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Boredom makes crativity or craziness.

I got home from work today and was thinking what can I do to the Rus'buggy to make it better with parts available at home. Made a short list and then completed the mods as follows

-Replace the front and rear bushing carriers with bearing carriers. Check
-Replace stock non adjustable shocks with threaded shocks. Check
-Replace solid upper arms with adjustable turnbuckles. Check

All the parts came from 2 cars from other manufacturers. Let's see if y'all can guess what they are from.

I don't like the rear carriers that much though I'm going to replace them with traxxas ones soon.

Ok so no guesses?
Well the front hub carriers, axles, all 4 shocks and rear turnbuckles are all off a wrecked hpi firestorm.
The rear hub carriers and front turnbuckles are from an exceed truggy.

All the parts fit right into place with swapping some hardware and adding shims for the exceed rear hubs. I used the exceed units because the traxxas axles are too short for the hpi units. As is I had to add a shim between the hex adapter and the hub. I will be swapping these out for traxxas units soon though

I am going to test it out today to see how it runs.

Just tested the Rus'buggy got 25.1 mph on the gps running the same strip I ran before. Ended badly after I took the gps out though. Handled turns and small bumps better with better acceleration until one of the parts I didn't like snapped off. The upper arm mount on the left side exceed carrier snapped off in a turn ending the run with the car slidding shiny side down. The exceed upper arms for the front held great though. Along with the hpi parts.

Now the Rus'buggy is down until next weekend at the earliest so I can get the traxxas rear carriers and bearings. I doubt the spare tl01 units I have will work.

Looks like there is a lack of interest in my Rus'buggy project. But I will keep updating this thread as it evolves. Kind of a diary of a crazy man.
The whole reason I started frankinstining my Rustler is I wanted better performance out of it and bearings seemed the way to go. My LHS has the bearing carriers but no bearings and I have been waiting for them to order some for weeks so I took matters into my own hands to see what I could adapt out of some parts I already had instead of ordering online. (Why spend the money if you got stuff that works)
After the epic fail from the exceed rear units I started looking at my spare TL01 parts and decided to try them they appear to be quite a bit beefeier than even the traxxas units. It took a little work but got them to fit into place. I had to adjust the upper arms but it all works!
Best part of all of this besides not spending a single cent extra is all the parts bolted up to the original suspention with out modifiying anything.
Next I think I am going to try to adapt the exceed threaded aluminum shocks in place of the hpi threaded plastic ones. I hope exceed aluminum parts hold up better than their plastic ones. If not back to the hpi ones. If any one is interested I will post pics of what is needed to install these mods. Also I need to get slightly longer turnbuckles for the rear now

Definitely keep updating! I think it's a cool project! Personally, I would go ahead and get the RPM bearing carriers. When I bought my slash, one of my rear bearing carriers was broken when I pulled it out of the box so I went ahead and replaced with RPM and haven't had a problem since.

I am planning on switching out a lot of parts for rpm ones. Until I do I am expiramenting on it with what I have on hand. So fae I have been pleasently surprised with what actually works on this critter.
Next steps are to get a bandit body, vxl gears, and slash bumpers. After that I'm going brushless. Anyone have parts numbers for vxl gears or aftermarket upgraded gears? I know the stock xl1 plastic ones will self destruct under brushless power.
More detailed pics on the mods are comming.
I figure this build could help people that are trying to build something out of a rustler with very little money and little to no fabrication.
Just remember you are not always stuck with units tha are specifically designed for the rc you are working with.
Later when money allows I am going to start building a "high end" Rustler.

Here are more detailed pics of the Rus'buggy economy build.

First is the only mod to the body that had to be made. This body is what started the whole thing. I had to cut a notch out on the right side to clear the servo linkage. Next is the front HPI carriers and axles with exceed upper arms I used the HPI ball ends down at the wheel side for the steering for now and the stock traxxas link and rod end at the bellcrank. I used the exceed arms as is with some adjusting. The rear carriers took some doing. They are kind of tight on the stock traxxas screws but move pretty good. I had to use a small shim because the TL01 units are a little narrower front to back. But it gives me a little bit of adjustability on wheelbase. (Keep scrolling for more)

The upper arms are from the HPI withe hpi outer ball cups and exceed inner ball ends.. This is with no cutting drilling grinding or any other fabricating on any components (except the body). Please don't mind the dirty parts I haven't gotten aroind to cleaning everything yet. I think that is everything I have done so far. It will be a little bit before I do much more to it. I am getting a brushless motor for it soon but I won't be installing it untill I get vxl gears installed or at least on hand (just because I have never had a trans selfdestruct on me before) watch the plastic gears last longer than I want.


Happy modding!

nice mix'n match

This weekend I decided to install my old kyosho atom smasher 12t double. With a 4200mah 7 cell nimh battery. Yeah I'm still in the stone age lol. The car ran great! I didn't seem to have any problems during the run that is untill I tried to disconnect the battery after the run. Seems like that set up was just a little too much for the old tamiya connectors and welded them together. Yeah I know I should have already tossed the tamiya units for better ones like traxxas. I didn't get to clock the speed with gps before that happened. The battery and esc survived though.
Hind sight is 20/20. Sad thing is I knew I needed better connectors.
The Rus'buggy might be shelved for a little while though I am picking up an interesting non traxxas rc this weekend. I am excited! Let's just say I am not going for speed on this up comming one.

slim_chance wrote:Looks like there is a lack of interest in my Rus'buggy project. But I will keep updating this thread as it evolves. Kind of a diary of a crazy man.

I personally like Frankenbuilds, doing mix 'n' match is a whole lot more involved than just slapping together another box-art...but if you want more interest, you gotta bring the bling.

The bling is comming. I have a habit of just building things out of what I have because I like projects and I like haveing something diffrent. I already have blue anodized aluminum shocks with purple shock caps.
Plans for it now I am pretty much done with it as a lowbudget build.

-Replace visable components with either blue or purple anodized or plastic parts ie shock towers gearbox and suspention.
-Short course style bumpers
-protective cage around the gearbox and motor
-flashier rims
-bandit body custom painted in blue and purple pattern to be decided
-vxl gears and brushless setup
-and possibly aluminum bearing carriers (might stick with plastic ones)
-possibly an aluminum chassis.
I saw somewhere that you can strip the color off anodized parts but can you re-dye them yourself?

slim_chance wrote:I saw somewhere that you can strip the color off anodized parts but can you re-dye them yourself?

Not really. I think another forum member did his own home-brew anodizing with battery acid, electricity and RIT dye, but I know that RIT dye isn't the same as the dye that's used for actual anodizing, and I don't know how durable a RIT ano job would be.

On the other hand, if you have a good number of parts to be anodized, it might be worth your while to have them all done at once, after you stripped off all the old ano & polished them up, like I did with Barney and CYANide.

I am looking at using aluminum parts from REM. Talked to the guy at addicted2rc.com yesterday and looks like I wll be going with clear anodized aluminum parts. From what I have come across their parts are really durable and they have a great warrenty. Has any one here used their parts?