Scale 1/8 buggy

[nativepaul]

I just finished Cuting and streching a paper model of the bowler to the proportions of my buggy, I cut some length out of the bonnet and took a chunk out between the door and the rear wheel, I streched the width and I raised the wheelarches to make it sit lower.

I will get it enlarged then stick it to some wood and get cutting soon.

You have to either have some imagination or a printer and glue to get the pic properly.


I tried to print one off but it seems I have no ink, it came out like this.



Does anyone have a printer, digicam and a few mins spare time? I will be taking it to the printers next week but I would love to see it in 3D before then.

If you want a larger pic to use, send an E-Mail to paul@nativebeats.co.uk

[nativepaul]

oops I killed that Pic Here is the bigger version.

[nativepaul]

My order from Mike cleared customs today, I got a letter from parcelforce the UKs bigest carrier, telling me that there was £14.04 VAT due on it and a £13.50 clearance fee from Parcelforce, I rang them up about the clearance fee and they said that they pay the duty as soon as it gets in, so its effectivly interest, at 96% per day.
I think its prety sick that they can charge such high interest on an uncontracted loan. If I started up a loan shark opperation with autherised and contracted loans at 50% interest per month I would go to jail for it, but because they call it a fee they can get away with it, some of the laws in this country smack of double standards, maybe I could charge them a £13.50 fee for writing them the check.

On the other hand I am very excited to get my stuff, and hopefully I will be able to run my buggy tonight.

[nativepaul]

Well after some unplanned modifications I got it running tonight, it was after dark so I just gave it a quick test less than a minute, I didn't let it get far enough away from me and the street light to try for top speed but I was impressed by the acceleration (as good or better than my wildest scale hornet setup (and that had totaly REDICULOUS power), and stunned by the handling it seemed perfect, neutral going into a corner with some lift off oversteer should you need to tighten up, I was drifting round my first few corners nicely which suprised me as I haven't driven an RC car for well over 10 years and when I was driving regularly I couldn't drift nearly as neatly or reliably with my Hornet or scale Hornet pan car.

For anyone following me on this this the RCMonster Lightning stadium mount does not fit the lightning 2 pro due to:-

The mount is too wide and without some triming it will hit the turn up on the chassis (I knew about this)

The portion of the mount below the diff hole is 3mm to tall, I had to drill out some locknuts and use them as spacers under the front diff mount to get the diff siting level.

The holes in the top dont Line up, I bodged it by drilling another hole in the diff brace and put 2 screws into the motor mount and just one through the new hole into the front diff mount, It won't stop me giving it a good thrashing tomorow, but will make up a wider brace that will take all 4 screws before I hit any jumps.

And a very minor one, it comes with countersunk screws and the L2Pro brace isn't countersunk.

PS. Sorry theres no pics but it was dark, I will take some tomorow.

[nativepaul]

I got the pics done but its raining hard out there, so I've not run again.


This pic shows the nuts I used as spaceers under the front diff mount.



This one shows the cut out I made to clear the chassis turn up and also the misalignment of the holes in the top of the mount.



Top view of the diff brace showing how far off the mount holes are.



this is individual to my buggy and tray, but I had to cut some of the curve off on the left hand side of the mount to clear my battery tray.



A general topess shot, sorry but its blured to pass the censors.



Plan View.



There is a bit of a mess of wires above the servo, I used my boat reciever its encased in silicone with extension leads sticking out for the servos ESC and Bec to plug into, it don't look good but its waterproof so great for boats and English weather.



And the last one, to show that it all fits under the body, just.

[jnev]

Very nice. Should be a lot of fun, especially out in the rain and mud!!:027:

[nativepaul]

It rained last night and ths morning so in an effort not to cake it with mud I put the road rages on and used it on tarmac, with the road rages it didnt handle anything like as well, I was geting a lot of understeer, when I brought it in I realised why.
The rear tyres are dirty all over so they have a big contact patch but the fronts have too much camber for the flater tyres so they are only making contact on the inside edges.

Looking from the front of the buggy if I put the spanner on to the top of the turnbuckle, do I need to pull it towards myself or push it away to lenngthen the arm? Is it the same direction for both sides or are they opposite threads?

If I lengthen the top arms to get the road rages sitting flat, how will this effect the handling with the off-road tyres?

[nativepaul]

I've taken nearly all the camber off the front wheels, after a run the tyres are dirty all over now and the handling has improved a lot but its not up to how it was with the off road tyres yet. I am still getting a little understeer in normal use, although it is close enough to neautral that with a dab of brakes and a scandinavian flick I can make it oversteer sometimes, but I would like to get back to its original feel (very close to neutral with maybe a tough of overtseer).
Does anyone have any tips or tricks to reduce understeer or to induce oversteer?
I have quite a lot of toe-out on the front, and a little toe-in on the back, would reducing either of these toe angles help?

On a lighter note, I had my first big accident on the weekend,:026: I've rolled it a couple of times but this is the first time I've propperly crashed.
I was running my buggy in the garage area behind my flat, running a course around a some puddles on the tarmac, with the straight next to the garage doors as they are slightly raised and theres a long line with no puddles, but I stayed too tight to the doors and started turning for puddle 1 too late, and hit this drain
It was going fast and I knew it was going to be broken so I ran over to it but saw nothing obviously broken, I tried to reverse away but there was no movement,:013: so I took it inside for closer inspection, I was worried that I had bent/cracked/snaped some parts and that the shock had ripped some components off my ESC, BEC or RX leaving me with a large repair/replcement bill. I looked the mechanics over carefully and found nothing broken or bent.
This scratch just to the right of the bolt in the lower arm was the only damage to the buggy. I am very impressed with the Lightning 2 pro's strength. I started troubleshooting the electronics trying a new battery first and eveything came online and worked just fine, so I took a look at the battery and one of the wires that links the top 4 cells to the bottom 8 had pulled off at one end, My only repair was a quick solder job.:027:

[nativepaul]

I got my first breakage yesterday, I hit the same drain again, this time going slightly faster (it was dry) but I had allready started turning away from it and just clipped it with the rear wheel, the leverage from hitting that far out broke the left rear hub :-( a new pair of rear hubs was a lot cheaper than I was expecting so its not too bad.



I got my dad to give me a lift to the model shop to get the rear hub and while I was there I picked up a set of Medial Pro Tarmac II tyres they only had them premounted on yellow rims instead of the cool black Hyper7 ones I got for for the Road rages, but the tyres are 10 times stiffer than the Crappy Proline Road Rages I was having problems with, so hopefully my handling issues will be over and at least I know what colour my scale body will be now.



Its been ages since I last saw my dad, he is into Electric boats and planes too, so I ran the buggy which impressed him, then showed him my Eagletree and what it did, which astounded him completely. He told me of a datalogger he used in his electrical engineering years ago that was the size of a desktop PC, with less than 1% of the eagletree's power, it cost his company £14k at a time when his skilled wages where £1200 per year inc overtime, technology has certainly moved on, here is some eagletree graphs for my buggy on its 12 sanyo RC2400s.



I showed him how low my voltage is getting under load and told him how good the recent LiPos are under load, we use 1st generation LiPos in our smaller electric planes, He said that as he hadn't seen me since my birthday he would buy me a set, they where out of stock at the model shop but we ordered some in and hopefully tomorow I will be the proud owner of a Flightpower 4s 4350 pack, I'll post a pic and some new graphs with that pack when I've got it set up for the new tyres and lighter pack.

Wish me luck, I should have about double the power and 50% more top speed, I hope I can still manage it.

[nativepaul]

No LiPo yet, but getting rid of the Proline RoadRages and replacing them with Medial Pro Tarmac IIs has made my handling predictable again and puting some 7K oil in my centre diff has given me the slight on-power oversteering sweet handling that it had originally with the off road tyres, but without ripping the spikes off in 1 run.

Next week will see a start to my scale body.

[bdebde]

Are those tires you got belted? Ofna makes some belted on road tires for buggies. I am running the road rages on mine now, but want some belted tires. I really like the belted tires on my touring car.

[nativepaul]

There not belted as such but they have a Honeycomb internal structure instead of using inner foams, that supports it VERY well, they feel like there made of solid rubber only they don't weight enough.


I taped my road rages but they still ballooned a little at the sidewalls where you can't tape em, and they squirm about a ridiculous amount under cornering. I can't detect any kind of distortion on the Medial Pro Tarmac IIs either ballooning or in corners, they really are infinatly better if you can get your hands on them. I've not tried the OFNAs but they can't be worse than the roadrages, they really are [expletive deleted].

Oops I almost forgot there is a downside to them, they are a fair bit lower profile than the RoadRages, the peaks on my eagletree went down by 10-12 Amps and I lost a few MPH top speed, my 45 shore ones seem to grip better tho (there available in 25,35,45,60 shore) so acceleration hasn't suffered, I will be getting that speed back and more with LiPo soon so I haven't regeared but a bigger pinion could be used, if you want to check on Brian's Calculator my calipers make the Tarmac IIs 3.769" and the RoadRages 4.3165"


There has been a for sale sign pulled up and laying on the pavement at the end of my road for a couple of weeks now, so I thought I would be a good boy and tidy up the terrible litter, I took it home with me and a couple of minutes with a saw and the cyno produced this, it's just my style, lots of good entertainment for no financial outlay and little effort.
Now there is no excuse, go and clean up your neighbourhood.


It turns out that my buggy jumps quite well even with 12 cells over on one side if I hit the jump straight it flies straight

[nativepaul]

Still no LiPo, it would have got here quicker if I had ordered from Mike instead of my LHS.

I got my enlargements back from the printer today tho, I cut out the paper glued the templated to some MDF and started cutting parts for my body mould, lots of work still to do but it's a start.


edit, on a side note, I went to my local hardware store today and they don't sell files or surforms or anything like it, closest they had was a foam sanding block. Sick huh.

[nativepaul]

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.


here's an overview of my first hard LiPo run.



and one that show the Voltage bertter.

[nativepaul]

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.


Mud mud glorious mud.


Poor ESC, there's some driveshafts in there somewhere.


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.