Also need to experiment with the placing of the ESC and reciever, never had any problems before but now when its about 30 foot away it go'es all jittery. Looking at the castle tuning guide it sounds like it could just be the amount of power going through the ESC, my receiver wire touches the side of the ESC. I'll have to find a better way to fit it all into the storm body shell!!!!
steveandbelle, go out and buy one, you wont be dissapointed :D .

JDT

04-20-2007, 04:52 PM

what batteries do you got? and what tires? IMO 67/20 for a speed run would be fun but I think it would be hot if you really tried to run that way, lots and lots of fans is all I can say about that, 3s and 67/20 would calculate to over 80 mph :eek: .
the stock tires and 67/19 is okay for the 5700 but if its hot out you better keep an eye on it, I have been running the dirt hawgs at 70/18 all winter and spring and they are taller than stockers so these 5700 systems can be abused some but I did that only for the lack of traction in the cold ran mine mostly at 70/16 when it was hot out last summer/fall just to be safe but with good batteries that comes to a 43 or so mph so don't worry about your theoretical top end speed as you will rarely get there unless thats all you do then speed runs are no rules lol, we usaully check temps with each pass when doing this though, that is if there isn't a horrible 8 cells or 3s wreck to attend to, one weekend with the 7700 was enough for me 70/16 was getting into the 185 range at which point I would usually quite rather than push it, the esc should save itself but the motor will just heat up till it fails, I thermalled mine once normal basing with the 5700 and 3s but the motor was 185 or so under 200 which castle says is the magic number, both for the esc to protect itself and the number you should keep your motor under, my temp guage read 210 on the esc heatsink. A temp gun from tower costs between 20 and 50 dollars depending on what you want, harbor freight sells the same for 6-30 dollars I would recommend a temp gun to anyone playing with brushless as its worth it to be able to experiment with the gearing as driving style and driving condtions always need to looked at also as stock gearing 70/19 is fine for the stock tires with the mm 5700 but if you are burning all four tires for 4 minutes straight playing in the sand don't be suprised if it get mega hot and shuts off possibly smoking the motor. No one is going to spend to much time at full throttle with one of these cars and a mamba system unless they are loosing traction.

houndog

04-20-2007, 05:09 PM

I'm just running the standard spikes but i've got buggy Hawgs aswell, as for battery, a couple of 3600 6 cells and a 4300 6 cell. Next purchase is a 3s lipo with charger. Is 67/20 ok with stock tyres?

SteveAndBelle

04-20-2007, 05:28 PM

free shipping to international?
omg

Yeah, it's pretty good hey ... but I've just received confirmation that the sale only lasts for another week so get in quick if you want to take advantage of it !

houndog

04-20-2007, 05:46 PM

Cool, thanks for that JDT. I'll get me a temp gun tomorrow.

JDT

04-20-2007, 05:51 PM

sorry I was editing the post and missed ya, save your money on the 3s unless you have another car to put it in, every 3s run I have had was at 70/16 with translates to 67 or so mph, if you can get there, I am one for five on attempts and have a pile of parts from the failures, go back up and check the edited version I tried to give a little bit of a further explanation. As far as the batteries go if they are stick packs you are probably going to need to break them down and put the better bars and wire on them to get any good out of them, some stickpacks are good however, if you have silver battery bars instead of knickle you should be fine, they will work with both the 5700 and 7700 as is but will glitch a little worse with the 7700, the good news is once you upgrade to a 2s lipo the 5700 will feel stronger than the 7700 did with the average stick pack IMO.

SteveAndBelle

04-21-2007, 02:18 AM

Today I finished part 2 of my DF-02 hinge-pin holder reinforcement. I did the rear of the front-end last weekend and today I've just finished the front of the front-end so that's all done. I've just gotta 'tweak' it a little bit because the suspension arms are rubbing a little bit but apart from that I think (& hope) I've now made the DF-02 chassis a heck of a lot stronger. Gees I hope so anyway, time will tell ;)

OK, so here's a shot of the raw material I used
Click here to see the image (http://i175.photobucket.com/albums/w159/SteveAndBelle/N-51mmlengthof10mmAluminiumChannel.jpg)
It's just a 51mm length of basic 10mm aluminium channel you can easiy buy at a hardware store.

I then measured everything up and cut, filed, drilled and bent it to fit as best I could
Click here to see the image (http://i175.photobucket.com/albums/w159/SteveAndBelle/O-DrilledShapedBenttofit-1.jpg)

I then did a 'mock' install to see if everything fit properly (which it did)
Click here to see the image (http://i175.photobucket.com/albums/w159/SteveAndBelle/Q-Mockfitting-FrontView.jpg)

Then after a few minor adjustments I decided to screw on the bumper just to make sure it too was OK
Click here to see the image (http://i175.photobucket.com/albums/w159/SteveAndBelle/U-MockfittingwithBumper-SideView.jpg)
I had to cut the semi-circles off the inside of the screw holes of the bumper so that it sat flat on the aluminium channel but that took all of about 2 seconds with a sharp knife.

Everything worked out well. The arms are extremely strong now and there's basically zero play anywhere either so that's an added bonus. I wanted to keep a gap between the bumper and the aluminium channel because I didn't want every little bump to go slamming through all that metal and pass down the threaded rod into the rest of the chassis. I also want to wedge some kind of rubber or pliable plastic in between the section of the bumper that used to hold the U bar in place and the aluminium channel to act as a type of bumper shock absorber but that should be a cinch.

Well, that's that bit done. I'm now waiting for my 'Square Racing 'carbon skid plate to arrive so I can use the bracket in that kit to strengthen up the rear hinge-pins but that's going to be easy-peasey. Once that's done I'll actually be able to start rebuilding the beast and get it back on (& off) the road. I can't wait.

I think I've made up my mind on the MM 5700. I'm going to do it ! I'll place the order tomorrow or Monday but even if I've gotta rebuild the car without it that's fine as I wouldn't mind seeing how the strengthened car goes with the stock motor & ESC first ... then I can release the beast and install the MambaMax :)

timie1

04-22-2007, 05:10 PM

Hiya everyone!!
I am asking all you experts cos I'm completely confused. In my GH I've got installed a futaba mc330 esc and 19t Chameleon 2 Pro. It's been going fine until recently. I bought some deans plugs the other day and came home to install them on the esc-motor and esc-battery. The battery i've got the deans plugs on at the moment is a team orion V-Maxx 3300mah NiMH. I soldered everything up right, plugged the battery in and took it out to test my new plugs. It is punchier. However, the problem is after a while (about 7 minutes) when the battery would appear to start going flat, it slows down somewhat, and then just stops, completely dead to the motor. Not even a drop of power to the motor. Normally the esc makes the motor make a high pitched sort of hum without moving forward, cos of the flat battery. There is still steering, but it's like the motor wires have come completely off the motor - they haven't though. It's never done that before, normally it just slows down slower and slower until it stops, but there is still the hum coming from the motor indicating it's still alive, and if you let it sit for a few seconds and go again it moves forward a little at least.

The only way to fix this problem is to unsolder the black negative wire to the motor, and re-solder it. Now before you people start screaming NOOB, I've been in the hobby for about 18 years. I've soldered 1000's of things for about the same amount of time. I know how to solder properly. After re-soldering it, it works for only 1 battery pack, and does exactly the same thing. Once again I have to re-solder it. At first I thought, maybe it could be a dry soldered joint. But surely not 3 in a row. I dremelled the brass solder tab clean to get any crap off that may have been on there like old solder and flux. A fresh clean tab and brand new solder yielded the same result - one battery pack and I had to unsolder it again. By this time I was getting kind of annoyed with it. I decided to completely remove the motor and hook up the silver can that came with the kit. It works perfectly fine with the same esc, wire, battery, solder joints etc.

So, by simple deduction I have come to two possible scenarios:
1 - The motor is screwed, possibly the brushes are worn or something and won't last more than one battery pack - actually it doesn't even last a whole pack. It appears that it's going flat and slows down to the stopping dead. But the battery isn't flat. Today I hooked up the silver can using the same battery with whatever charge was left in it, and it lasted for about 10 minutes. But if it was the brushes, how would re-soldering the wire fix it?

2 - The esc for some screwed up reason doesn't like the deans plugs with this particular motor. I doubt this scenario, but you never know when dealing with crappy Taiwanese electronics.

Like I said, I have JUST installed the deans plugs. Until then it was running perfectly, and has been running perfectly for months. Maybe the plugs are at fault. I can't see how they could be though.

Someone please help me!!!!! I don't like driving with the silver can, it's too boring. I've never heard of, nor seen this particular peculiar problem before.

Thanks in advance

SteveAndBelle

04-22-2007, 06:45 PM

JDT

04-22-2007, 10:13 PM

timie1

04-22-2007, 11:19 PM

I would initially think its getting to hot and thermalling out on you, did you touch the heatsink on the esc to see how hot it was? when an esc thermals it will usually go again ins about 15 seconds in my experience however I did a quick search for this esc and found this is one of the descriptions

Low battery feature reserves control power by automatically cutting power to the motor.

to me this would mean something like what you are experienceing, once it senses the battery is near done it "warns" you(delay time ?) that from there on out the power is "reserve" and you better bring it back to you, IMO it would make a little sense that with deans you would be pulling more amps than prior and would reach this low voltage threshold and reserve feature sooner and "harder" than with a standard connector, I would also assume the reason you have no problems with the silver can is it just draws so much less amps and eases the lv cutoff in

Thankyou for your reply and bit of research. The low battery feature works nicely, but this particular problem isn't it. All that feature does is it means you never lose control of the steering when the battery gets low. With this problem, once the power to the motor is cut, it won't right itself at all. The only way to fix it is to resolder the negative wire. The very first time it happened I thought that it was thermalling. I turned it off and came back to it a few hours later. I turned it on, but the same thing - steering but no motor power. Normally when it all works ok, when you turn on the receiver and if the transmitter isn't on, the motor/esc beeps. Even if the battery is dead flat, there is ALWAYS enough power to make it beep. With this problem, it doesn't beep - and that is on a cold EVERYTHING, fully charged battery, motor, esc.

However, you could be right about the amp draw bit with the deans plugs. But it's still strange. The esc can run down to 13t, and the motor is a 19t. Shouldn't any extra amp draw still be within a reasonable scope of the esc? The esc though has never gotten hot, just a little bit warm.

Please people, keep the ideas coming.

timie1

04-22-2007, 11:35 PM

Could it be that now you're running better connectors the motor is getting more current and running hotter than before ? Does the ESC get warmer now with the Deans plugs and could it be thermal OL'ing ??

I really don't know because although I've been into electronics for many many years I've only been into RC for the last three months so I'm not 100% sure how all this works yet ... but I DO know that once I replaced my Tamiya connectors with Deans and replaced all the high current power wiring with Deans 'Wet Noodle' thick wire my stock silver can and stock ESC got a LOT hotter than they used to but nowhere near hot enough to start thermal OL'ing.

Hmmm, that's an interesting one for sure. I'm keen to find out what the problem is myself ! Do you have an old motor and/or ESC to install temporarliy to eliminate some possibilities ?

Thanks for your input. Just an unrelated note - I was in Brisbane a while ago - LOVELY PLACE!!!!! You are lucky!!!!

I don't think it's thermalling, it's not getting that hot. And like I said in the previous post I did, even after coming back to it a couple of hours later when everything had a chance to cool down, it was still dead as a dodo, except the steering worked.

Yeah I have numerous silver cans and a 23t Tamiya super stock RZ, but only one other esc the stock tamiya teu 101bk. I know that's a cheap esc, but I love it. It works flawlessly, always has, even powering the 23t motor, of which it's not meant to. Now that gets hot on that motor. Apparently 27t is it's limit..........I don't think so!!!
I ripped a heatsink out of an old computer monitor and put it on top and now it only gets warm powering the 23t. I might try taking the deans plugs off and putting the tamiyas back on and see if the problem goes away. Maybe hard wiring the motor would work??

Oh geez, I dunno. Stupid electronics!!

SteveAndBelle

04-23-2007, 01:36 AM

... the stock tamiya teu 101bk. I know that's a cheap esc, but I love it. It works flawlessly, always has, even powering the 23t motor, of which it's not meant to. Now that gets hot on that motor. Apparently 27t is it's limit..........I don't think so!!!

Yeah, I'm running a 21T Venom (or is it a 23T, I forget now) still with the stock ESC and it hammers. In the first 10-15 pages of this enormous forum there were people successfully running 19T Venom Fireballs and the stock Tamiya ESC could even handle them so they're pretty good for a cheap controller hey.

I've done a similar thing to what you did and glued a small transistor heatsink onto the top of my Tamiya ESC (using heatsink compound glue of course) to keep it cool. It got to over 60 degrees once but that was when the motor was at over 130 degrees so that stock Tamiya ESC still runs relatively cool even under massive loads.

I love that ESC too and as I managed to pickup a spare on eBay for next to nix and because no-one else can tell me if it works or not I'm going to try running 7-cells through it and see how long it lasts (probably only a matter of milliseconds I know :). If it dies I know I killed it for scientific reasearch and for the good of all budget RC'ers across the globe :) If it works, great :) I probably wont bother trying 8-cells though as I know that's pushing things a bit too hard. 7-cells would be nice though hey. It'd make for a cheap upgrade for beginner-bashers at least.

I wont need to know too much more about that ESC soon though because I just ordered my MambaMax 5700 so hopefully that will be reaching me within the next couple of weeks sometime. It's still fun to push the limits of the stock standard stuff though hey :)

Glad you liked Brisbane. I was born & bred here and although it's still basically a quiet little city of a couple of million people it's currently growing way out of control and from the projections it seems that the population will double within the next 10-15 years ! Ouch !! That's fine with me though because it means we get all the cool stuff here that other large cities have had for decades ... things like decent HiFi stores for audio purists (read: tossers) like myself ... otehr things like the deluxe Jewellery and clothing stores for people like my wife to drool over and even simple pleaseures like coffee ! There has been a huge explosion of great coffee shops in Brisbane in the last 5 years but that unfortunately includes friggin' Starbucks. Can't they just go away and annoy someone else for a change ?

Pity we're currently in a very bad drought and don't have enough water to even wash the car or water the garden at the moment. Where are we going to get water for double the population from ? Hmmm, the mind boggles.

Good luck with your car though dude !

timie1

04-23-2007, 02:07 AM

...Glad you liked Brisbane. I was born & bred here and although it's still basically a quiet little city of a couple of million people it's currently growing way out of control and from the projections it seems that the population will double within the next 10-15 years ! Ouch !! That's fine with me though because it means we get all the cool stuff here that other large cities have had for decades ... things like decent HiFi stores for audio purists (read: tossers) like myself ... otehr things like the deluxe Jewellery and clothing stores for people like my wife to drool over and even simple pleaseures like coffee ! There has been a huge explosion of great coffee shops in Brisbane in the last 5 years but that unfortunately includes friggin' Starbucks. Can't they just go away and annoy someone else for a change ?

Pity we're currently in a very bad drought and don't have enough water to even wash the car or water the garden at the moment. Where are we going to get water for double the population from ? Hmmm, the mind boggles.

Good luck with your car though dude !

Yeah I heard about the growth explosion. It'll be good though for property values, providing of course you own a place. Isn't there a semi decent Hifi place there, JB HiFi? It's not really top quality stuff they have admittedly. I too love hifi stores. Now that I'm in canada, I lived in NZ for 19 years before coming here, I'm a kiwi citizen, I've realised that HiFi is seriously over priced downunder. My amp cost $1000NZ and the same one here is about the $299 price range. JB HiFi mainly concentrates on cd's and dvd's don't they?

Anyway, I was thinking about possibly going to Aussie to live. Brisbane was my favourite place out of the places I went. Melbourne was next. Sydney was last. Is the 4wd buggy class popular there? What about hobby stores in Brisbane? I found a website in aussie that deals with MRC/Academy. I am thinking about getting the SB V2 buggy. It would be nice if I chose to move there, cos I don't like it here, to find 4wd offroad rc is really strong. At least there you can race all year round. Here in canada you can't for half the year :mad:

I think I'll sleep on the problem with my car and cry myself to sleep doing it. Maybe I should try using the stock tamiya esc on the 19t one and see what happens. Maybe the esc is screwey. I've already sent one back ages ago and they replaced it, for a completely different reason. I wouldn't buy another futaba piece of equipment. I'd stick with Sanwa (Airtonics in North America). Far better stuff than any futaba I've had. I hope you enjoy your brushless when it comes. I'm hoping to win a shopping spree at some online american hobby store within the next month. If I do win it, I'm getting that same mamba max one. I'd find it hard to justify spending that much money on just the motor and esc for a car that is worth half that price. But I'll glady win one :D

Thanks for your help. If and when I find a proper fix for it I'll let you know.

SteveAndBelle

04-23-2007, 02:46 AM

Don't get me started on property values ! They're probably the main reason I can actually afford to blow loads of cash on RC stuff ! We bought our first house in late 2002 for $100,000. It was a VERY basic 'Post-War' place, timber outside but asbestos sheeting inside, like tens of thousands of other similar houses in Brisbane, cheap & cheerful built in the boom-time after the war. We thought we'd never pay it off ... that was until we sold it in late 2005 (yes, only three years later) for just over TRIPLE what it cost us !

We then upgraded BIG time into a nice big fat 'timber & tin' 1920's classic Queenslander in a much better suburb and closer into town (only 8km's). 12ft high ceilings, beautiful solid timber outside & in, enough space for my wife & I to do whatever we want PLUS enough land to run the RC Car around the backyard ... well, in the dust at least :) It needs a lot of work sure and it will cost us a small fortune to get it the way we want it (ie. spotlessly 'classic') but it's already worth 25-30% more than what it was when we bought it 2 years ago and we've only put a new roof on so far ! Incredible. We're expecting a big crash of course ... but I doubt that will hit within the next 10 years as there's just so much growth yet to go.

Anyhoo, you're right when you say HiFi stuff is expensive out there. I'm trying to load up the house with the Sonos system in every room and out here is costs $2400 for the amplified kit (that's basically US$2000) but if I was to buy it from the US via eBay I could get it for less than half that ... however I'd then have to pay a massive amount for import duty and that would bring the price up to about AU$2000 and for the extra $400 I'd have to pay to get a real Aussie one from an Aussie shop it would probably be worth it with things like warranty claims etc.

Painful hey ! I'm seriously looking at getting an E-Maxx for my next RC car and over here they're $700 for the RTR kit (that's about US$585) but as you probably all know you can get an E-Maxx over there for only about US$300 ! It's not fair.

Still, I suppose the fact that you can easily make over AU$300,000 in 5 years in the property market over here has to count for something ;)

PS. The rest of the country is also great however Melbourne is my all-time favourite city in Oz. Sydney is far to 'blingy' for its own good. The harbour & bridge and beaches are really, really nice, don't get me wrong, but I don't think I could live there. Melbourne has just got that hidden mystery about it plus it's so much more cultured than any other city in Australia in my opinion. Hobart in Tasmania is also very very nice ... but probably a little bit too sleepy for me :) Absolutely beautiful to visit tho.

JDT

04-23-2007, 08:42 AM

glad you knew about the low voltage thing in the esc so it eliminates that, if its not getting hot I guess I would assume its a dead player, I guess I misunderstood about the HAVING to resoldier every time, screw that lol.

houndog

04-23-2007, 04:58 PM

houndog

04-23-2007, 05:43 PM

At the end of the day, apart from getting dark, its time to go brushless.........................

juntom10

04-23-2007, 06:07 PM

my local hobby shop's df-02 price is 154bucks..(canada)
and df-03 price is 174bucks...hmm

timie1

04-23-2007, 08:34 PM

Brushes? A few pages ago i had just bought a reedy brushed motor and after no more than 5 runs it stopped working. I was very concerned, £56 down the drain? But the stearing still worked.....
After a bit of thought (i'm still quite a noob!) i realised (and hoped) it might be the brushes. A quick trip to the model shop and a bit of soldering later and the motor was as good as new.
Some brushed motors eat brushes for breakfast, lunch and dinner!!
Have a look and see if the end of the spring that pushes the brush down is touching the edge of the endbell brush housing, if so you need new brushes.
Thanks for the idea of the brushes. I took out the offending negative brush last night. It looks ok to me. The spring pushing it in is about half way down it's little slot. It's not touching the endbell like you mentioned. When I say the brush looks ok to me, I wouldn't know what a munted brush looks like unless it was really really munted looking. I have the motor in front of me, and I just took out positive brush, and it looks quite munted. It's not worn down, but there is a chunk missing out of the end of it right on the edge of the curve where it touches the comm. It's also quite blackened (the brush, not the comm).
I think you may be right there on your diagnoses. It seems very weird that by resoldering it it fixes it, but at any rate, I will have to replace that brush. It probably is route of all the problems.

Next question for everyone :confused: I saw in a forum somewhere about the Trinity Chameleon 2 Pro motor that by replacing the brushes with some other ones, I've forgotten the name exactly and getting blue springs I think, you notice a huge increase in torque and efficiency. I looked on the trinity website and they say the stock brushes for the motor wear very quickly. Does anyone know the best brushes for this motor to increase power and life of the brushes?

Thanks in advance
Yep, the day has ended and it's dark, brushless will be my next big spend me thinks.

juntom10

04-23-2007, 08:41 PM

Yep, the day has ended and it's dark, brushless will be my next big spend me thinks.
mamba max for 155bucks!(usd)

http://pfmdistribution.com/secure/shop/category.asp?catid=54

SteveAndBelle

04-23-2007, 08:45 PM

Fenris

04-23-2007, 08:46 PM

The Canadian dollar is = to 1.06 Australian dollars, almost identical. The price for a DF-03 at my local RC store is $288 and for a DF-02 is $200 as is the DT-02.
Even with $40 postage costs its cheaper to get stuff from HK or Jp

SteveAndBelle

04-23-2007, 09:08 PM

The Canadian dollar is = to 1.06 Australian dollars, almost identical. The price for a DF-03 at my local RC store is $288 and for a DF-02 is $200 ...

I've seen the Dark Impact DF-03 for sale for $249 here in Brisneyland and that was just their standard retail price so I dare say you might be able to knock a bit more off that ... espeically if you pay cash and buy extra stuff with it !

I agree on buying stuff cheaper from HK or Japan though ... 'Jasons Store' is currently selling the 'Keen Hawk' which is the same DF-03 chassis as the Dark Impact for about AU$215 or CAD$198 but for my money I'd rather buy a Dark Impact from my LHS for the extra $35 because I get it instantly and there's absolutely no risk involved in getting it. Parts are very cheap though as they're much cheaper to post than a full boxed kit.

Fenris

04-23-2007, 09:26 PM

juntom10

04-23-2007, 10:03 PM

rc price of canada is better than austarilia,,,,,but price of usa is better than canada.... and price of japan is much much better than usa(especially for tamiya, sanwa)

NEW df-03 avante is about 10000 yen which is about 90 bucks usd...

timie1

04-23-2007, 10:06 PM

Yea I would be happy to pay an extra $35 to get it now especially at the Canadian price, but at Perth prices I won't be getting one in the near future.
It sux that the Canadian dollar is of equivalent value and the DF-03 costs so much less, also consider that the kit probably originated from Japan or Asia somewhere and shipping to Australia would have to be more economical than to Canada.
The Australian Gov probably slapped a 40% luxury goods tax on it....thieving gits. Honestly you cant take a piss these days without someone wanting to tax you for it.
At least it doesn't drop to 30 below in winter in Aus, gotta see the bright side :)

I am in Canada and I have bought from RC Mart. The DI from them is $119US. You can actually get it cheaper from the Dinball ebay store, the last look it was $115US, which is run by the same guy. When he sent my package to me, on the customs he ticked "gift". The canadian govt didn't charge any tax or duty on it. If gift isn't ticked then the govt charges the duty. I have also bought from towerhobbies in the US. They didn't tick gift, typical americans (no offence anybody), and so the duty had to be paid.
Also, RC Mart is VERY quick with the shipping. It arrived here in under a week. From towerhobbies it took about 13 weeks, and they are only a couple hundred km away.

Surely the Aus govt can't charge duty on a "gift"?

Fenris

04-23-2007, 10:07 PM

Arrgh at that price its almost worth my while to fly to Japan just to buy one

juntom10

04-23-2007, 10:20 PM

I am in Canada and I have bought from RC Mart. The DI from them is $119US. You can actually get it cheaper from the Dinball ebay store, the last look it was $115US, which is run by the same guy. When he sent my package to me, on the customs he ticked "gift". The canadian govt didn't charge any tax or duty on it. If gift isn't ticked then the govt charges the duty. I have also bought from towerhobbies in the US. They didn't tick gift, typical americans (no offence anybody), and so the duty had to be paid.
Also, RC Mart is VERY quick with the shipping. It arrived here in under a week. From towerhobbies it took about 13 weeks, and they are only a couple hundred km away.

Surely the Aus govt can't charge duty on a "gift"?
ummm
i'm not agree about gift thing...
i know that we don't pay any customs for that..
but if thats over 80bucks?? or so??
we pay customs even if it marked as a gift( from my experience)

rc mart is good though..

how about shipping fees??

juntom10

04-23-2007, 10:23 PM

i agree about the shipping from towerhobbies...

illinois is couple of hundreds km from the niagara falls..

but takes tooooooooooooooo long

juntom10

04-23-2007, 10:23 PM

where do you live in ontario timie1?

JDT

04-23-2007, 10:24 PM

I would urge anyone to check with champ rc, they don't sell df 02s but they have all three df03 chassis including the new avante mark ii for less than $100 us, shipping is higher but will beat tower to your door in most cases and if you are odering alot of hop ups of spairs it will definetly be in your advantage, my shipping one time was $37 US but I saved over $50 from ebay pricing so it was actually free.

SteveAndBelle

04-23-2007, 10:33 PM

Hey, JDT ... could you possibly answer some of my questions on the last page to do with LiPo's and Brushless motors ?

It was before all this 'best price', shipping & gift-tax stuff started so it kinda got lost that's all.

If you can't that's fine too.

Thanks.

JDT

04-23-2007, 10:55 PM

I'm wondering if anyone can solve these two mysteries for me :

I know from reading this forum and other websites that a '2s' LiPo pack is made up of two LiPo cells and a '3s' LiPo pack has three LiPo cells and so on ... but what the heck does the 's' stand for in 2s and 3s etc. ?? No-one I've asked can tell me and in fact one of the LHS guys tried to tell me that I was wrong and that I was mistaking a 'c' for an 's'. That'll be the last time I go to that hobby shop ;) ... but does anyone know what the 's' stands for ?

Also, I've just taken the plunge and ordered my first brushless setup, the good ol' MambaMax 5700. I know this is a sensorless system vs. say a Novak system at twice the price which has sensors but what are the sensors, why do brushless motors use them and why are they so much more expensive ?

At a guess I assume the sensors are something to do with the motor being able to tell the ESC exactly what it's doing & where it is at any point in time so it can readjust itself on the fly if need be and I'd imagine that's pretty expensive technology ... but why doesn't the MambaMax need this then ? Is it just a cheap 'ignorant' version of a Novak ??

Questions ... questions ... :confused:

your are correct in 2s means two cells, the s stands for series, think of your stick pack as a 6s1p meaning six cells in series and one in paralell, we never talked with way before because nearly everyone was running the sub c batteries, when a guy says he has a 2s2p he actually has four lipo cells in one pack two in series to make 7.4 volts and 2 in paralell to make whatever the mah is, the cells vary in mah so if you have a 4000 mah cell you can make a 7.4 volt 8000 mah pack in 2s2p, if you have 2000 mah cells you ould need 2s4p to get the 7.4 volts and 8000 mah, when people talk about C they are referring to the discharge rate, a 2000 with 10c constant will supply 20 amps, a 2000 cell with 15c will supply 35 amps, 20c 40 amps, this is where the p part comes in if you have two in paralell you add the amps together so two 20c 2000s would give 80 amps of power. if the cells are only 10c you would need 4000 mah cells to get the same 80 amps, if would still be a 2s2p but would require the higher mah cells to get the same amps, newer cells are 20c 5000 so that would be 100 amps all by its lonesome so guys can run 2s1p or 3s1p without much problem but in most cases you will have multiple in series and multiple in paralell.

the sensored verses sensorless debate will rage forever, your assumptions are correct, by being able to find the position of the rotor in the motor they are able to be super smooth, before the mm most sensorless systems were know to be glitchy and not like big trottle imputs at low rpm, its well known a sensorless system makes better power but Novak was pointed towards the racers that needed smoothness rather than sheer power, the sensors are inside the can and tell the motor exactly where and when to let the juice flow and in what proportions, the mamba gets away without a sensor as it simply uses software to smooth out most of the glitching, I don't have a degree in electronics so I can't tell you the mosfet speed and such but it allows the software to do what the sensor does for novak. I would say its an improvement over the novak, the sensor wires are known for getting damaged so think of not having one to get buggered(good aussie word) ;) as a good thing.

If you are still confused on the 2s or lipos let me know

juntom10

04-23-2007, 11:20 PM

i have novak 4.5R for xxx t mf2...
it is kinda smooth...but i can not use 3 cell lipos or 7 or more cells of nimh!

so i will go with mamba next time..

(i have mamba for rc18b :D)

timie1

04-24-2007, 01:20 AM

where do you live in ontario timie1?
I live in Peterborough

timie1

04-24-2007, 01:24 AM

ummm
i'm not agree about gift thing...
i know that we don't pay any customs for that..
but if thats over 80bucks?? or so??
we pay customs even if it marked as a gift( from my experience)

rc mart is good though..

how about shipping fees??

I don't know if there is any value at which they decide they want duty out of us. When I ordered some parts from rc mart, the value was about $50USD. They ticked gift and I didn't pay any duty. If I remember rightly, the cost of shipping was about $8USD from Honk Gong. I was amazed how quickly it arrived.

SteveAndBelle

04-24-2007, 02:16 AM

If you are still confused on the 2s or lipos let me know

Nah mate, thanks for that. Best not to have buggered sensor wires ay cobber :) Glad I went for the MambaMax (not that I could afford or be bothered to pay the $550+ for a Novak system just for my GH anyway ... or any other car for that matter).

SteveAndBelle

04-24-2007, 08:17 AM

JDT

04-24-2007, 08:28 AM

I am sure you will be happy with the 5700 I know I am, I estimate about 40 hours runtime so far on mine, to me that means its under $5 an hour for the fun I have allready had and the cost keeps going down with each trouble free hour, I would have spent the cost of the system on replacement motors or comms, brushes and springs by now so in all reality its now nearly free

juntom10

04-24-2007, 08:29 AM

I don't know if there is any value at which they decide they want duty out of us. When I ordered some parts from rc mart, the value was about $50USD. They ticked gift and I didn't pay any duty. If I remember rightly, the cost of shipping was about $8USD from Honk Gong. I was amazed how quickly it arrived.
oh my god...

just 8 bucks?

thats nice!!!!!

when i tried rcmart...they said about 40bucks with tamiya kit...

umm..

dinball is nice..

JDT

04-24-2007, 10:56 AM

Hey, one more thing (for the day) ... when I get my MambaMax 5700 I'll initially be running it with my home-made NiMH 6 or 7 cell 3600mAH ladder packs. They're nothing special and I have no idea what rating each cell is etc. but they're a heck of a lot better than the pre-made junk I originally bought with the car that's for sure. They run the car fast & for about 20-30 minutes (bashing, not continuous) so I'm kinda happy with them as they only cost about AU$35 for the cells from a local Electronics store. I will eventually look at getting a nice 'LiPo capable' charger and build up or buy a couple of very decent packs in the not too distant future but for now I'll just stick with these. Packs are an easy upgrade anyway !

Anyhoo, I've got a set of the black 2.2 JDI wheels and the ProLine Dirt Hawgs to use for off-road and genral bashing and also have a set of the white 2.2 JDI wheels fitted with ProLine Speed Hawgs for the on-road speedy stuff and was wondering what pinion I should use for each scenario. When running the larger Dirt Hawgs with the the stock Tamiya silver can and the Venom I geared it down to a 16T however as I know the MM will probably be able to power this thing along without the need to change the gearing should I just put the stock 19T back in ? Saying that though, because the Speed Hawg tyres on those same size wheels are a fair bit lower in profile (over half an inch shorter when standing side-by-side with the Dirt Hawgs) what does anyone recommend for gearing them for ultra-high speeds with the MambaMax ? A higher toothed pinion ? Is there such a beast ?

One more thing, can you get harder pinion & spur gear sets for the DF-02 ? I think I was wearing my aluminium 16T down even with the not-so-grunty-but-gruntier-than-stock Venom motor so I think I might need to step up to a harder material.

Any thoughts or solutions or links to cool stuff ?

I use the robinson racing hardened steel pinions

http://www2.towerhobbies.com/cgi-bin/wti0001p?&I=LXEX39&P=7

you can only go up to 19 with the 70 tooth spur so get 16-19 for adjustment, I have ran my mm5700 mostly at 70/16 with dirt hawgs, however this winter and fall when it has been cold/cool I have been running at 70/18 but this was due mostly to cold ground and lack of traction not for a needed top speed increase. I will switch back to 70/16 to be safe once its hot out, with the shorter speed hawgs you should be able to run 70/19 without much issue. There is a 67 tooth spur available that will let you run 19-22 tooth pinions but this would be for speed runs only and I would not even really recommend 67/19 let alone 67/20 as I am sure it would get pretty hot even on the smaller tires if you tried to bash it that way. With the mm 5700 not only will you be running much more power you will be running more than twice the rpm of the tamiya can, on seven cells closer to three times the rpm, gear 70/16 the figures work out to about 39-41 mph on six cells and 43-45 on seven, the stock silver can is reported to be good for 18.9mph in one of these cars so you are more than doubling that so it will be more than fast enough I am willing to bet

Get a temp gun to keep an eye on things as in theory if you go from six to seven cells you can go up on the pinion but there was never really any need for me, six cells is fast, eight is stupid and 3s is a bad wreck waiting to happen IMO, anyone who can drive a 5700 and 6 cells geared 70/16 and claim they are spending to much time at max rpm and need to gear up is either a godlike driver or can't tell when the tires are not getting traction as I rarely get to top speed in normal bashing and racing with buddies. A temp gun will help you to keep an eye on you esc and motor and is a good idea for anyone playing with brushless

http://www2.towerhobbies.com/cgi-bin/wti0001p?&I=LXEMG5&P=ML

this is the one I use but these cheaper knockoff are just as good

http://www.harborfreight.com/cpi/ctaf/displayitem.taf?Itemnumber=93983

on sale now LOL.

When you go to build you batteries get silver bars and good Deans wire if you can, the difference between a silver bar and a nickle bar is huge so its worth it to spend twice as much per bar as they are $10 for 25

http://www2.towerhobbies.com/cgi-bin/wti0001p?&I=LXDHV7&P=7

wire

http://www2.towerhobbies.com/cgi-bin/wti0001p?&I=LXKX26&P=7

love this stuff

http://www2.towerhobbies.com/cgi-bin/wti0001p?&I=LXKX34&P=7

needless to say you can get the bars in 6 or 100 packs to if 25 is to many or to little, the same with the wire, you can get 25 foot sections in red or black or blue but two feet should due at least 4 packs. I can't wait for your first impression of the system.

SteveAndBelle

04-24-2007, 07:10 PM

I use the robinson racing hardened steel pinions

... and soon I will too ! I swear you work for or have shares in Tower Hobbies :) I just bought the two Robinson Pinion kits (odd & even) to allow me to experiment with all the possible variations for both the Brushed motor setup and the Brushless setup (once I get it installed) plus the different sized tyre sets I will be running too. I splurged and got the Tamiya 67T spur gear too so I think I've covered all bases for gearing now ;)

See, buying stuff from Tower when here in Oz is dangerous because I hate wasting the postage fee so I ususally triple my expected expenditure .... grrr. It DOES however mean that I get enough stuff to last me a very long time though so that's OK :)

I've already got myself a similar temp gun but it wasn't as cheap as that and doesn't have a clock/stopwatch. Dang ! It's probably one of the most useful tools in my RC toolkit and I wouldn't be without it now.

... the difference between a silver bar and a nickle bar is huge ...

Well, I was amazed at how much of a difference my home-made ladder pack was compared to the stick pack ... and that was using the exact same cells too but I only used the nickel bars. Although I don't usually fall for 'techie propaganda' like this I have a feeling you're telling the truth so yep, you guessed it, I got all the Deans stuff you suggested too. It's all about making the most of the postage fee remember :)

I got the silver bars, the real 'Wet Noodle' wire (compared to the stuff I bought previously which is exactly the same but just not branded 'Wet Noodle') and the silver solder.

Ouch, I've gotta calm my spending down now. I think I've replaced every replaceable part in the Gravel Hound and I haven't even got it back on the road yet so now that I've nearly got all my OS parts I guess I'd better get stuck in to rebuilding it. I can't wait to see how it runs with all the new parts and my strengthening mods let alone with the friggin' MambaMax once it arrives. WOW.

Thanks again for all your help JDT. I'll leave you alone for a while now ;)

Next big expense ... an E-Maxx I reckon :)

Seeyuz !

juntom10

04-24-2007, 08:46 PM

i love my RRP pinions!!!!

JDT

04-24-2007, 10:15 PM

I hate to say it but last time I knew robinson did not package the metric pitch pinions in kits, I bet you got regular 48 pitch, was it this part #1050 and 1055?

http://www2.towerhobbies.com/cgi-bin/wti0001p?&I=LXEX34&P=ML
http://www2.towerhobbies.com/cgi-bin/WTI0001P?&I=LXEX35&P=V

these will not work, you need the the metric .6 pinions like the one I linked to, sure hope you get this in time to change the order before it ships, I should have stressed the link was for the metric you need, I did the same dang thing and mangled my first spur gear trying to use the 16, it didn't sound quite right but I had been warned the steel was a little noisier so I ran it and the spur failed during the second pack.

SteveAndBelle

04-24-2007, 11:11 PM

I bet you got regular 48 pitch, was it this part #1050 and 1055?

Yep, sure did ! I checked and thought that 'METRIC 48 Pitch' was just '48 Pitch' ... but obviously it isn't from what you say. No probs, I'll just get Tower to change the order to a couple of METRIC 48 Pitch loose pinions instead. Thanks for the heads up ! I'll get onto it shortly.

I do have another question for you though ... do you kow anything about the Duratrax ICE charger ? I know it's a favourite budget charger for NiMH & LiPo users and I know it's got a big screen with heaps of info etc. but as I've never had a pimp'd up charger like that I don't know exactly how it works. Can the Duratrax ICE give you full information on each and every cell being charged ? I'm guessing it does and I'm guessing you use this info to check cells and build up decent battery packs for racing vs. Ok-ish packs for bashing ... right, or am I completely wrong ? Do you need a special 'battery checker' to check individual cells ??

juntom10

04-24-2007, 11:47 PM

Yep, sure did ! I checked and thought that 'METRIC 48 Pitch' was just '48 Pitch' ... but obviously it isn't from what you say. No probs, I'll just get Tower to change the order to a couple of METRIC 48 Pitch loose pinions instead. Thanks for the heads up ! I'll get onto it shortly.

I do have another question for you though ... do you kow anything about the Duratrax ICE charger ? I know it's a favourite budget charger for NiMH & LiPo users and I know it's got a big screen with heaps of info etc. but as I've never had a pimp'd up charger like that I don't know exactly how it works. Can the Duratrax ICE give you full information on each and every cell being charged ? I'm guessing it does and I'm guessing you use this info to check cells and build up decent battery packs for racing vs. Ok-ish packs for bashing ... right, or am I completely wrong ? Do you need a special 'battery checker' to check individual cells ??
i think ICE charger does not give the information of each cell..

input volt, amphere, temp, time, etc etc

juntom10

04-24-2007, 11:50 PM

new trinity discharger? can show you the info of each sell...but expensive..(discharger)

anyway...ICE is a nice charger...

timie1

04-24-2007, 11:56 PM

Hey.......I was at my LHS today ordering some new brushes for my motor, I'm hoping that will fix the problem I am having with it dying. The +ve brush has a big chip out of the end of it. When it arrives on friday I am thinking I might get shock oil as well. What weight have people tried on the kit shocks? I would like to stiffen up the back enough so that when driving flat out over cracked, rutted, and roughly-paved-snow wrecked concrete it doesn't slap the ground. I don't expect to fix the problem of it bottoming out on jumps, just normal driving.

Thanks

SteveAndBelle

04-25-2007, 12:04 AM

Well apart from stuffing up orders at Tower, today I have managed to finish all the hingepin reinforcing I needed to do before rebuilding the car next week.

The rear was a heck of a lot easier than the front-end as I didn't have to manufacture anything much. I just stole JDT's method of drilling holes into the gear casing to anchor rods to the rest of the chassis instead of leaving them float around in the breeze as per the original Tamiya 'U' hinge thingy. Thanks again JDT !

The ease of the rear-end reinforcement was helped along by the fact that I had purchased & received the 'Square' rear carbon skid plate kit which comes with a nice alloy bracket that screws the plate to the underside of the car replacing the original rear bumper. The kit also included a couple of shafts that replaced the Tamiya 'U' hinge thingy and were held into place on the supplied alloy bracket by a couple of small grub screws ... however I didn't use these as I wanted to go through the holes in the gear casing instead and these obviously weren't long enough for that. No problems there as the 3mm stainless rod I used for the front-end slid through everything perfectly and I even managed to flatten a small section on each rod so I could still use the grub screws ! Nice.

So, all I did was cut a couple of short 64mm lengths of the stainless rod, drilled the two holes in the gear casing, slid the rod through, tightened the nuts at each end and that was basically it ... oh, and flattened the threaded rod in a small section so the grub screws could do their magic too :)

Here's an over exposed top view (http://i175.photobucket.com/albums/w159/SteveAndBelle/A-Viewfromabove.jpg) ... here's a view from the front (http://i175.photobucket.com/albums/w159/SteveAndBelle/B-Viewfromfront.jpg) ... and here's a view from the back (http://i175.photobucket.com/albums/w159/SteveAndBelle/C-Viewfromrear.jpg) .

Now that I've done that both the front & rear-ends are extremely solid so going by what JDT has reported I shouldn't ever destroy another chassis ... but if I do all I've got to do is drill a couple of holes and move my home-made parts over to the other new chassis I have in stock :)

I highly recommend similar mods for anyone experiencing MCCS (Multiple Cracked Chassis Syndrome).