Another Slash bash, another broken rear shock tower!

Yeah, thats right, I broke it again! Not only that but at the same place (dirt BMX track in Wymondham), in the same way (rear shock tower snapped clean in half at the bottom) and at about the same point (3/4 of the way through my first battery of the day)!

I would have upgraded it last time round but Modelsport didn't have any in stock and at less than £4 I thought I'd risk another standard one. Not this time though! Having checked Modelsport both the Pro Line and my prefered RPM option were both out of stock. So I hit ebay and the only thing I could find from a single seller was a Pro Line one so that decision was made for me!

To be honest I have no grounding as to why I would want RPM over Pro Line so I will try and keep an open mind. If it lasts a whole session then it is already doing better than the Traxxas effort!

Only concern is that the picture on the Modelsport website is completely different. In fact it shows this as being the front shock tower. Checking the hole positions though I can't see how that can be the case. Anyway, hopefully it will be the right one... if not I've just picked up a spare for the front!

Slash diff replacement

Also in the post today was the new diff for the slash.

Much faffing about and some seriously greasy fingers later the diff was assembled.

 Diff assembled it was time to put the rest of the transmission back together.

One design feature that I was less than impressed with was the piece of tape that covered over the bottom of the transmission. I have no idea why Traxxas chose to do it and once removed you need to find something to replace it with.

I bought some waterproof repair tape (the stuff you can fix broken car lights with) from B&Q which hopefully will do the job.

...and a quick trim later...

Hopefully it will last!

Transmission complete I started on the re assembly of the car.

getting there...

It actually went back together pretty easily and after I remembered that I'd used the new screws that came in the pack when assembling the diff I had no screws left over either... can't be bad!

Here it is back in one piece!

Hopefully I can have a proper run with it now... PLEASE!

Wheely good news... wheely bad news!

While clearing out my car (1:1 scale!) to go in for some work I was digging a couple of months of receipts and pastry wrappers out from under my passenger seat and I found my missing HPI wheel!

But karma being a strange beast my ying was soon followed by its yang!

My new rally block wheels turned up today and while they are 1/10 scale I'm not convinced they are 1/10 on road size! Here is a pic for comparison with today's find.

Oh well, they will be perfect for the Hyper 12 when the current off road tyres wear down!

It does mean that I either need to buy some more wheels with tyres or just a set of wheels for the rally block tyres I ordered earlier in the week.

Slash grinds to a halt...

Hopeful of a run at some point this weekend I headed out (in the dark!) to run down the batteries from the last run nearly two weeks ago when the shock tower snapped cutting my run short and leaving me with 1 1/2 batteries charged.

I was running on flat wet tarmac with a few tame jumps (and admittedly a few doughnuts!) thrown in. I finished off the first battery and was about half way through the second when it started to make a horrible grinding noise followed by a complete lack of drive.

Slightly miffed and expecting a dodgy slipper clutch to be the issue I packed up and headed home.

Here is the issue:

So it was off with the transmission cover.

Everything looked in order so I tried to adjust the slipper clutch but the whole shaft rotated even though the wheels didn't... odd...

So the only option was to take the whole transmission out and have a look from the other side. Everything at the back had to come off.

But after a while the transmission was out.

To summarise slightly (unlike me I know!) after much faffing about I found that I could rotate the input shaft to the transmission without either wheel spinning. Spinning the wheels also felt very 'crunchy' which could only mean one thing... the differential.

So, I had a look...

...and found two rounded off gears and diff oil that was full of shards of metal. The diff had basically gone into self destruct. Not bad for less than an hour running...

So in less than an hour I've destroyed the diff and snapped a shock tower. I thought these trucks were meant to be tough?! Oh well, replacement diff has been ordered so I can get some running out of this truck before I lose interest in the thing completely and I'll fight it out over a warranty claim in due course.

RS4 - Little bit of prep work

In order to save a bit of cash on the rally conversion I decided to dig out my old RS4 Impreza shell from the garage.

After a quick wipe with the quick detailer it was looking pretty good!

It won't be much of a rally car if I can't get 4 matching wheels on, luckily my replacement alloy hubs turned up today.

I'm not a huge fan of alloy hubs but as usual it was cheaper to get alloy ones from Hong Kong than to get plastic ones from the UK... THE WORLD HAS GONE MAD!

Here they are adding a bit of bling to the RS4...

Finally I threw the Impreza shell on with the vintage wheels for a laugh expecting it to look a complete joke.

Funny thing is I think it kind of works in an odd way! Maybe I'm just trying to convince myself that so I don't have to buy any more on road wheels! Take a look...

I'll order up some rally block tyres and new wheels for the loose stuff and make do with these for a bit for tarmac.

The rest of the bits were ordered tonight but Paypal is playing up so I'll have to wait until tomorrow to see if the payments went through or not.

RS4 - Project Rally!

Ok, so I have been happily tinkering here and there but I think a small project is the order of the day!

From what I can tell in the small amount of time that I've had it the Slash is pretty good as it is but will need an upgrade to brushless and lipo at some point in the future to keep me interested. The Hyper 12? Well I love that car just as it is so the only car screaming out for an overhaul is the RS4 which if I'm honest... I don't really like!

First of all, my inspiration!

HOW COOL IS THAT?!

So as you may have guessed (duh, as if the title didn't give it away) I'm doing a rally conversion on the RS4.

A quick tap on google soon lead me to this page- http://www.hpiracing.com/rcforum2/showthread.php?threadid=62303

Straight from the horses mouth (well, a member of HPI staff on the official website is good enough for me!) a full rally conversion would require the following;

Here is a list of parts needed to convert the RTR 3 or NRS4 3 Type SS to Rally. The conversion requires some minor modifications, but it can be done.

1. Slipper Spur Adapter (72230 from NMT Racer)
2. 47T 2-speed spur on slipper (76817)
3. 19T optional clutch bell (A979)
4. Rally Tires & low bounce inserts 
5. Rally Shocks (A723 Aluminum, or A773 Composite) #1 pistons, 20
wt oil
6. Super Nitro Rally front kick up bumper/ skid plate (A373)
7. Modified SNR front and rear shock towers (A373)
8. SNR rear body mounts (A373)
9. Any 200mm Rally body 
10. Stiffest rally springs (6737)
11. Nitro 3 fixed steering links (85032-7) used as front upper links also (longer
than standard upper links)
12. Type SS engine mounts (if you have the RTR 3)
13. Lexan Spur Guard (from NMT bodies)

Quite an extensive list! That said even they admit that you don't have to do everything.

I'm going to start by doing the following;

Rally Tires & low bounce inserts 
Rally Shocks (A723 Aluminum, or A773 Composite) #1 pistons, 20 wt oil
Super Nitro Rally front kick up bumper/ skid plate (A373)
Modified SNR front and rear shock towers (A373)
SNR rear body mounts (A373)
Any 200mm Rally body 
Stiffest rally springs (6737)


Apparently there will be some minor modification of parts which I'm looking forward to! After that I may consider looking at the gearing. 45+ MPH really isn't needed for a rally car! Neither is 2 speed come to think of it!


Obviously everything will be covered in (minute!) detail on here over the coming weeks.

Hyper 12 filter clean

As I need to retune the Hyper 12 after fitting the new carb needle I thought it was a good time to clean the air filter... especially as it has never been done!

As you'd expect the inner layer was much cleaner.

I set up a tray with a small amount of clean fuel which I've been told is the best thing to use to clean filters with.

After a quick wash in the fuel the filters were much cleaner but worryingly, twice the size they were! I just hoped that they would shrink as they dried!

Because I'm impatient I cracked out Jane's hair drier to help things along.

Thankfully as they dried they reduced in size! Phew!

Once they were both dry I applied some filter oil to the inner layer and used my favourite technique for ensuring even coverage of the oil... stick it in a sandwich bag and give it a good squeeze!

Once it was back in place it made the rest of the car look even more dirty than usual!

So I thought I better give it a quick spruce up. Obviously being me it was of the "quick brush out and a squirt of nitro cleaner" variety rather than a full strip down!

While giving it a clean I spotted that the rear wing was broken (but not in an obvious way once clipped back into shape) and the wing support had also cracked.

I'm not even going to bother ordering a replacement as it isn't going to disable the car if it fails completely. I did throw in a bit of super glue to try and extend its life a bit but I'm not sure how effective this will be.

Slash shell, preventative measures!

Well, I say preventative but I've already done some damage.

At the moment the tyres scrub the inside of the body when the slash bottoms out (although it shouldn't do that as often with the extra spacers) which has caused some paint to be rubbed off in places. To stop this getting any worse I decided to tape up the spots that were a problem.

But to get tape to stick I was going to have to get some of the mud off of the inside of the shell. After a quick scrub...

As you can see, some paint has already been scrubbed off. Worst place is where the rear tyres made contact on hard landings but there was also some paint taken off where the front tyres, body mounts and side nerf bars had rubbed.

A little bit of gaffer tape later...

Not the most elegant of solutions but it will do the job! I'll make sure to do that before running my next shell!

The rear suspension wasn't rebounding as well as the front. Thinking that it might be full of mud I gave it a bit of a clean. This was some of the crud that just came from the rear suspension linkages. Remember, it only ran for 10 minutes!

The suspension was still just as bad when I had finished though. I think a shock rebuild with some thicker shock oil might be on the cards soon.

Slash rear shock tower replacement

Continuing from last night I decided to carry on with sorting the Slash. First up was to remove the rest of the broken shock tower. Here are the two offending parts.

And here it is looking sorry for itself with all its suspension bits flopping about!

So, fitting the rear shock tower. Can you see the screw heads?

...no I can't either. That is because you need to fit the shock tower before fitting the body mount. DOH! Oh well, not a big problem.

All done...

While I had the Slash on the table with the hood off I thought it was worth sticking some more spacers in to stiffen it up a touch. So an extra medium spacer on the back and a large on the front. I'll see how it handles on the next run as to whether I leave them in or not.

Back in one piece!

...and then I went crazy and decided to give it a bit of a clean. As you have seen from my photos, unless a car is literally caked in mud I'm not real big on cleaning. In all honesty I simply don't see the point on a basher.

When it comes to bodyshells though I've found that a quick spray with some detailing spray and a wipe with a microfibre cloth and you have a car that is 90% clean and with a nice waxy protective sheen. Just like this...

So there we are, back to a fully operational fleet! Not sure if I'll get out for a bash this weekend as I'm off to the Autosport show tomorrow, that said I could really do with running down the Slash's batteries that were charged for last weeks run.

Hyper 12 wishbone and carb needle replacement

First job tonight was to replace the front wishbone now that my new hinge pins had arrived.

Also in the post this week was a new carb needle.

This one was a much tighter fit. Hopefully this will sort all of my tuning issues out. I went for a best guess tune rather than returning to stock settings. I might change my mind before I run it and put it back to the factory settings. Either way I have been quite conservative with the setting so it shouldn't be an issue.

I also made a start with the Slash. First job was to remove the body mount from the snapped shock tower.

As the part is generic with other Traxxas models the shock tower needs to have the correct body mount added in the case of the Slash and Rustler, the Bandit's body on the other hand fits straight on. Here it is swapped over to the new shock tower.

...and that was as far as I got tonight. Next job is to mount the shock tower to the car and then we'll be back to a full fleet again!

Three non runners...

So after today I effectively had no properly running cars! There was nothing I could do about the Slash so after a quick brush down and clipping the back bumper back in place I put that aside. On to the RS4...

A nice simple fix here, fit my two spare hexs and throw on some new wheels and rubber. Because the other two hexs are well and truly stuck in the Tamiya wheels my only choice at the moment is to run ghetto style!

I also spotted that my bodyshell didn't escape the impact with Chris' tyre (on his 1/1 scale!) unscathed!

Hard to see in the photo but there is a small crack that runs the length of the rear arch. Oh well... I never liked that shell much! Ghetto wheels and cracked body aside my least favourite of my three cars is the only runner at the end of the night!

Finally it was time to fix the Hyper 12. A familiar site...

Broken front lower wishbone

...and while I had a replacement my ghetto hinge pin had bent in quite an impressive fashion. Maybe I'll retract my statement about never buying hinge pins again. The steel bar is no where near as strong. Good enough to get me out of a fix but not a permanent replacement would be a fair evaluation.

As I couldn't fix the suspension I thought I might as well have a look at the carb. So it was out with the needle where the problem became apparent straight away.

Near the top of the needle is a small rubber o-ring. My one had gone flat and felt 'plasticy'. No wonder it didn't give any useful seal or resistance any more. I prised the ring out...

...and will keep the needle as a spare if I can find another suitable size o-ring. I have also ordered a new needle and ring from Modelsport with a few other bits and bobs.

Sunday bash with aftermath!

Today I took the Slash out for the first time in anger and you guessed it... I broke it!

I was running it on the BMX track in Wymondham and after a particularly ungraceful landing on its roof the rear shock mount broke causing the bottom of the car to drop to the floor and lift the rear wheels up!

That 2" gap shouldn't be there!

Disappointing as I didn't even get onto the second battery! I was starting to get the hang of it too, not as precise as the Hyper 12 on the same track and more difficult to control the angle of flight with the throttle but put together a tidy line and it made good progress.

Slash disabled it was time to see Chris at work to have a look at his Ansmann Vapour which was playing up under heavy throttle. It turned out that the carb was set too lean and we were just starting to get a good level of tune on it when the clutch died! Oh well, that will have to wait for another time.

I had the RS4 with me and was keen to try the new shocks to see if they improved the handling. After ages trying to get the thing started (flooded > too lean > flooded > too lean > blister from the pull start....) we were off and I think that there was some improvement there. It was still a challenge to drive but it seemed to be in contact with the road at least half of the time, a massive improvement on before!

The engine in this thing is a mystery. It runs great but throws out tons of smoke and drinks through a tank of fuel in no time at all. Too rich right? The almost flush HSN would agree but it is already running hot and leaning it up just causes it to cut out on heavy throttle. I'm pretty certain that it is running lean... but with loads of smoke and a drink habit... confused! Whatever the case this thing is quick, I just wish it was a bit more controllable.

Inevitably the crappy old Tamiya tyres didn't last long!

So as a true basher I ran it on the rims! To be fair there was a little bit of rubber left where the tread ripped from the beads and due to the stuck hexs these wheels were junk anyway.

Despite rattling around on the rims nothing seems to have shaken loose but I will be checking all the screws before the next run!

The Slash has arrived!

The Slash turned up today. Only had a chance to take it out of the box so far but it looks great!

The looks were one of the biggest off putting things about the Slash, almost to the point where it put me off buying one. In the flesh though it looks. Really chunky and ready to take on some rough stuff!

Just need to wait until the weekend now before I can run it!

RS4- Exhaust gasket and handling issues

Last time I took the RS4 out the exhaust gasket disintegrated!

Luckily HPI supply a spare in the box (common fault maybe?!) and it was a quick and simple job to swap it over.

So... on to the handling. Now I have never been a fan of the handling on the RS4. It is too skittish on even the slightest of rough or dirty tarmac and seems to bottom out constantly.

I rescued my old threaded upgrade (well, they are cheap ebay jobbies so probably not much of an upgrade!) shocks from my TT-01D which I have broken for parts. I had hoped that these would be slightly longer than the original HPI items but a quick comparison showed the opposite to be true.

Oh well... maybe the slightly more compliant ride will help with things anyway!

I swapped the springs over for the stiffer blue ones supplied with the shocks to account for the extra weight of the nitro then fitted them on the car. It was only then that it occurred to me, the RS4 has alternative mounting points for the shocks!

Whilst the rear was only going to give me more caster angle the front gave the opportunity for a small amount of extra ground clearance that the car so desperately needed. So it was off with the front shocks again and a quick change of the top and bottom mount positions.

After putting everything back together I noticed just how far out the rear was!

Not only was this giving crazy wheel alignment it was even effecting the ride height with one side sitting much higher than the other!

So after stripping the rear end off and struggling with the rear prop shaft for ages (I resorted to bending a paper clip into a hook to hold it in place in the end!) the back was back as it was meant to be. Maybe I bumped it on the last run, maybe I didn't put it back together properly when I swapped over the rear wishbone, who knows.

Here it is back in one piece and with a noticeable increase to the ride height. Now you probably noticed the wheels... well... I thought I would trial fit my old Tamiya wheels (from my old TL-01 (RIP)) and in doing so the hexs fused to the inside of the wheels! I was going to damage the wheels, hexs or most likely both if I tried to force them out so I decided to leave them in place and will order up some replacements to use with my original wheels.