Lightning 2 Pro carbon rallygame conversion

[nativepaul]

Hi, I am starting this thread to document first the conversion of my Hot Bodies Lightning 2 pro to electric and then its conversion to rallygame spec for use on-road.

I already have a thread HERE but as it has now evolved so far from its origional form I feel a new thread is in order, I will be recreating the relevant posts from the original thread here so if any Mods read this can you delete the thread I just linked to please and then I'll edit this paragraph out.

My gratitude goes to Sylvester, serum, BrianG and SqueeForever for all your help and advice during this my first four wheeled brushless project, without you guys I never would got past the first stages, thanks guys.

Here is a teaser.

[nativepaul]

The buggy as it came.



After rough cutting the centre diff top brace and servo plate the 7075 the L2P is made from is tough stuff and my dremmel kept on overheating whilst cutting it.



Measurements found the L2P to have a narrower chassis than the LSP and Mike's original style mount was 8mm to wide for the buggy chassis and I will have to chop the corner off it, Mike's new style LSP mounts are rounded at the end and i dont think they will need any modification.



I cleaned up the metalwork I did earlier and refitted it.



I fitted the rear wing.



And applied a selection of the decals to the body.

[nativepaul]

I'm getting a little closer now, I put ball races in the steering and fitted the servo.
I re-formatted my 12cell pack, I made up a battery tray from alloy angle section lined it with foam and cut some carbon tube chassis stand-offs, but I'm waiting for longer bolts to fit it.
Just an order from RCMonster and it will be runable.

I made a battery tray from 1.5mm 6061 alloy angle covered in 2mm neoprene foam, held up over the mudguards on standoffs between the chassis and tray cut from 6mm carbon tube, also pulled an 8XL from one of my boats to see what it looks like in position.



The battery tray is made for a 12 cell stick pack, with 8 cells on the bottom and 4 on top, I fitted my servo and RX too, so really am just waiting for my mount from Mike now.



With everything but the body, spur, pinion, motor mount, clamp heatsink, Mamba Max and Ubec.

[nativepaul]

I spent last night washing, taping and glueing a set of Proline Roadrages to a set of black hyper7 rims.

They look great so I'm kinda hoping that my off road tyres will wear out fast so I can get black wheels for off road too.




My new longer bolts arrived this morning, I countersunk the battery tray, drilled the chassis and bolted it in with the stand-offs, now its bolted it it feels very sturdy and it fits the battery so well I can lift one side of the buggy up just by lifting the battery, with no straps yet.


My RCMonster motor mount, heatsink clamp and pinions arrived and after some unplanned modifications I got it running tonight, it was after dark so I just gave it a quick test less than a minute, I didn't let it get far enough away from me and the street light to try for top speed but I was impressed by the acceleration (as good or better than my wildest scale hornet setup (and that had totally RIDICULOUS power), and stunned by the handling it seemed perfect, neutral going into a corner with some lift off oversteer should you need to tighten up, I was drifting round my first few corners nicely which surprised me as I haven't driven an RC car for well over 10 years and when I was driving regularly I couldn't drift nearly as neatly or reliably with my Hornet or scale Hornet pan car the L2P is a very good chassis right out of the box.

For anyone following me on this this the original mark one RCMonster Lightning stadium mount does not fit the lightning 2 pro due to:-

The mount is too wide and without some trimming it will hit the turn up on the chassis (I knew about this)

The portion of the mount below the diff hole is 3mm to tall, I had to drill out some locknuts and use them as spacers under the front diff mount to get the diff sitting level.

The holes in the top don't Line up, I bodged it by drilling another hole in the diff brace and put 2 screws into the motor mount and just one through the new hole into the front diff mount, It won't stop me giving it a good thrashing tomorrow, but will make up a wider brace that will take all 4 screws before I hit any jumps.

And a very minor one, it comes with countersunk screws and the L2Pro brace isn't countersunk.



This picture shows the nuts I used as spacers under the front diff mount.



This one shows the cut out I made to clear the chassis turn up and also the misalignment of the holes in the top of the mount.




Top view of the diff brace showing my bodge and how far off the mount holes are.



This is individual to my buggy and tray, but I chose to cut some of the curve off on the left hand side of the motor mount to get my battery tray as close to the centreline as I could without hitting my 44t kyosho plastic spur.

[nativepaul]

The buggy is all finished!

[nativepaul]

It rained last night and ths morning so in an effort not to cake it with mud I put the road rages on and used it on tarmac, with the road rages it didnt handle anything like as well, I was getting a lot of understeer, when I brought it in I realised why.

The rear tyres are dirty all over so they have a big contact patch but the fronts have too much camber for the flater tyres so they are only making contact on the inside edges.


I've taken nearly all the camber off the front wheels, after a run the tyres are dirty all over now and the handling has improved a lot but its not up to how it was with the off road tyres yet. I am still getting a little understeer in normal use, although it is close enough to neautral that with a dab of brakes and a Scandinavian flick I can make it oversteer sometimes, but I would like to get back to its original feel (very close to neutral with maybe a touch of overtseer).


On a lighter note, I had my first big accident on the weekend,:026: I've rolled it a couple of times but this is the first time I've propperly crashed.
I was running my buggy in the garage area behind my flat, running a course around a some puddles on the tarmac, with the straight next to the garage doors as they are slightly raised and theres a long line with no puddles, but I stayed too tight to the doors and started turning for puddle 1 too late, and hit this drain.


It was going fast and I knew it was going to be broken so I ran over to it but saw nothing obviously broken, I tried to reverse away but there was no movement,:013: so I took it inside for closer inspection, I was worried that I had bent/cracked/snaped some parts and that the shock had ripped some components off my ESC, BEC or RX leaving me with a large repair/replcement bill. I looked the mechanics over carefully and found nothing broken or bent.

This scratch just to the right of the bolt in the lower arm was the only damage to the buggy. I am very impressed with the Lightning 2 pro's strength. I started troubleshooting the electronics trying a new battery first and everything came on-line and worked just fine, so I took a look at the battery and one of the wires that links the top 4 cells to the bottom 8 had pulled off at one end, My only repair was a quick solder job.

you should get a subaru 300mm body, they are at amainhobbies.com for like 40$ and paint it blue.

nice paint job

[bigboi146]

That's a great looking car! I wanna do something like this in the near future.

[powah]

Wow


It looks realy High-Tec and also very sleek


p.s. Paul i have a brand new Lightning Pro body i painted in Monster Energy Style for my Lightning Pro i ain't going to use it because i'm working on a Traxxas Slash body for this buggy. So if you want a new painted body let me know. The only thing the body needs is to cut it out and make the body post holes.


Keep up the good work!

[powah]

I have no picture now but i have a picture of my new Hyper 7 body that looks a little like the Ligtning Pro body only the windshields aren't green and the sides are green carbon look with black.

[nativepaul]

I like the slash look for a scale off road buggy, I would keep hold of your buggy body though, when I was running off road with my Focus rally body the chassis, motor, ESC, servo etc got covered in crap so for off road i used to run with the buggy body on and the scale body over the top of it, it saved a lot of cleaning and by the end of the run it was probably lighter too. Seeing that you have a hyper with out any of the stickers on the body I will ask you if you still have the decals, I'm after the ones that look like vents.

[powah]

Hello Paul,

I have send you a PM thank you again for the parts and the lovely card!


No problem, well the body is a Proline Hyper 7. Proline don't sell them anymore but a shop also in The Netherlands still have them for sale http://www.the-border.com/product.ph...7&cat=0&page=1

The stickers i have with some vents on it are these, i have also the original lightning stickers and some hyper 7 stickers only 1 big vent and 1 small vent.

[simplechamp]

Could you please explain to me a little bit about what rallygame is? Is it a type of racing event, or car type, or what? I know what rally racing is, but never heard the term rallygame.

Also, awesome car, I love carbon fiber!

[nativepaul]

In essence it is on-road for buggies with road car bodies, road racing for those that don't want to have to vacuum the track before running to avoid crashing, that could take place in bumpy car parks as well as specially prepared tracks. It started with people converting buggies with road tires and stiffer suspension but has progressed to specially designed cars, there are quite a few available ranging from the most popular and probably the worst the Kyosho Inferno GT which is still basically a stiffened buggy but done by the factory, to more specialised race bred ultralight machines with belt drive and ball diffs the pinnacle of which is probably the Cronos SP9 which I'm loath to post a picture of because it makes my buggy look like a shed in comparison, but is too awesome not to so heres the pic.

I just have to ask for no posts saying how awesome the SP9 is without mentioning my car too please, I wish I could afford an SP9 but even with all the carbon and if I added a set of titanium turnbuckles it would still be twice the cost of mine at £600.