I have the following mods done:

OS18 engine (thanks for the help Poor Judgement)

New Era roll bar

Cen adjustble coilovers with Team Losi springs

Cen aluminum tuned pipe

Airtronics MX-3 radio with Hitec hi torque servos

Chrome 2.2 wheels (from LHS)

Pro-Line Masher 2000 2.2 in. truck tires

Upgraded CV's

Cen Racing:

Aluminum steering link

Aluminum brake seat

Metal brake plug

Metal brake disk

Taller gearing

Ford F-350 body

As you can see, the truck has been getting good use. I had it out at a local construction site Saturday, bashing through a 4 acre field of rutted dirt and dust. It performed flawlessly, other than a broken CV. (hence the CV upgrade I performed today)

Best regards,

Ken

Nice one. By CV I assume you mean diff cup? Higher gearing, bloomin heck, these things almost fly with the stock gearing and OS engine!!

Looking great, the Atomik body is the one I go for aswell. Those Masher tyres look the part, might have to get a set of those myself.

glad to help mate and good to see it nice and dirty, the way it should be. u also have got all the mods u need i reckon, good job.

and yea - reinforced cvs? u got us all excited there... or do u mean the diff cups?

she looks good, did you paint that body yourself?

Thanks for the compliments!

Sorry guys, I meant the diff cups. My company makes hardened chromemoly CV joint innards for the inner CV joints on Toyota MR2's. These tend to break when you are putting over 300 horses to the rear wheels, and have sticky tires, on a drag launch. The diff cups on the MT2 serve the exact same purpose, so I called them CV joints instead of diff cups.

The body came prepainted, with an assortment of stickers, most of which I left off. I'm not much with arts and crafts, so I thought I'd leave the painting to the pros. My forte' is nuts and bolts. The body is a much heavier grade of plastic than the CEN body, and does a much better job of protecting the truck. The New Era roll bar helps out a lot in that department too. I left out the windows, as opposed to having to cut holes. This allows me to refuel with the body on, and once I get a longer glow plug starter, I should also be able to start her with the body on. I also have great air flow through the body, to cool the engine.

I just got back from the latest round of bashing around the construction site. No broken drivetrain parts this time

I DID break the rear body mount, where it attaches to the shock tower, and one of the knuckles that attaches the tie rod to the back of the wheel hub. Luckily I have spares of those here, having broken them before. I also apparently didn't use enough CA glue on the tires. (tyres for you Brits ) Three of them are pulling away from the rims, from the sheer centrifugal force that is being applied to them.

I'll try to get a video of some bashing in the near future, and post it.

Ken

ill look forward to the video

Update: I'm having a hell of a time keeping tires on this thing. They are pulling loose from the wheels. I've found that the CA glue is attaching the tires to the chrome paint, which pulls away from the wheels under extreme load. I think I'll go back to using stock wheels in the future, to avoid this problem, or else sand the chrome off the bead area of the wheels before mounting tires to them.

I went back in and cleaned it all up, and glued the hell out of the tires last night. We'll see if that does the trick, once I get home from work and go bashing.

lol yea the os spits tyres off alright!

u are really supposed to sand/scrape the chrome off for glueing ur tyres.

Kblake... You mean you don't like the tires flying off the truck.. I have the same engine in mine and the simple fix it to remove the chrome paint... also, only glue a little at a time and make sure you glue completely... a little miss and the tire speed will blow out the bead... Do you have any trouble with the diffs breaking... I have gone thru several and I just ordered the ffs027 hd carrier.. I spoke with mike at Cen Racing and he said these should help, but no guarantee they will last...

Yes, I've figured out the chrome needs to be removed through trial and error. You would think they would mask it off or something when painting the wheels. Lazy so and so's!

I haven't broken any diffs yet, well, maybe. Something broke today (but the tires stayed on!) the car will move forward under light throttle, but give it any gas, and it just revs and sits there. I haven't had time to tear into it yet. I DID find that the screw was out of the end of the clutch bellhousing, and was missing some parts, I think. It may have stripped the nylon gears, will check it out tomorrow. I have a pretty good assortment of spares for it, so hopefully I can fix it without resorting to ordering more parts online. (none of the LHS carry Cen).

Ken

in regard to diffs blowing - i have only had the large 43t and the small 13t tooth gear strip out on me, replacing them with the machined steel ones cured this.

it does sound like its a bit loose fitting or something cenracer, hard to tell once its all assembled i guess...

I will try to be more careful with the shims when I fit the new diff together... I spoke to mike at cen and he pretty much said the os 18 will screw up the diffs... not meant for the power of the engine... anyway, they are cheap to fix so not too big a deal..

Update: I tore into the truck last night. It turns out that in addition to the loose clutch bellhousing, the inboard motor mount was no longer attached to the engine! These two problems had caused the nylon gears to strip, but I had spares in stock. I reassembled everything with loctite, and the truck was back in action. Back over to the construction site today, and got through three tanks of fuel before the truck was no longer able to move forward under it's own power.

Today's damage:

Broken right front diff cup. Both halves were completely sheared off, I guess that's what breaks after you reinforce the cup part.
(kept bashing)
The screw holding the bottom of the right rear strut at the bottom popped out, leaving that corner of the chassis dragging on the ground.
(kept bashing)
The right front tie rod end broke, leaving me with no steering control over that wheel.
(kept bashing, but started heading back towards the 1:1 car)
The steering control arm from the servo popped off, leaving me with no steering at all, ending the session.
(20 feet from 1:1 car, picked up the MT2 and carried it to the car)

The good news is, I'm not breaking the same stuff every time, so I have hopes that eventually I will have the car built up to the point where I can get through a whole session without anything breaking.

still a bit suspicious about ur diffs cenracer. i have had a few gallons thru my os18 and have never broken that part. aah - i was running the rally setup tho. i have about a gallon thru it on the tmaxx wheels, maybe less, so i guess time will tell on that one.

kblake - do u have ur driveshafts set as horizontal as u can get them? that and some 2mm lengths of fuel hose in the cups will help save the cups. was it a reinforced one that u broke?
do u mean the control arm or wishbone? get some machine screws in there if its the control arm, or some imperial threaded screws ala tmaxx etc, if its the wishbone pillow ball that pulled out... yea that happens... and those skinny little tie rods... been there too... see if u can get some beefier ones to fit the m3 threaded control arms.

sounds like u have been havin some fun tho mate, any chance of a vid of ur bash sessions?

I don't know-I'll have a look at it. What am I adjusting to get them horizontal?

It was a reinforced cup-I did the long strip of aluminum foil with CA glue around the outside of the diff cup. All that was left of the cup was the part that goes into the diff. Had to use a needle nosed pliers to pull that out. A 2mm length of fuel hose where? between the end of the dogbone, and the inside of the diff cup?

It was the screw that goes through the strut, then the pillowball, and into the lower wishbone.

I've been having a blast with it. I need to get one of my mates to come out there with me and film it, while I am running the truck. My 3 year old son has been coming out with me, and he's great about carrying around a couple of tools, and the squeeze bottle of fuel for me, but asking him to run a camera is a bit much right now

The truck is officially down until the new tie rod end gets here from E-Hobbies. I ordered several, so I won't be down, due to this particular part failing, again. Once I get the parts in (should be mid-week) I'll try to get back out there with a cameraman.

Ken

adjust the ride height to get the shafts level - move ur shocks around on the various mounts etc. some people, i think, have even limited the down travel of the shocks with a small piece of fuel line inside the shock on the shaft, to help get the shafts right.

u got it mate, inside the actual cups, it seems to stop the shaft moving about in the cups too much and binding, which breaks the cups. speaking of which, i used 10mm compression fittings/olives on mine, i had to cut a little out of the arms for clearance, along with a bit of the shock tower, pics in my sig i think. dunno how it compares strength wise to ur method, but i havent had one break yet, but then i only use the cups on the rally setup.

worth getting ur lad interested in cameras tho mate! kids are fearless and will get some great shots! its just when they drop the cam... lol. sounds like u drive pretty similar to me! i am on the lookout for a quarry or something round here to give this new engine a good workout. a guy within an hour of me also has a .28 in his funfactor, also a guy across the road from me has a lst too, that would make a good vid, will see what i can do too.

lookin forward to ur vid, i got running in to do...

cenracer1, although Mike at CEN said the OS.18 is too powerful for the diffs, the CEN racing team was running a MugenRossi .12 in their racing Fun Factor. That particular engine has been tested and put out 1.6hp, the OS .18cvr put out 1.3hp according to the manufacturer. It may be worth getting back in touch to see what modifications were made to their racers to safeguard the diffs against the power of their race engines. After all, the CEN NT.16 is putting down 1.2hp apparently so the difference isn't really that great!!

for what its worth regarding numbers... the os18 was dynoed at 1.6hp, os normally hold back a bit with published figures.

its the torque of the .18 compared to that of a .12 that will be the issue with the diffs, i feel.

i heard somewhere that the NT16 is more around 0.9hp that 1.2, but its all just numbers anyway, dont get to worried about them mate, as i am sure u know, there are too many variables, and porkie pies involved with hp claims.

The diffs should hold up fine if they are shimmed correctly or even shimmed a little tight. I suspect that the problem is the gears are worn down or damaged from the previous breakages.
I had the same problem and the way that I fixed it was to rebuild the diffs with new gears and then I shimmed it a little tight. No problem since.

As far as dyno's go there is no set standard for dynoing a motor in the RC industry. Two identical motors will give different numbers from different manufacturers dyno's. This will always be a problem until a standard is settled upon.
Poor judgement is correct when he mention the torque difference. The .12 might have more horse power but the .18 will have a whole lot more torque.


rolland