Here's a pic of one of the bulkheads off the drill press, but not yet finished. I ran the drill down the hinge pin hole, and used it to remove a bit from the remaining outside. I still need to remove the rest of that material (by dremel and by hand) as well as do a bit of shaping on the inside to give the arms full range of movement. You can see I left the center section in place.
Its pretty shiny, so the contrast is a bit tough to see. :)

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y25...9912122238.jpg

Did the finishing work on this bulkhead before I went to bed last night.

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y25...9998391151.jpg

Turns out well, but a mill would be so much easier and cleaner :)
Plus the bit doesn't skip across your work. Dremel jumped a couple times and nicked the work. Nothing bad, but will have to work it out on the polishing step.

thanks for the pictures. Gives me a good idea as to how much must come off...

Im looking at trying to adapt some losi arms at the moment... ill keep you posted on how it goes...

I REALLY WANT A MILL!!! Would make these jobs quicker & Easier!

So a bit of playing around with the cad program from emachineshop. Drew up a simple shock tower that I'm going to test cut on the pegboard tomorrow.
2nd time playing with it, and had an easier time of doing things and figuring out how to make more complicated shapes by using a few tricks in the proggy. Happier with how it ended than where I started!

Was going to cut this from 1/4" 7075 I have. Considering picking up some CF instead. I found some ~cheap CF in small sizes. Enough to make the tower.

I can refine it later some more, but should be good for a test cut.

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y25...hocktowers.jpg

This is designed for flux shocks which I received yesterday. The LSTs are just too big to mount how id like, and there the shafts snapped alot anyway. The fluxes look good and much lighter.

Also recieved my mbx6t rear suspension set yesterday also, as well as all the axles.

First off, the axles do look slightly longer than the XLs. :yipi: Nice 8mm shaft that should hold the hex extenders too. Will get more width than I was thinking.
Planning to get +15mm ofna adapters. Should push it out nicely.

The other good thing is that the weight is half of the XL axles. 25g vs 50g for the above setup. Thats 100g savings total alone. The axles seem strong, and the cvds spin smoothly. Hopefully they last.

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y25...0228681724.jpg


The other interesting thing was that the toe plates that came with the suspension set fit the Sav bulks actually quite closely. Some simple mods and they will fit right in. The other bonus is that they came with a bunch of toe plates, all for different toe and anti-squat settings. It would be awesome if I could get these to work!

I overlaid the Sav hinge pin brace over the brace from the mugen. Very close screw mounting. Need to open the holes on the mugen from 3mm to 4mm anyway, should be easy to make it fit. :)

Crappy pic, but I put M3 screws thru the mugen brace, and up thru the HPI on top.
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y25...0228994468.jpg

Off-topic...
 

And now for something completely random:

Was playing play-doh w/ my son. Army men vs Ogre.

Ogre won lol

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y25...9751963524.jpg

Looks like it is a beast.
I like big trucks.
Can't wait to see how it all turns out in the end.

Thanks CHC, I like how its going, but be a while before Im done.

Got the first test tower cut. Came out well IMO, but I'll thicken a couple of areas. I think I have the bolt alignments spot on.

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y25...0277791740.jpg

This was designed for a flux length shock. It would be easy to just use BB truggy shocks and cut a shorter tower. Actually might be preferable, less leverage for the tower to get bent back. For this project tho, I'm going with the long shocks

Moar
 

Also made up a template for a rear tower. One of the challenges was to mount the wing when the body is so freaking tall. Was going to use some of the roll bar nylon, but was not too thrilled w/ that. Would be a pain to get straight for starters.

Decided on using a mugen wing mount, and mount it high on the towers. Will probably have to figure out a brace for the tower, but thats not a bad thing anyway.

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y25...towersrear.jpg

Made from F tower design. Tweaked some things too.

Mounted:

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y25...0318166499.jpg

With body in place. Looks about right. Marvel at my awesome body prop/ shop rags lol.

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y25...0318014072.jpg

Been a while since the last update, but I've been making some progress as time and budget allows.

I got some hub extenders to finish off the arm assembly. I got some +15mm, as well as +30mm hexes. The +30's really push the wheels out, and are mounted in the pix below. To make the ofna hubs work on the mugen axles, I had to file down the inside flanges (where the hub meets the wheel bearing) down from .5mm to .2mm. Even then I had to use 2.3mm pins instead of the std 2.5mm pins. At this point I'm not going to worry about a small loss in str. I can trim down the hub a bit more to fit a bigger thru pin, but I would have to trim back the whole hub, not just the bearing flange.

The width looks good now. I'm not really going to worry about too much extra bearing wear, as the stock mugen hubs look about +15mm anyway, and the bearings are only $1ea from Avid.

Don't mind the front toe out. I know its way off, but don't care for now. don't mind my son's Thomas track either lol.

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y25...2715629225.jpg
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y25...2715610683.jpg
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y25...2715690413.jpg


I also fit the Mugen arm braces to the Savage bulkhead in the rear. Is allows me to use different toe plates to adjust toe and anti-squat. Cool. I did have to completely remove the remaining material in the bulkhead that was for holding the hingepins. Now the pins will be completely held by arm braces ala truggy style. I will have to mod the arm braces slightly, as well as the Sav skid plate to make everything fit.

The original holes are for 3mm screws, the Sav uses 4mm. The screw hole alignment between the Sav bulk and the mugen brace are only off by ~.2mm. Easy enough to adjust for when widening out the mounting holes.

I want to recess the front arm brace (made from 5mm 7075) onto the two 4mm screw posts on the flm bulkhead. (seen in the previous pix, underneath the drive pinion.) The posts are 7.1mm tho, and I need to get a drill bit that is close.

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y25...2715821468.jpg
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y25...2715671441.jpg

I also started cutting the shock towers from 0.25" 7075 alu. Holy @#$% that material is tough. My saw would zip right thru 0.25" 6061, but it cut very slowly thru the 7075. Got all the way around the outer template, then my band saw threw the tire. Eh, I was waiting to replace it anyway, but sucked it did it right there. Otherwise I'm happy how the tower came out. I tweaked the design a bit from last time, and added body mount holes to use either the Mugen body mounts I have, or directly bolt Revo body mounts to the tower. The Revo mounts have always been very tough, so I'll likely go with those, plus I have lots of spares. The oem savage body mounts always broke on me.

Not too much work to be done until after Xmas. Need to repair the saw as a top priority.

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y25...2725842638.jpg

very cool project. I love the large sale and FG beetle body. Kinda suprised the Mashers don't look too small for it.

Is there any update yet???

how did you find the arm conversion? was it strong enough?

I haven't done anything with this since the last post, nor any other RC. I have just been too busy with Xmas, holiday travel, work/kids/storms in Jan. and a continuation of it until now.

I need to get some more materials and tools to move on, but I've been spending all my play money buying Legos to go along with the Lego train set I got my son for Xmas.

LOL, I might bring home a set I got, or parts ordered online and my wife kinda complained/ asked about the money I spent on it. Ha, wanted to tell her it was cheap compared to the RC stuff! Best off that I didn't say anything other than to ask her if I should take up another hobby such as motorcycles, jet skis or horses. Pretty much ended that conversation. :)

I hope to get it done by spring time/May or so. Wish it was sooner, but just aint gonna happen. :)

thats all good!!!
just keep us posted on how things pan out