I got to take my Turmoil out for the first time yesterday. Ran it for about 40 minutes or so (a few minutes out in front of the house, then walking it around the corner to the park). I let my GF practice with it some too. First time out she hit my car tire at maybe 30 MPH, sending it spinning wildy accross the driveway. I honestly thought it would have broken, but it was just fine. As far as durability, that is the only testiment I have so far. She had no more major mishaps after that (other than getting stuck sometimes), though, heh.

The manual lists two different factory diff fluids (5k/5k/1k and 5k/7k/1k). Whatever it is, I dont think Ill be switching anytime soon. It handles much better than my Storm did. Turning is relatively push-free (I didnt run any tight lines, but it is much better than my Storm was), especially so considering how enough power is transmitted to the rear to do donuts almost on command. With factory specs it seems a good combo of agility and controllability(sp?). My GF had never even held an RC remote before yesterday, and after about 20 minutes she was practicing drifting side to side at near WOT (not much better to do in an open, dusty field, heh). That might be a testiment to her ability, but I think it says alot about how controllable it is (being able to control slides at high speeds without spinning out or unloading). On that note, I think I might have her hooked on isRC thing. By Summer maybe she'll be at the track with her own buggy trying to knock me down a step, hehe.

I still want to go through and change a few minor things for now. Mainly I might try to set the brake bias so the fronts dont lock up when under full brake. Speaking of brakes, Ive never had a car with brakes that worked this well (GS Storm, Nitro Rustler, Losi XXX-NT). Other things I might change will be to move the shocks all the way out (to get a little more out of them without making any changes).

Also, the tires that come with it seem to be pretty good quality tires. They aren't the super-soft compound, but they still seem more track-oriented than any other factory tire Ive had.

Build quality overall seems quite good. I had to add some shims to get my steering servo to fit (Futaba S3305), because when mounted sideways the back (bottom) of the servo would hit the front diff/chassis brace. I dont know if Futaba servos are longer, or if I didn't do something right (quite likely), or if they really did mess that part of it up in the design process. Also, I noticed that most of the chassis metal>metal scews seemed thread-locked in place from the factory. I did most of the rest before I ran it, but I forgot to do the wing mount screws (the ones that go horizontally from the sides under the wing, into those threaded metal cylinder things), so I lost three of those screws before just taking the fourth one out and setting the wing aside. Although, the wingless look grew on me, especially with my black body, hah.

The only bad thing I noticed was that the wheels (or, where the axle sits in its carrier) are a little wobbly. I dont know if the stock bearings are not that great, or if it even has ball bearings (and uses bronze bushings instead). When I start tearing into it Ill check and let you guys know. The wobbling isnt terrible like something is going to break or fall off, but it is enough that the wheel angles likely change a few degrees between throttle, breaking, and turning.

Here is something bad that happened yesterday. Apparently, the air filter fell off sometime during a run. Typically I run without the body when first getting a vehicle going, so I can easily notice major things like this. However, this time out I decided to do it the "right" way, and it may have cost me my engine. After disassembly, there was lots of dirt that got all the way into the combustion chamber. After disassembling the engine (well, removing the head, carb, and back plate), I found that there was almost a complete coating of mud around the inside of the crankshaft, and there were even several large specs of dirt and grit stuck to the side of the cylinder wall above the piston. It even got into the glow plug and slightly fowled it out (enough that it wouldnt stay running without the plug warmer on). I cleaned it out as best as I could, but I dont know how well it held up. For as much dirt as got inside it, Im suprised it ran as long as it did.

So yeah, with that said, I am likely needing a new engine (or will soon). I am actually somewhat intrigued about this whole new brushless thing, but that would be a $400+ investment vs a $100-150 investment for a new engine. Plus it would depend on if the local tracks would let me race in the same class if I did that (or if I would end up wanting to get more into racing than I am anticipating now).

Next time Im out doing something interesting (like big jumps or racing when the tracks open), Ill add more, and likely add some video.


P.S. Let me know if I should move this to the "Official" thread. I didn't, because it is so long that it is almost useless to anyone actually looking for info or reviews about this buggy, who doesn't have hours and hours to read through threads like that. This way, they can skim through topics and see this.

Search terms:
Sportwerks Sport Werks Turmoil

*edit - added some stuff*

One more thing:
The stock shocks seem pretty smooth (at least, smoother and sturdier than the Storm's). They seem a bit on the soft side, but I have never raced an 1/8 scale buggy (and hell, havent held an RC car in 4 years), so I dont really know. The car bottoms out when you drop it from maybe like 18 inches. I know these cars don't mind being bottomed out, but it seems like with it being this soft, you are giving up stability after landing for more controll over rough sections. I will leave the shocks / springs set like this (though I might mount them a bit more aggressively for bashing) until I start racing. Depending on how the track is set up, I might leave the shocks the same or stiffen them up a bit.

Is this the RTR or ARR?
My buddy is getting the ARR this Wed. from Amian. He has not decided on servos or transmitter.

I think this review is alot better than having to go thru 15 pages to find out some info. Thanks!

It is the ARR without the engine ($189 from A-main!). I used my old B01 engine from my GS Storm RTR.

Throttle servo: Z590M. It lasted a few gallons with my storm, and about a gallon on my old XXX-NT as the steering servo, and it seems to do the job just fine.

Steering servo: Futaba S3305. The one with ~125 oz-in of torque and .20 transit time. I "splurged" a whopping $33 on it. It is obviously not the best out there, but it is MUCH better than the z590 I had in my Storm. Im sure this also plays a part in the handling of this buggy over the storm. If I get into racing enough that I am really competitive, Ill upgrade. However, Ive always been able to do pretty well with less, so I might just leave it like it is unless I really feel it will make a difference. My problem has always been more with the DNFs than with just getting plain beat.

Transmitter / Receiver. I am using a JR XR3i. The receiver is the JR RS300, the one that can change frequencies, but the transmitter requires crystals. If I find myself always having frequency conflicts, Ill probably try to find a used XS3i from ebay for the synthesised frequencies, unless there is a cheaper synthesized radio out, or a better one for the same price. I only say the XS3 because it was popular the last time I was into RC, but I am still a newb when it comes to the electronics available now!

*edit*

I am probably going to replace my B01 engine with enough simpler low-end engine like the TTR .21. The Tiko .21, the Go .21, and the Ofna Picco 3-port are also options, but the the Picco has a low RPM limit (27k), the Go is out of stock at A-main (which is and has been my point of reference as I find my feet in this hobby again), and the Tiko's reviews arent all that consistant it seems (pretty good overall, but there might be some lemons floating around also).

In general I am trying to keep a budget in mind as I start off in this hobby again. I am not trying to cheap out, but I dont want to just spend a bunch of money right off the bat when I dont need to.

the ttr .21 is a nice engine.

Glad to hear you are happy with the buggy so far, since I was the largest proponent of getting it. You can't beat that price. Did you paint the body yet? Ya, let me check and I will find you some stiff spring part #s. It should be stiff. The chassis should just contact the ground, it shouldn't slap on a jump. That kills all of the buggy's momentum. Definitely stiffen it up. For some reason, RTRs come with too soft of setup. I guess they just tune them for good bashing not all around performance.

Glad your girl liked it! Time for her to get one.

Yes, Ive very glad you took the time to convince me to get it! With the price gap I was looking at, Id probably still be sitting here RC-less, hah. Yes, I painted the body solid metallic black. Thinking about stripping it and redoing it with lots of clear spots (almost like having a clear body with black stripes), to keep things like that from happening again. I had that idea at first, then decided to just paint the whole thing. Then again, the all-black look, while somewhat toy-ish looking without windows, does have a nice stealthy look to it, heh. Yeah, new springs would be good! I think I have some extras lying around from my storm pile, but I dont have any spring force numbers (either on the Turmoil or the extra spring I have), so Id really be going by nothing more than the "squishiness" test when determining what springs to use. So yeah, anything with numbers would be nice!

And yeah, my GF did like it! She wanted a MiniT or a MicroT at first (just looking at the videos on youtube), but I think she might start liking the big stuff! At the very least, I might try to get my old Nitro Rustler going for her to bash around with.

Well, I took the Turmoil out again! This time, the GF took her Mayhem out too!

First of all, the Go .21 5-port (5-port 5 port) is a beast! I have it running about 200 degrees on 20% nitro and it is doing great. It seems to like alot of fuel and runs best when shooting out lots of smoke. Right now I have the tune on the rich side, enough that it fails the "30 second load up" test miserably, but I am not going to mess with it too much because as long as you keep it moving it picks up nicely. Additionally, I havent removed the break-in shim yet, which Ill probably do before I take it out again. Even today on about the 8th tank I still couldnt get the engine to crank without getting stuck at TDC a few times. I still need to get a pipe for my engine. Im still using the old stock (unchambered) Storm pipe so I think I can get a bit more out of it with a real tuned pipe.

Second of all, her Toki .21 engine (ebay, ~$77 shipped I believe) is actually a pretty decent engine. She had a bad WOT runaway on her 3rd tank (radio interference), resulting in a broken arm / bent shock shaft (I had to chase it down the street and the only reason it stopped going is because the arm came off after hitting and ramping over a ~8" curb at WOT), but I still had to shut the engine off myself). Thus, I am not sure how long the engine will last. For now it seems OK, though. After getting it tuned pretty well, it does run pretty decently and I still recommend it for a cheap budget engine.

As far as the Turmoil goes, it is still doing great. Other than her runaway we havent broken anything. I got to do some jumps today, using a small pile of wood chips, resulting in air about 3' high and 12'-15' far. It flew pretty well considering the shoddy, make-shift nature of the ramp. Mostly all we did was run around a grass / dirt field (with its share of pine cones and large sticks), and they did pretty well. With my droops set so that the arms cant go below parallel, traction rolling wasnt much of a problem even on grass, and I didnt notice anything related to it being it too low.

Here's a pic of my Turmoil and her Mayhem, as well as two closeups under the body of my Turmoil.

When you described your all-black colour scheme i thought it would look crap. Then i saw the pics and reckon it looks awesome! Very mean and a little like those spy shots you see of a soon to be released real car.
Very nice!

Heh thanks man.

Yeah we just took the engines and radio trays off and hosed each chassis off. I cleaned the engines separely and she cleaned the radio trays. This time around im glad I left the body off, because the filter came off on what was going to be the last jump anyways heh.

The local track is geting redone now but hopefully they will be finished before next weeked so we can head out there! Then ill be able to do a more conclusive review.

Great review man. Very detailed

BTW, I found out what was causing the wobbliness I mentioned in the first post from a few weeks ago. First, one of the screws on the ackerman arm was loose. Second, the stock GS storm wheels I had on there don't fit very well it seems, and can wobble a bit on the axles. After fixing / replacing those things as well as the broken bearing, there isnt any wobble beyond the norm.

I bought a set of used holeshots on the wheel and the hexes are alittle loose. Do you know a way I could get them tight?

I honestly have no idea. I was thinking maybe a thin, stiff washer under the wheel?

I found my old ramp that I was talking about (in the back of the shed at my parents) and had that out playing with it. With the stock setup, other than a low droop and higher preload, it ramps pretty well. For the most part it jumps pretty flat, but tends to dive a bit if you dont accelerate pretty hard up the ramp face.

Well, I had a pretty bad landing, one of those where the front end digs in so hard that the buggy just stops. It was about 5ft high and 15ft far, into pretty dry Oklahoma dirt (clay). The front right lower arm broke just off the hinge pin in front of the arm mount. This is where it broke on my GF's car also. I noticed on mine that there was a good sized (maybe 1-1.5mm) air bubble from the molding process where it broke. Im sure that is what caused the weak spot. I don't know if that is a common thing or I just got unlucky and got that one. Anyways, most of the driving was just in the parking lot, and my GF was just getting going so I went ahead and finished the tank with her around the parking lot. Overall I was a little disappointed in how easy it seemed to break given the other stuff its survived, but oh well.

In an open parking lot it handles pretty predictably. The tires I was using are old stock offroad tires smeared with silicone (gheeeeetto I know, but they last forever for just messing around on pavement, heh). With the stock setup, it will psuh a bit on power (if you turn after you apply throttle), but long powerslides aren't difficult if you give it gas after you turn, or if you drove on a loose offroad surface. I suppose this fits my mentioning of the GF drifting with it.

However, the GF had some pretty nasty tumbles across the parking lot and had no problems. One of them was when she went WOT across the parking lot and up a gross embankment and didn't notice there were those movable concrete parking curbs lined up at the top of that embankment. Well, she hit one of those at probably 30MPH or so and tumbled across the upper parking lot. Her wing warped for a bit from it (it seemed to pop itself down over the wing mount), but then it fixed itself.

As for the arms, I think I know a way to help keep that from happening. The arm mounts are designed so that the hinge pin is angled forward relative to the kick-up angle at the front of the chassis. This makes the lower arms almost parallel to the ground. I am going to try to swap sides with the arm mounts so the pins angle backward even further. This should make it so frontward impacts translate more into upward motion of the suspension. The downside to this is that as the suspension comes up, the lower pivot ball will move backward further than the upper pivot ball, so the caster will become more vertical after landings and over bumps. Its not a huge deal though and I can actually think of more positive things than negative ones that would come from increased caster under high suspension deflections. I REAALLLY wish RPM would make arms for it though, heh.

Lastly, I really need to change the shock fluid. Im trying to decide between 40 and 50wt (or maybe 45). There is a chance I might raise the rear a bit via les droop, but so far I really like the way it runs when its lower to the ground. For that reason, Im leaning toward the 50wt to make up for how low I have it.

try 5000/7000/2000
lighter front rollbar
3° rear camber
all caster shimms behind fr arm

1) I just weighed some of my CF and each piece really is about half the weight of its aluminum counterpart. It only adds up to about 1.5oz savings (a decrease of a little over 1%), but it was all lost from an average point of about 2" above the chassis, so the benefit might also be a lower CG of maybe .125-.25".

2) The front arm mounts cannot be reversed because they interfere with the diff outdrives and thus do not fit.

3) The stock arm mount screws ARE threadlocked from the factory! The stuff was so strong they might as well have welded it in place! I ended up having to use all sorts of tricks trying to get the screws out after two of them (and the hex driver I was using) rounded out!

4) And yeah I think I am going to put 40 or 50wt oil in the shocks, and probably 3000wt diff oil in the rear.

5) Both the Mayhem and Turmoil weigh about 7lb 15oz with a full tank and body, though she has lighter wheels and tires (used holeshots on spoked wheels vs stock medium-pin Turmoil tires with dished wheels).

6) I also decided to raise the rear a bit with droop.

When something breaks - replace it with an upgraded part.
Continue in that fashion until you end up with a car has cost you a bomb and you end up asking yourself, "Why didn't Ijust buy a kit in the first place?
Well that's what i did

I would, except there are no other arms to upgrade to. I just ordered 3 sets of front arms, though, so that will give me a while to sort it out, heh. I think I might boil them when I get them to see if that will help. When I used hot / boiling water to dye my wheels and wing, I noticed they were much more flexible afterwords, so maybe Ill get the same affect with the arms.

Still, on the buggy itself Ive still only spent about $270 including the buggy itself, the aftermarket CF, and the cost of one replacement arm.

Well, I set the ramp back up in my backyard today after getting the arm replaced. I had many more tumbles and harder landings than yesterday and nothing bad has happened so far. I was also jumping about 6 feet high and hit 31 feet length wise. I set the droops mostly all the way back up and took out some of the shock preload (so it would still rest with the arms about parallel and a little higher in the rear). I also put 40wt fluid in there. It jumps much better now. If you hit it with about costant throttle it will dive a bit, but a few blips of the throttle will level it back out pretty easily. Jumping at WOT (while still accelerating) pts it in the air angled up, and it will level back out before hitting the ground.

Overall I am pretty pleased with how it jumps. It is easy to control if it lands flat or nose-down.

Secondly, after its performance today I am willing to forget the little mishap from the last time I had it out.

Well, just ran a few more tanks (3-4, cant remember, but it seems like it was about 45 minutes of driving, at about 13 minutes per tank) with the friend and GF (both of them running her buggy).

Well, we ran out of Losi Nitrotane fuel so I cracked open the bottle of good ol' Blue Thunder (also 20% nitro). I had to lean each engine a good half a turn before they performed the same. Then I took the temp of my engine and it was only about 185 degrees, where it was running about 230 at the same performance level with the Nitrotane! So I then leaned it out another few clicks to bring it up to about 225ish, and it really woke up. After that, I actually started having problems with the buggy coming off the ramp near vertical (pointing up) when jumping at WOT! On top of that, I was able to increase that jump distance to about 34 feet this time (from the lip of the ramp to the mark on the ground).

I just stopped because (I think) my receiver battery is finally dead (though it seemed to happen quite suddenly, so Im going to have to check the electrical connections). However, no mechanical problems so far! And I drove it WAAAAY harder than I did last time! Additionaly, the GF had many encounters with fence posts, the wooden ramp (backwards), the corner of the house, and a small tree in the backyard, at speeds ranging from 10 to easily over 30MPH.

In a nutshell:
1) I am now willing to attribute my broken arm to being unlucky enough to get a badly molded part, and am gaining much confidence in the durability of these buggies.
2) Blue thunder seems to perform NOTICABLY better than the Nitrotane I was using. At the same temp, it was using less fuel and making more power.
3) The Go 5-port was already starting to wake up, but the Blue Thunder made a huge difference. Even after leaning it out nearly a full turn on the HSN there is still about the same amount of smoke out of the exhaust, so I know it has a ways to go before its performing optimally. Finally, I STILL need to take out the break-in shim!

Well, I definately need to lower the car back down. With the droop set as high as it will go it was traction rolling like crazy on green grass everytime it would hit a bump while doing a sharp turn.