horatio

My Kronos GTR story starts here...Having read all sorts of stuff about issues with pivot balls and carriers, I was keen to see if they are the revised, stronger version or the ones that fall off. It's quite difficult to tell and I was looking for reinforcement webbing - but they look the same.The body has clips and tethers pre-fitted. This surprised me as early reviewers complained that they had to fit them themselves.Suspension is silky smooth, no rubbing of springs on shock bodies and no air in the shock oil.Steering is super free and with zero slop.Nothing looks cheap or poorly put together.All that being said, I personally would still have preferred putting it together myself. I still need to choose my electronics etc, so it would not have bothered me spending a few hours building this car and getting to know it.Make no mistake, whilst I find it quite difficult these days to get ultra excited about an RC car, this is a remarkable rig - it really is.1/8th scale is a sweet spot size-wise for off road trucks and buggies. Large enough to run on un-prepared ground, but small enough to have low weight.The Kronos XTR is certainly in that zone but it's bigger and heavier than my Xray XT8 at around 4000g. Considering the bracing and over-engineered everything,, it's still impressively light.The chassis looks absolutely sub-zero cool. My first upgrades will be carbon parts for the A arms and steering plate.Receiver is on the way. I'm still open minded about what Motor and ESC to use, but I'm very tempted to try the Kuros 185 motor and Corally ESC. Obviously, if you guys here think that there are better combo's to be had, please feel free to point me in the right direction. I'll take some more pictures tomorrow. But so far, I'm very impressed and can't wrap my head around such negativity towards this outstanding rig.

Thanks! I'll add my thread from the 'other' site here.

My Kronos XTR Detailed Build As a long time RCTech member, I detailed my Kronos XTR build in a thread. Surprisingly, literally no-one on RCTech has any interest in the rig and the forum is generally very quiet unless people have found something to argue about. I could add all my 'build' posts here, as it seems a more active forum for this kind of rig. Would that be OK?

Somehow, my post ended up in the wrong thread! My bad.

Here's an example of spurs that slip past QC and on to our Baja 5B's, causing no end of problems. Note the difference between the outside/inside diameter measurements, which at it's worst was 0.5mm of difference! In gear manufacturing terms, it may as well be half a yard, for all the good the spur is worth. It's totally unusable. Thankfully, the spur holder and bushings were good so for that reason alone, I decided not to send it back to RCModelz, who's service I've found to be very good generally.

There's clearly an issue with the gear mesh here - it looks like the wrong pinion/spur combo, or something is in the wrong place - either your engine or gearbox. Or something might be bent possibly? With the Baja 5B, you don't really 'set' the gear mesh - you just choose a pinion/spur ie: 16/58, 17/57, 18/56 - note that the sum total of teeth is always 74, as there is no scope to adjust the position of the engine. Because there is no option to slide or move anything to accommodate different size gears, using 'the paper trick' to set play/backlash with the mesh of the gears on the Baja 5B is neither relevant or applicable. Some have indicated that you can go up or down a tooth on the regular gear combos. For obvious reasons, this isn't advisable - going up a tooth would cause a very tight mesh, going down a tooth would cause a very loose mesh. Issues with mesh can also be caused by inaccuracies with the molded plastic spurs. They're never perfectly round, which causes tight spots that ease with bedding in. Worse - and this is very easy to miss - some spurs aren't straight/square ie: there is a very slight conical shape to the spur. You can check this by placing the spur on a flat surface, standing it upright, and either using a square, or one of your straight/true gears to compare against. Anything more than a degree will cause problems. The only solution here is to use a different sour. Machined steel spurs are generally much more accurately made, rounder and square/true.

Rdarsa - so how did you get on with the KM brakes? Any improvement? 🤔

If you've had plenty of experience racing various types of car and you intend to race on well prepared race tracks rather than bash, you'd really enjoy racing a 1/8th buggy - lighter, nimble and generally sharper (quicker response) because they are narrower and have a shorter wheel base. I would argue that they are actually more demanding to drive and have less ground clearance so need to be raced on a proper track, rather than a building site! To stay within the BRCA rules of most clubs, they run with .21 size engines and are very quick if used with competition style engines (and yes, they are expensive). Truggies have many of the advantages of a buggy's rugged and simple design, but have a wider stance, higher ground clearance, longer wheelbase and are generally more stable because of this. Whilst they are heavier, you always have the option to use a higher torque .28 size engine (or bigger! - but most clubs allow up to .28 for racing), which tend to be cheap and cheerful and have plenty of bang for your buck. For racing, you have the option to use competition .21 size engines that are generally higher revving but are more manageable on slippery tracks (because they have less torque) and give better fuel consumption (longer runs between re-fuelling stops). Comparing them with buggies, you'll find that truggies being so stable are able to shine on rutted and bumpy sections. It's easier to be consistent with a truggy, even if you're an average racer. Ultimately, buggies should be slightly faster around a well prepared track provided the driver is skilled. If it's a 5 minute race with a high performance .28 in a truggy vs a high performance .21 in a buggy with drivers of equal skill, well I wouldn't want to put money on the outcome - especially if the track is rough in places. If you're in any doubt still as to which to get, then my advice is get a truggy. You can bash it round a park mid week and race it on a Sunday!

I can honestly say, that the Baja 5b SS is a good quality bit of kit. Notice I say 'good', but sadly not 'perfect'. I've had some minor issues with mine. 1) For starters, during the build, the inner bearings simply wouldn't fit in the alloy diff case halves. Or rather, they fitted when heat was applied via an oven, but the bearings ended up being pinched - so getting them out to relieve the diff halves resulted in the bearings being completely knackered afterwards. 2) The spark plug I had didn't last a whole tank of fuel - a bit of bad luck, but still very annoying. Apparently, 'R' resistor type plugs can fail suddenly, or in some cases actually come out of the box faulty. It's not always because the plug has become fouled. It's a rare thing, but I was just plain unlucky. So get a few spares, just in case. Even if you don't need one, sooner or later you'll come across someone who does - and they'll be grateful you've got some to hand! 3) The clutch bell, clutch carrier and pinion on my SS simply wasn't straight. The problem seemed to lie with the clutch bell, but the slight wobble caused the bearings to creep out of the carrier, destroying the spur in the process. The nylon clutch bearing carrier is simply not up to the job, nor is the clutch bell unless it's perfectly straight. My example was out of true - enough to produce a 0.7mm wobble, when measured at the pinion. This elongates the holes that the bearings sit in and when that happens, your clutch carrier is effectively only fit for the bin. The buggy has a huge appetite for grass, more so than anything I've ever driven. The tyres are lacking if you race in the UK - they fine for general purpose use, but they don't work on grass. I think the Hostile MX tyres are the way to go. Hope this helps anyone who has run a search on 'Baja related problems' on google!