I received my Flightpower 4s 4350 in the post yesterday, I ran the storage charge down at low throttle then charged up and ran it hard, from the start I thought I had blown something, it accelerated away slower than before and released a puff of smoke, I ran over and disconnected finding that the smoke had stopped and everything was still cool, it turns out the pinion had slipped and was burning off the threadlock causing the smoke, a quick reaplication of threadlock and retightening the grubscrew with the other end of the allenkey had it going again.

Holy [expletive of your choice]ing hell this things FAST and then some, easily half as fast again over the old setup despite the smaller tyres, I may get used to the power at some point but for now I think a 3s pack would have been enough, I need to set up some punch control on the MM and put my throttle thumb in some serious precision training as it will spin the wheels at what used to be its top speed.

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b3...glipograph.jpg
here's an overview of my first hard LiPo run.


http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b3...ovoltgraph.jpg
and one that show the Voltage bertter.

I switched back to its original off-road tyres today for a bit of fun in the park, I was glad to find that the adjustments that I have made to get it handling well on-road haven't affected its off-road performance too badly, it still handles great.

It's a shame I dont have a camera man, it looked awesome with roostertails coming up from all 4 wheels.

I was getting some nasty coging toward the end of the run, and it wasn't until I brought it back to me that I Discovered why, It had nearly doubled its weight with all the mud and grass all over it and it was completely enclosing the rear suspension and driveshafts making the rear wheels quite hard to turn.

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b3...Picture116.jpg
Mud mud glorious mud.

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b3...Picture115.jpg
Poor ESC, there's some driveshafts in there somewhere.

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b3...Picture119.jpg
Special racing mud this is, it lowers my CoG.

Well I learnt my lesson and I won't be taking it off road in the wet again, even after over an hour of cleaning it's still the dirtiest its ever been, and its been off-road in the dry a few times before.

Oh man, haven't seen a 1/8 buggy that dirty in a long time. Did a lot of dirt get inside the body?

When I'm going to get into stuff like that, I usually spray my buggy or truck down with WD 40. On the front and rear bulks and the chassis. It helps to keep the mud from sticking.

Well it certainly wasn't clean inside especially behind the nitro engine holes, but I was quite pleasantly surprised considering how bad the outside was, not enough mud inside to warrant a picture.

Wow, that's some dirt and a half. lol

I ran it again today (on-road) and the coging has gone back to normal, the MM seems to have lived through its torture session with no long term side effects, its a sturdy little fellow.

Holy cow! I would be tempted to simply take it to a car wash and then oil any screws to prevent rusting!

That's not too far from what I did Brian, I took the battery out and chucked buckets of water at it poked around the rear end with a knife to get the worst of the trapped grass and mud out, chucked a few more buckets of water over it, gave it a quick once over with a wet J-cloth, brought it in to dry, and sprayed it with WD40. If I had a pressure washer you can bet I would have used it. Thank Darwin for waterproof electronics.

I did that with my nitro Revo (oh so long ago!). I parked my car near the vacuums and then put the Revo in the garage bay. I went to go get some coins and when I came back, there was an old man in his Lincoln just sitting there waiting to get his car in staring at the Revo with the funniest expression on his face. Priceless! I guess you just had to be there. :005:

However, I didn't think to oil the screws and they started rusting very soon. I did not enjoy having to replace them. :007:

Necro post warning: I thought this thread had snuffed it when the old forum died but just came across it, guess it was only the search tags that croaked.

As you might expect after so long without an update things have changed a bit, I got Mike to make me a diff top brace and a 3mm spacer to go under the front diff mount so I could get rid of the bodged up 3mm nuts acting as spacers and re-drilled top brace with only 3 screws attached as pictured earlier in the thread (very nice work Mike thanks).
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b3...ghtning012.jpg
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b3...ghtning016.jpg


Unfortunately I didn't manage to get my Bowler Wildcat body moulded but I did find a source of pre-made scale bodies stretched to the right dimensions for the buggy and some extra long body posts to mount it with so my buggy is now rocking a Ford Focus WRC body for on-road.
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b3...l/e86557aa.jpg

I am getting an XT8 truggy for Xmas so this buggy will only ever be see on-road use now and is undergoing an extensive lightening and stiffening program currently with a carbon chassis, braces, towers, battery tray etc and a smaller motor, I'm tempted by smaller LiPos too but I have so many 4s 5000mAh packs I'm doubtful that will happen.

I am waiting for 3.5mm carbon for the chassis and shock towers, but I have some 2mm on hand for the rest of it, so far all I have made is a new servo top plate but I hope to have more updates with carbon replacements for plenty of the alloy stuff soon.
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b3...nbraces005.jpg

I made some more progress today:-

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b3...nbraces018.jpg
I made a carbon Ackerman plate, unfortunately I went slightly overboard with the sanding, but as I'm using the other holes anyway I will use this one rather than remaking it, and may sand the unused second holes off completely to save further weight.

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b3...nbraces009.jpg
I cut out parts for a new battery tray that is not only much lighter but will lower the CoG too, as the alloy tray I have at the moment is raised off the chassis on spacers by about 5mm to clear the mudguards, I will mill groves in the chassis to hold it in position at the bottom.

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b3...nbraces013.jpg
I made a full front diff/steering post/centre diff/rear diff top plate that I hope will stiffen the chassis a lot over the regular front and rear braces, but without any vertical triangulation I may still need to use one of the stock diagonal braces to make it rock solid, I hope not but I have holes for the front brace if needed and there would still be a small weight saving with it.

More to come soon.