masher81

iTrader: (16)

Whats wrong with the body?

Mike Whiskey 76

Good to hear the buggy is working out for you and you are finding solutions for things with it. If you find yourself needing any parts for it, contact Rick at Caster Racing Parts. Event though he may not stock every vehicle made by Caster, he can order any vehicle and parts as he is the US distributor for them.

fyrstormer

iTrader: (1)

It's poorly trimmed and leaves no space for an air filter of a decent size.

I got a bunch of aluminum parts in the mail the other day. I'm going to install them and see if they have any noticeable improvement. I also bought a set of pavement-friendly tires, and I'm waiting on a set of bare wheels to put some Pro-Line Calibers on.

fyrstormer

iTrader: (1)

Thanks, I'll keep that in mind.

Right now the only weakness I see that there isn't an upgrade for is the rear chassis brace. It's made of plastic and it really needs to be made of aluminum. I might be able to make something workable out of turnbuckles and all-thread, though.

fyrstormer

iTrader: (1)

I drew first blood on the buggy a couple days ago. The pavement was wet and the buggy slid into a curb and broke one of the front A-arms. Replacement A-arms are on-order.

fyrstormer

iTrader: (1)

Another follow-up on this vehicle.

I've replaced a bunch of plastic parts with aluminum parts (hubs, steering parts, servo mounts, pivot blocks, camber-link mounts), and the buggy feels more solid than it did before. However, I was having trouble with it accelerating very slowly at full throttle but not at partial throttle, a problem which I eventually figured out was being caused by the freaking brake linkage binding-up. This buggy has a single brake linkage to operate both the front and rear brakes, and it was binding against the sides of the brake levers and partially engaging the brakes when the throttle/brake servo moved to the full-throttle position. There's probably an elegant way to solve this, but I decided to just clean-out the center diff and lock it with JB Weld, then convert the buggy to a single-brake setup. That eliminated the brake-linkage-binding problem.

The GO .15 engine continues to work well, but I was having trouble with it not coming up to temperature -- even though the brakes were dragging at full-throttle, which is kind of amazing. It's already running on 30% nitro, so that was puzzling. A hot glowplug helped a little, but I did a couple speed-runs to get the engine nice and hot and I discovered it was actually colder afterwards, so I cut two rings off the heatsink. Now it get up to temperature and stays there even in 40-degree weather. I may have to cut another ring or two off when the weather gets even colder, but that's find, because I intended to use this as a winter vehicle all along.

Still haven't found a replacement body that fits. If I have to run it naked all winter I will, but it would be nice to have a body to put on it. Oh well.

fyrstormer

iTrader: (1)

I found an HPI RS4 MT2 on eBay that looks to be in good condition for a reasonable price, so I decided to jump on that. I'm going to set that up as my winter nitro vehicle instead. The Caster buggy works okay, but I'm tired of having no body to put on it to protect it from damage in rollovers, so I'm going to transfer useful parts like the cold-weather-modified engine, servos, and hex-head screws to the MT2, and get rid of the Caster buggy.