Nitroholic

Savages are still fun! I have a pair that are both long time ownership cars. Other stuff has come and gone...but there has been a Savage in my collection for as lopng as I can recall. They hit the sweet spot between being ..bad...and being ..well..good. Bad in a good way.... and always fun

average in its day..... trouble is ....its day was 13 years ago. spares are going to be a real issue

tarmac tyres will help, and I reckon some tuning of the diffs will give you an edge too As a baseline...I used to run my stock Hyper 7 on 7k front, 10k middle, 3k rear. Its current setup is.....different.....

Thats not really adjustable ..... thats basically a funtion of the tyre shape and the steering geometry. By lowering the car, you will have solved one problem...but basically made another one worse...as your buggy is operating ot the compressed end of it's suspension travel rather than sitting more centrally unless compressed by a jump or bump. I fully understand why you have done it....but you kind of have to accept that taking a buggy, slamming it, stiffening up the springs, and running on tarmac is going to be a compromise setup, and not as good as an onroad car. As to why this happens? well...first off, your chassis has a kickup on the front of the plate, and the whole suspension and steering is mounted on that, giving quite a lot of caster. Also...when you look at the steering...the pivots are on the flat part...while the moving parts are all on the kickup. This is great for riding bumps at speed, as the angle of impact is softened, and it stops the car from bouncing as much. In a sharp turn, though, the positive caster angle changes the camber as you turn the wheels. If you look at an F1 car, they have a LOT of camber....but in a corner, the caster effect 'flattens' the camber, almost leaning the tyres into the bend to get a faltter contact patch and more grip. Your buggy is going the other way...and generating camber on turns. You could set up the camber so itflattens in the turn...reducing localised wear...but as you have a light 4WD buggy...your wheelspin will be back....and you will shred your tyres. You may be able to find parts to modify the caster slightly, changing the angle of the front A-arm pivots... but to be honest...you may find it ruins the buggy for offroad and costs you money. If it was me...I'd buy a sheet of 6082 3mm ally plate, and make a flat chassis...but then you have an onroad vehicle....not an offroad one. First thing I would ask is whether you are using on road tyres on tarmac...or if you are using offroad buggy tyres. Offroad tyres are soft compund and designed for grip on dirt....they last 5 minutes on tarmac. You may get improved tyre life with those. You may also want to dial in a bit of camber, and get a more comp[romise setup for steering.....but then look at your diff oils to help reduce wheelspin. Power takes the path of least resistance...so when the front end goes light...the centre diff sends more power to the front...making it worse. Thicker silicon diff oil in the centre will even out the power. Then run thinner diff oil in the rear...to encoureage more rear wheel bias on power....with a medium oil up front. Better balance of power will make your buggy nicer to drive EVERYWHERE... dirt and car park, so if you haven;t done it...its well worth the time and effort, and its always good to give the difs a service from time to time.

ESC setup can be an issue. On start up, they should beep/flash to show the detected voltage. If you have an esc that thinks you are set for 6S and you ug in a fully charged 4 or 5s pack, then it will hot the Lvc straight off. Had that with ESC in the past where they wouldn't detect odd cell counts .. so it's worth checking, and if you can ... Manually setting the cell count and Lvc. Should aitodetect...but maybe it isn't. As far as the Quicrun goes, may e get one to start with a d see how you get on with it. It's a better unit, but I would have to see you drop £200 notes on a pile of ESC and have it not cure the fault.

Need a bit more to go on here. If you have had 3 ESCs ... in the same car.... doing the same thing: 1) Are you sure the rest of the setup is right. Motor, gearing etc. 2) If you change motors as well...again...is the kit suitable for the application, and geared right. If it isn;t ... the setup just won't work. Finally...Surpass Hobby ESCs are cheap and do not have a good rep. I don;t use them. Hobbywing kit is not that much more money for a Quicrun 150A unit, and they are much more reliable. You can get away with cheap motors...but cheap ESCs can be a real minefield.

Worst one I had to paint was a rally body for a Losi min 8ight. No supplied window masks, and no clear mould lines etc to define the window areas. Trying to get good masking to match on both sides was not fun. Usually you get either stickers for the outside ( no stickers) or masks ( no masks) and failing that, you get clear datum lines for making a mask up or using masking fluid. Smallest shell I have painted....longets time to do it. Plus...it wasn't a multi colour complex design either.

or else do what many have done on DX2, 3 and 4 ... as its a VERY common problem...usually the end piece has snapped off. take the transmitter apart and bend a new hook into the existing spring an re-hooked it to plastic case.

TWICE WHAT IT USED TO BE!

I know what you mean about problem solving....I have only built a couple of Tamiya cars....and on each...there was something that needed sorting 🙂 ARRMA, like Traxas and others do seem to churn out iterations of the same chassis with a different bodyshell and wheels, and once you have one....well...there is no need or reason to buy another. Its why I pretty much end up making custom one off builds rather than buying stock cars. There just isn;t the incentive or the pleasure in the finished product. But I do wish in some cases that Tamiya would fix some of the niggly issues or where they have old, old kits that haven;t been improved...they would drop prices. I mean, I sort of fancied a Clod Buster ( I'm a truck guy...its one of the original trucks....) but at £279 for the kit, plus a bearing kit meaning a basic, brushed motor truck is over £300...... and for that sort of money, its dangerously close to an SMT-10 builders kit and a 12T brushed motor and ESC. Sure, the Axial needs tyres and a shell...but the Clod is in oddball wheels and friction dampers...and there are upgrades still to go! Mind you....I do feel the temptation to take a Tamiya model....and try and really bring it up to date. That could make for a very intersting project, grafting in proper diffs, suspension etc. hmm..... now thats got me thinking 🙂

I think it's probably time to dispose of this one........

I find Tamiyas like this interesting....but hell, no way would I open the wallet and buy one. Can;t find the heart to put more than £200 into a brushed motored, non ballraced buggy. There are a few cars that I can understand the Tamiya Love ..... and some that are good value....but a lot of them I just don't 'get' Sand Scorcher...Wild One...the wacky 6 wheel bus....Mad Bull .... Those I can see, along with the cheap entry level stuff like the Lunchbox or Hornet. But, that said...I still enjoyed watching the video 🙂

You want to buy a budget 6S rated buggy from Sweden...and you think the description will tell you if the car is any good. (its not German....the .SE domain name tells you its a swedish site. The one star review is in German) The translation is irrelevant. There are virtually no specs listed for the car, and the ones that are there are all easy to work out. The weight and 6S voltage, plus the size of hte buggy...thats all the numbers. The words will tell you its super, duper, and gonna be amazing. Probably. If you want to buy one, Google some proper reviews you can read, and find some proper specidications for motors, ESC etc. and then decide. Bear in mind also, that Carson don;t make cars. They rebrand cars. So the Specter is probably also available under other names from other brands who do the same. Also make sure you can get spares.

does look good though..... and if its like the old Madforce.... its tougher than it looks

basically..... it's a steel collar you put over the liner and tighten up. It squashes the cylinder liner in a fraction to restore the 'pinch' on a nitro engine. As these motors do not have piston rings liike larger engines do, it relies on atight fit between piston and liner for compression. To achieve this with minimum friction...the cylinder liner is not parallel...and narrows slightly at the top to reduce tolerances. This stops the gasses all escaping round the piston. As the motor wears, most of the wear is at the part where the piston and liner rub....which loses compression. This squashes it back in to restore some compression. You can't replace the worn away metal...but it does extend the life of the liner. This is a propoer tool to keep the thing even and squash it while retaining a proper round cross section. Old bodge methods used jubilee clips and the like...which were hard to manage, and ruined a liner as often as they saved it. This is a bit more professional. Results with repinching are never guaranteed...but as the motor is low on compression and probably running like a pig when you do this sort of thing......there isn't much to lose!

3d printed rims might hold up OK if you stay off the jumps. They are strong in the right dierction for the actual rim. The bit I would worrk about though, is the wheel hex area. Whether it sill stay on the wheel! Could see it shear off where the hex joins the main wheel disc if there is not enough support. I'd say they would be stronger with a solid dish and plenty of ribbed support in the back. Only way to find out though is to drive the beast! Love the IMEX tyres though

The XT2 was a good buggy in its day.... I had one. Great car. Tough getting spares nowadays though, as you basically have not been able to get new parts for10 years or more. Makes it hard to sell on. In good running order, you might get £120 .... or it may just never sell at all. Same goes with an old Annsman. They were cheap back in the day, but spares availability for somehting like an old Virus buggy is nil. And they break. Quite a lot. So, odds on its got broken parts, and they wont be easy to get stuff. You might make some money back on the £450 outlay..... but it might take a long time. You might also end up with a load of stuff you can't sell. You might also end up a couple of hundred in the hole if there are a lot of non runners.

nice

Looks like the running gear is basically the same as my old 1/8 scale Madforce Kruiser. That was nitro...but I converted it to brushless. They have, by the looks of it, got 4 link rather than the older layout....which is something I might have to look closer at. Got some thick 12mm ally plate to make some axle clamps from.

https://www.manualsdir.com/manuals/650180/ofna-racing-force-21-p4-black-t8.html

glad you got it sorted 🙂

https://www.cmldistribution.co.uk/ these guys are the importers for FTX cars, so if the spares are still available...they will be able to tell you

I need to experiment printing with different filament materials. ABS should help with the strength. Horizontal will be stronger, but vertical for round profiles is always prettier. I've been mostly workign with PLA, which is very weak across layer boundaries under side loads. Half the fun of 3d printing is the experimentation 🙂

https://www.opieoils.co.uk/p-768-castrol-power1-a747-2t-semi-synthetic-2-stroke-racing-motorcycle-engine-oil.aspx my oil of choice

its a nicely modelled car...but she seems madly over excited by the invention of fairly straightforward radio control! Love the interior details and the extras ..but....the thing is a static model on a rolling road. that kind of spoilt it for me.