djindoe

Not the rear, but I had the front lower shock screw strip out on me. I ended up replacing the front arms because of it. I hope it's not a recurring problem. I'd hate to keep replacing the arms just because of the screws stripping them.

Alan_r

DJ: A few posts back I had brought up the issue and found that this truck requires that you check the lower shock screws after every run. It has proven to be my biggest issue with this truck. I've tried plastic loctite, CA glue, you name it and they still work loose. Recently I installed the RPM front A arms and I guess the plastic is much better because they stay tight now. However, the rear arms are another story. I've tried all of the above, billet arms and the through bolted method. The bolted method seems to be the best and is what I've gone back to. Once you get your front shocks where you want them maybe try and through bolt the fronts. The arms are very similar to the rear, including the gap down the center line that allows room for the nut. It's weird though that your major issue is with the front, mine the rear....I wonder why?

djindoe

Alan: My hubs and rear arm/shock assemblies have been perfectly fine despite some hard tail landings.

Aside from my spur gear losing a tooth, all of my issues have been in the front. The A arm/hinge pin keeps coming off and I still haven't figured out why. There doesn't seem to be any flex that would allow it to pop out. Tried tightening it down a bit more and secured the rod end a bit more to the second hole from the outside, and then my rod end snapped.

I've been having a lot of reliability issues with this car. I think the quality of the plastic is mostly to blame.

Alan_r

DJ: I'm trying to picture what's happening with your front hinge pin. Are you talking about the inner hinge pin, the one attached by the two plastic cups and the metal toe plate? That pin is captured and I can't figure out how it would ever allow the hinge pin to come loose without evident catastrophic damage. Can you post pictures of the parts we are talking about?

But yes, the quality of this truck is a little lower than the typical AE kits, the fact that the truck is a Thunder Tiger chassis likely has everything to do with it. Though I wouldn't say I've had any more or any less failed parts than any of my other race kits. It has some fixable shortcomings and it does require pre/post race inspections. During those inspections I do find more loose screws and the like than on my other kits. I agree it's most likely the plastic.

truck driver

If you are losing the front inner hinge pin your front lower transmission case most likely has a hairline crack in it just inside the rear hinge pin bushing.
It's hard to see, but I'm willing to bet if you take your front bumper off and flex the transmission case you will see a small crack

djindoe

I will have to try this. I could've sworn I took everything apart and tried flexing it to see if I could see a crack and didn't happen to see anything. Might need to go over everything again with a flash light to see if I can see anything.

djindoe

That's exactly what I'm talking about. It bewilders me as well. Per Truck's suggestion, I'll try to take everything apart sometime this weekend and see if I can find any hairline cracks by flexing it around. If I do, I'll post pics.

Meangene67

haven't had problems with stripped screws or even loose ones in A arms. Just rear hub mainly. I bought the raceways store out of them. After I get more laps of practice I may thing about making some upgrades.

Alan_r

Ok I was able to put in some time yesterday with all the new equipment. 1st off, the Tekin RX8 G2/PROHD 4300 kv power system rocks. Unbelievable power. There is no jump on the track this truck can't clear. I would NOT recommend this power system to a novice or someone running a smaller track. Setup with a 15T pinion/47 spur resulted in 130 degree temps after 12 minutes of solid running. There is no need to gear up. So the power issue is solved. However after the fact I realized I'm going to have to put together a setup with the Pro4 4600kv 540 as the HD is not ROAR legal as it's a 4 pole 550. I do plan on hitting some ROAR races so I'll need a setup for that.

The next thing is the suspension. The increased speed has highlighted some issues with the new shock setup I'm running. While copying the setup I had with the 16mm composite shocks resulted in a drivable truck, it is far from a smooth and easy to drive setup. The truck was easy to drive around corners without too much fuss, when pushed to hard it would result in a mild oversteer and tail out slide that was easy to manipulate with some feathering of the throttle. Very similar to a well set up rear motor 2wd car. Weight transfer was fine under heavy acceleration and braking, (though I could lift the front wheels off the ground with this power system lol) But the truck felt sluggish on the broken sections of the track and didn't land the bigger jumps very smoothly. Additionally, I had to be very careful with the way I powered up the face of the jumps or the result would be a NASTY nose dive. Smoothly downsiding any jump took a level of concentration far beyond any of my other cars. I tried going to a stiffer spring in the back, blue 4.65, just to rule out the suspension bottoming out but it only improved marginally. I also started adding weight to a custom weight platform I built into the rear bumper with gloss black acrylic sheet. Once I got up to 4oz without success I realized I was trying to mask a bad shock setup. So what I'm going to do is start over with the suspension. I'll likely start with 35w front, 30w rear oil. Then the Green 4.0 springs in the front with the Nickle 3.8 springs in the rear and start tuning from there. The new threaded shocks completely change the truck so anyone out there contemplating them just be prepared to tune. They are much more effective and respond better to changes than the composite shocks. Either way I'm really happy with the direction these mods have taken the truck. I feel that once I get this thing dialed in again it's going to be a serious contender. BTW, so far so good on the lower shock screws. With the RPM front arms and new stock rear arms, I haven't had any pull out yet. I checked them after each run and they stayed pretty much tight. Once I get it dialed in and I've settled on a lower shock position, I'm still going to through bolt them on though. Anyway, good luck with your trucks and I'll update as things progress. And Happy Thanksgiving!

Alan_r

TruckD: I remember the Prolite having an issue with the front diff case cracking. I would imagine the ProSC could be susceptible to this as well. I haven't had this issue yet but Integy makes some really nice alloy diff cases for the front and rear. I'm usually not big on alloy upgrades but in some cases they can be beneficial. Earlier I tried the alloy rear a arms while trying to solve my lower shock screw issue. They never did bend or fail. However I did notice a slight bulge right where the screw goes in so I went back to the plastic arms. It was a long shot to see if they would help but they are cheap so it was worth a try. The alloy diff cases at be worth a try as well.

Cuebulon

Very nice write up man! I just ordered this truck as a roller just a few days ago. Is the track you race at normally a loose track? I've been looking at the Tekin 4,100kV setup for it. On a loose track where would be a good starting point on shock and diff fluids?

Another off topic question. Since this is coming in as a roller, do you have suggestions on bodies that cut through wind better than others?

I'll be hanging around here and posting about my truck as well. I really appreciate the time you took write this. Great help and thank you again

djindoe

Quick update on mine. Ran it a bit on the street and took it off a few jumps in the dirt near my house, and A arms seem to be holding up fine for now, I have a few extra sets handy for the next track session. On the other hand, spur gear completely stripped. Still not sure how, since I'm only running 2s and I know for a fact that the gears have always been well meshed. I bought a couple spare spur gears just in case, wondering if any of you guys have run into this issue.

Alan_r

I've got some ideas that may help you guys out plus a good report from today's runs. However I just got home after spending 12 hours at the track so I'm a bit tired and will write an update tomorrow.

Alan_r

Hello CueB: No problem man, I spend a lot of time working with these vehicles so I felt I could help others by sharing my experiences with them. My home track is a medium grip, outdoor track that runs both 1/8 scale and 1/10. It has a very good combination of smaller technical sections and two long sections that allow you to really put the power down. For an outdoor track, it is very maintained and we have an extremely active club that runs races on it pretty much weekly. The track is a combination of dirt and Georgia clay. Based on my testing yesterday, I am now convinced that the set up for the 16mm alloy V2 threaded shocks is vastly different than the set up for the 16mm composite shocks that are included with the kit. I'll discuss this in depth below. As far as bodies go, I generally don't like recommending specific brands of anything as most modern gear is pretty good. All I can do is tell you what bodies I have tried and what I thought of them. The stock, screen printed body was actually not that bad with modification. Once I cut out some of the triangle areas in the bed, it did not parachute quite as badly as it did and I actually used this body to practice with for quite a while. Unfortunately, the body is not the strongest body out there and with the material removed, it eventually started cracking around all the curves in the bed area. The truck gets raced with one of three bodies. I use the Proline 3441-00 Dodge Ram 2500, which works pretty good once ALL the vents are cut out. However, just like the full size Ram, the body has a very large front fascia and a large area around the wind shield to capture air. I follow the posted ROAR rules on body cut outs so I'm limited as to how much material I can remove. But overall my opinion is that the body looks awesome and works well enough that I use it often. On calm days it works fine, but the sheer mass of the body does cause it to parachute more than the next two bodies. I also use the Proline 355-00 Flo-Tek and the 3413-00 Evo body. These seem to work very well and when properly cut out, parachute the least of all my bodies. The durability has been about the same for all three but definitely better than the stock body. On any of them your going to have to play around with the vents until you find the best combination that works for you. You can actually tune the way the truck flies by cutting out certain vents in the body. But at the same time, you must make sure your truck is properly balanced the best it can be before doing this. If the truck is flying tail high due to a weight imbalance or improper shock setup, I wouldn't use the body to try and correct this. Get the chassis right and then fine tune with the body. Just my opinion based on what I've experienced. I haven't tried any SCT bodies from other manufactures yet but I'm sure any of their current bodies will work fine. It's all in how you tune the cut outs. More is not always better.

DJ: While it is possible that the spur gear just failed, I have had no issues with my spurs since doing the steps I listed earlier in the thread. I've got two days and 17 lipo's on my current spur gear running a Tekin PRO4 HD 4300. This same spur gear has been running since I did my spur gear experiment a few months ago. It easily has 20 batteries a week run through it with the stock power system for a month. Things to check are the three motor mount screws located on the bottom of the chassis. Also make sure the motor adjustment plate that attaches to the motor and rotates within the mount is fully seated in the mount. Make sure you can rock the spur gear within the teeth of the pinion without moving the pinion. Also check to make sure the slipper shaft is not bent, causing the mesh to change. You can check this by removing the center brace and rolling the truck on the floor. Look to see if the center driveshaft wobbles at all. It should rotate perfectly without any deviation to the left or right. I recently found a bent slipper shaft in mine and it was putting pressure on the forward bearing support, causing my gear mesh to get a little tight for 6-7 teeth. Not enough to cause damage but enough to cause a problem if your mesh is a little tight. The next thing to check is your slipper settings. The manual calls for 3.5 to 4mm or thread showing to be the correct adjustment. On my truck, 3.5mm is completely locked down and it wont go any tighter. I don't know if this is a miss print or what but I run my truck with 3 mm of thread showing. The slipper allows for a little give within the drive train and absorbs shock loads to protect your gears. This is extremely important in heavier vehicles such as 4x4 SCT. A properly set slipper should slip a little for a foot or so when you apply full throttle from a stop. After checking the things I said above, try experimenting with the slipper setting and see if that helps your spur gears last longer. On a side note, I'm working on getting a steel spur gear made for this truck so once I get it, I'll report what I find and if it's good, how to get one. It's a fellow racer helping out so I don't have a timeline.

Ok, I spent half the day at the track yesterday running this truck with the new suspension and power system. The only additional mods I've done since the last update was to install the Team Associated FT High Torque slipper pads, PN 91170, to replace the stock unidentified white pads. All you have to do is lay the white pads on to of the new yellow pads, trace the white pad outline, and then cut them out to fit. I did this mod to better handle the power of the Tekin PRO4 HD motor. It was successful and the slipper worked very well. If anything these will last longer with this high power motor. I also installed a T-Bone Racing Prolite Front bumper system and swapped all my ball cups out for SC10 HD captured ball ends and SC10 HD Ball Studs. PN's 91047 and 91051. As far as suspension goes, I went all the way back to stock settings while using the new shocks. Black 4.8 springs in the front with 30w oil. The rear got the nickle 3.8 springs with 20w oil. Front spring pre-load was set at 2mm and the rear pre-load was at 13mm. Ride height with a 5000mah Reedy stick pack was 31mm fron and 28mm rear, measured at the chassis right behind the front A arms and right in front of the rear A arms. Caster was -2 degrees all the way around. The front diff is running 30k fluid and the rear has 7k. The slipper with the HD pads is set to 3mm of thread showing. I have 4oz of weight attached to an acrylic plate low on the rear bumper. Pro-Line Holeshot M3's on each corner.

The suspension is S.O.F.T. So soft that myself and a couple guys at the track really didn't have much hope for this truck. However, I was very surprised when the truck actually made it around the track pretty good. Body roll was pretty extreme; think garbage truck doing Slalom. But the body roll created lots of traction and the truck just went. I was able to hold the inside line and stay in the groove very easily with only minor rear end step out. And when this happened, as is typical with a 4wd platform, the front wheels easily pulled the truck through the rest of the turn. The suspension did not seem to be bottoming out and the shocks did their job. With the soft suspension, the truck definitely should benefit from the addition of sway bars. The only nasty habit the truck had was that if you didn't maintain throttle until after the truck cleared a jump, you would get a nasty noise dive that was hard to recover from. This would result in a hard, jarring face plant into the ground. I'm running the T-Bone Racing Prolite front bumper (it clears my Dodge body better) and it is nearly indestructible. I could definitely see the stock front bumper having issues very quickly with these kind of impacts. So if your truck is nose diving off jumps, work on your throttle control.

So where to next? I'm going to work my way up a bit with the shock fluid. 35w front and 27.5w rear first. The dampening was very fast with the light shock fluid and I think the truck might have been loading up the shocks a little over the longer, rough spots. It's interesting to note that with the stock composite shocks, the heavier oil seemed to be the right way to go, but with the new shocks, lighter oil is working out better. I think with a little more shock tuning and then the addition of the sway bars, this truck will be as dialed in as it can be for my track and driving style. More to follow and I hope some of this has helped you guys.

EDIT: Oh yeah, I almost forgot. An additional benefit to the T-Bone bumper system is that it removes the brace that attaches the front bumper to the front of the diff case. This completely isolates the front diff case from the shock loads imposed on the front bumper when you hit something. I don't know if this works or not, but in theory this should help the diff case survive and by removing it from the line of impact, it may help prevent the case from cracking. AR

Cuebulon

Very cool. My local track is maintained weekly as well although its mainly damp loose dirt with packed clay/dirt underneath. Ill have to do what you did and go through different weights for both shocks and diffs. From your past experience with it where would be a good place to start with shock oils and diff oils? I cant wait to have fun with this thing.