My new FLM Savage X SS

[killjoyken]

Ok, enough with the ginger kid jokes.....there's a couple of them staring in my window... I think they're after my soul...

Serum: Yes, hurry up and finish it. We're tired of waiting!

Thanks for the compliments guys. I really love this truck. It's by far the toughest truck I've ever built. I'm really tempted to enter it in the RCCA WFRCC challenge this year. I took home fastest mini last year and would like to take home fastest monster truck this year for RC-Monster, esp since last year should have been a win for RC-Monster, not HPI. I forgot the guy's name who was sponsored by Mike, but he should have won. I hope he'll show up again this year.

I've got a MMM on order for this truck and I think I'll end up ordering a 1521 as well. I wonder if it's even possible to get this tank into the 80-90mph range.

[killjoyken]

Ok, Dewmerz and I went bashing at the BMX park today and got some pretty good video for you guys. It's unedited and a little long (9 mins) but it shows what this truck can take. The first 2 and a half minutes are me getting used to the truck so you can skip to 2:40 if you want to see the jumps. With the nice long chassis it's really stable and easy to control in the air. It did cog a few times in the air that prevented me from bringing the nose back up fast enough, but at least the brakes worked flawlessly. Remember, this is the first 1/8th scale truck I've owned and the first time I've really driven it, other than 5 mins in my small back yard and another 5 mins in the parking lot of my lhs to set 3rd gear. For such a big, heavy truck, it's really easy to control and very responsive. There's also some video at the end of my E-firestorm on 2s until the MM separated from it's case.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJVkNKYJbck&fmt=18

Total damage after 15-20mins of hard bashing? 1 broken rear dogbone, 1 partially blown rear shock cap and a slightly dented lipo. Instead of making a front lipo brace last night like I should have, I ended up playing GTAIV. Well, just as expected, that worthless little piece of delrin failed and my lipo slid into the spur gear. The also worthless maxamps "lipo cover" did nothing but thankfully Neu put nice thick wood spacers at the end of the pack that kept the cell from fully impacting the slipper nut. The damage isn't as bad as it looks. I actually peeled back some of the shrink wrap to make sure the cell wasn't damaged. The shiny thing in the pic is strapping tape, not the cell.




Dewmerz came up with an idea to use the remaining stock motor mount support to add extra bracing for the skid plate and lower chassis while also freeing up two nice aluminum tabs to use for a lipo brace. I used a piece of scrap fiberglass for the lipo brace until I go back to work next week and make a proper plate. Don't even plan on using the stock delrin stopper in the front. FLM really needs to make better braces. It really doesn't take much, esp for them. I have to make stuff the old fashioned way, with a mill! I'd kill for a CNC machine!





Overall, I couldn't be happier. This is by far the best RC investment I've ever made. The 8XL did get up to about 180F, but not any higher. Power was great and runtime was a lot more than I expected. No regrets at all. Best truck ever.

Ken's Savage was really cool to watch today. It handled the big jump much better than my LS2P did and had really good runtime. The truggy just couldn't match the ground clearance.

The broken dogbone on the Savage was minor compared to my over jump on the double casing the LS2P hard enough on the peak of the next one to tweak the chassis and pop the center CVD during flex.

If I can get my Savage done by Sunday hopefully we'll do it again.