[burrows]

that buggy looks so mean with the truggy wheels on it great idea i love it.

[Aronek]

Originally Posted by burrows

that buggy looks so mean with the truggy wheels on it great idea i love it.

I like it too... but I'm going to change it back into a buggy again (but leave the SC bumper on, for bashing). Why? Because I got a deal on another "real truck", so I can leave this as a car. I'll post pics later. For now...

[Aronek]

I had a spare for the camber link, hooray!



But I took my RC8 out for a spin... and made my final "sharing RC with others" mistake. I met a father with and his 12 year old son... and asked the son if he would like to try. He immediately pinned it, full lock, and spun a half dozen circles in the dirt... then let go of the steering completely (still pinned) and ran the car through a 4" puddle of water... into the side of a concrete support pillar under a bridge. It hit at top speed and obliterated the front end.



It hit so hard that half the screws holding the bumper on popped out... then compacted the front gearbox backwards (bottom right, ripping it off it's 4 mount screws)... snapping the steering brace (top left), then bending the aluminum chassis brace (bottom left), and finally bending the driveshaft that goes from the gearbox to the center diff (center). $50 in parts from Hobby Hobby. My own fault: from now on if I don't know you personally, or you're old enough to drive a real car, you can just watch. Live and learn...

But, I still had a working Stampede, right? Well.. I had just received my "Swami-Bar" wheelie bar and installed it, so I took it for a test drive.



If you own a Stampede, you may have noticed the gearbox in that pic is black, not the stock grey. Why? Well, the Swami-Bar attaches with the four 4x12mm screws that normally go through the bottom skidplate into the chassis... and although the Bar is 1/8" aluminum the instructions say that the stock screws are still long enough.

So I used the stock screws.

And on my first run I hit the Swami-Bar on a curb and it made a "ping"ing noise... and the plate fell directly onto the ground with all 4 screws still in their holes, like this:



...with the correspond 4 holes in the bottom of my gearbox now stripped of 90% of their threads. They're not really screws I can do without, since they're the primary way the gearbox is attached to the rest of the chassis

So, a visit to Hobby Hobby got a black gearbox (lots of black Stampede parts now that the Monster Jam trucks are out). It didn't take too long to install...



...and this time I also bought some longer 16mm screws to replace the stock 12mm's:



With everything buttoned up, I managed to burn a battery through it before noticing some other damage: must have happened the same run I broke the Swami-Bar: booo!

[Aronek]

Some time on Kijiji found me a couple more cars...

Original pic: mystery car: ended up being an RC10 Graphite:



After a lot of cleaning up:



And with a new body (still waiting for the wing to come in the mai):



And, a well-used Bullhead/Clod:



...after some love:



Hopefully with enough RC's... I'll have at least one runnable no matter what breaks

[Aronek]

Hopefully my final post to this thread. I don't need the larger tires for my RC8 anymore (after having put truggy tires on it, then removed them) as I ended up filling out my collection with other cars instead :



Front-to-back: Tamiya Hornet, Associated RC10 Graphite, Associated RC8e, Traxxas Stampede VXL and Tamiya Bullhead (Clod Buster)

The Stampede and Clod have satisfied my "big tire" needs for now - in fact I should sell a couple of these...