Yet another DuneRunner :)

[RampageHopUps]

You can straigten out the dogbone if its only slightly bent.

 

[Ice_2k]

how?! Seems fairly strong, I'm fairly sure I can't do it with my hands.

 

[RampageHopUps]

You need to use a breaker tube. Find a meter long tube and use that for leverage. Or anything that can fit over the dogbone and give you leverage.

 

[Ice_2k]

do you think laying it on a piece of wood and hammering it might work?...

 

[Ice_2k]

At a closer look, it doesn't seem like it's touching anything. Do you think it's bent bad enough to cause problems for the front diff or the center mount? Or can I just leave it like that until I get a replacement?

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWnUD4DShQI[/ame]

 

[RampageHopUps]

I can'e see it until I get home, but if you can see the wobble, its bad enough.

 

[Ice_2k]

Yet another DuneRunner

I managed to straighten it out a bit with a hammer on a piece of wood, it's better now. Still visible wobble but hopefully won't cause any issues. If I see signs of problems, I'll just remove it and run 2wd until the replacement arrives.

 

[RampageHopUps]

There you go, having fun with your hobby!!

 

[Ice_2k]

Yup, loving it

 

[Ice_2k]

I went for a run today and ran into a few issues:

1. The biggest problem: car completely died twice. I don't mean just the engine, I mean everything: engine turned off, no commands from Tx were working. Turned main switch on the battery box OFF and ON and everything was working again. First time it happened I thought "hmm, who knows" but then 3 minutes later it happened again. My guess is that it's some sort of radio glitch (based on the fact that the engine also died at the same time, I can't think of another reason for that except the kill-swtich kicking in).
   Two weird things about this:
   • in both cases the car was no further than 50-60 feet from me with the antenna fully extended (via that black support tube. Which is funny because this is the first time I used that, up until now I just kept the antenna under the body and had no issues). I ran the car much further than that with no issues. There were no other R/Cs around.
   • the fail-safe didn't activate, the brakes were not applied! This really-really sucked as the 2nd time the car was close to top speed and it was only sheer luck that it didn't hit anything while it rolled to a stop for close to 100 feet. Not sure what to make of this. If I turn the Tx off, the failsafe activates and applies the brakes. Why didn't it work in these cases?! After it happened the 2nd time I packed up and went home because it was getting dangerous, I was running on an empty street but there were still cars parked on the side, ocasional traffic passing by etc. Not a good place to lose control of a 20 pounds piece of metal going 30mph, especially since on asphalt it takes quite a long time for the car to come to a halt.

[*]The little bolt in the stopper on the brake linkage keeps loosening and obviously leaving the car with no brakes. Is it a good idea to loctite that little guy? I'm afraid that, with such a small head (I think it's a 1.5), I might not be able to get it off if I loctite it.

[*](i'm reasonably sure this is a stupid question, but still... I'm a n00b when it comes to 2-stroke engines so better safe than sorry) Putting my hand near the engine on the right side of the car I feel a lot of hot air coming out. Initially I thought "oh crap, my exhaust is leaking" but after thinking about it some more, my guess is that it's coming from those little fins on the flywheel and it's meant to cool the engine. Am I right?

On the bright side: after adding grease to most of the spinning parts with metal-to-metal contact (CVD's on all 4 wheels, gearbox, center "diff") the car seems to roll A LOT better than before (which didn't help me much when radio died and brakes didn't apply but that's another story, lol). Also, engine is really coming alive, man this thing likes to drift. Even with tarmac busters and running on dirt-free tarmac, it loves to throw the rear end out. Can't wait to see how it behaves after changing clutch, carb & exhaust (need to find a -much- bigger playground though).

Also, big thanks to the guys who insisted on the importance of a kill-switch and to Rob for hooking me up with it, I don't want to consider what could have happened today if my engine kept running when the radio died.

P.S. Voltwatch in action, very happy with it, very visible even in bright sun:

 

[designed2survive]

Check all of your power connectors. Everything dying means you lost battery power that's why you had no brake, no TX input being received.

 

[Ice_2k]

but how would that get fixed by doing OFF + ON?

 

[Ildy666]

Maybe ur on/off switch is defective and making intermittent contact.

 

[Ice_2k]

I'll check, but I doubt it. The power was on while the issue was happening (I could hear one of the servos slightly buzzing). I'll turn it on tonight and play with the steering while moving the wires, see if I can get it to happen again. Do you think it's possible that the Rx gets in a 'confused' state if it receives a very fast off/on command (like it would if there was a bad connection somewhere)?

Any idea on the other issues?

 

[designed2survive]

I went for a run today and ran into a few issues:car completely died twice. I don't mean just the engine, I mean everything: engine turned off, no commands from Tx were working.

I'll check, but I doubt it. The power was on while the issue was happening (I could hear one of the servos slightly buzzing).

Your previous post says everything was off.

Anyway you may still have intermittent power connection issues. Worth double checking to make sure.

 

[Ice_2k]

I will check for sure. Power was not off, just the car wasn't reacting to any Tx commands. I turned it off immediatelly because I could hear a servo buzzing and at that point I didn't know what had happened, I suspected a servo failure so I just turned it off. Unfortunately I didn't check what the voltwatch was showing at the time. The second time it happened, I did OFF/ON on the battery box switch and everything was back to normal. If it happens again, I'll investigate a bit before turning it OFF. Hopefully I open the battery box tonight and find a connector that's not plugged in completely or something like that.... I do have a lot of stuff now in the battery box (added kill-switch, voltwatch wiring and an additional charging plug to an already crowded box so maybe something came loose when the lid pushed down on all the wires).

 

[Ice_2k]

Went through all the connectors, pulled on everything while radio was on, no issues. Doesn't look like a power issue... Any other ideas? I'm sort of worried of driving it again without knowing what the issue was...

 

[RampageHopUps]

If I were to guess, your on/off switch wasn't all the way on. Just a guess though.

 

[Ice_2k]

Seems unlikely I would have opened the switch incompletely twice in a row. Anyway, after messing with all the wires and connectors last night, I took it out today again, drove it for ~40 minutes with no issues. Hope it stays that way.

The 5000mAh DDM battery seems to have been a good investment, after a total running time of ~1h20min my voltwatch lost just one line (from 7). At this rate, considering I'll only be running it within the 4 green LEDs and stop when it reaches the yellow ones, I should be getting 3 hours of running time easily.

One bad part from today is that my fuel cap's venting hole got covered with something and so I put a needle through it but I think I perforated something I shouldn't have because now there are small amounts of fuel leaking out through that hole.

(i'm reasonably sure this is a stupid question, but still... I'm a n00b when it comes to 2-stroke engines so better safe than sorry) Putting my hand near the engine on the right side of the car I feel a lot of hot air coming out. Initially I thought "oh crap, my exhaust is leaking" but after thinking about it some more, my guess is that it's coming from those little fins on the flywheel and it's meant to cool the engine. Am I right?

Any thoughts on this?

 

[designed2survive]

Seems unlikely I would have opened the switch incompletely twice in a row. Anyway, after messing with all the wires and connectors last night, I took it out today again, drove it for ~40 minutes with no issues. Hope it stays that way.The 5000mAh DDM battery seems to have been a good investment, after a total running time of ~1h20min my voltwatch lost just one line (from 7). At this rate, considering I'll only be running it within the 4 green LEDs and stop when it reaches the yellow ones, I should be getting 3 hours of running time easily.

One bad part from today is that my fuel cap's venting hole got covered with something and so I put a needle through it but I think I perforated something I shouldn't have because now there are small amounts of fuel leaking out through that hole.

Any thoughts on this?

Nothing to worry about. It's just the flywheel doing it's job of channeling forced air to the cylinder to cool it down. Because of the shroud design that air comes out on the right side of the cylinder.