Lightning 2 Pro carbon rallygame conversion

[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.

[nativepaul]

I picked up a set of Medial Pro Tarmac II tyres they only had them pre-mounted on yellow rims instead of the cool black Hyper7 ones I got for for the Road rages, not as good looking, but the tyres are 50 times stiffer and handle a million times better than the Crappy Proline Road Rages that flopped around like an elephant on stilts giving me understeer and making cornering erratic and unpredictable.

The Medial Pro Tarmac II pre-mounted wheels and tyres, there not belted as such but they have a Honeycomb internal structure instead of using inner foams, that supports it VERY well, they feel like there made of solid rubber only they don't weigh enough.



I almost forgot there is a downside to them, they are a fair bit lower profile than the RoadRages, the peaks on my eagletree went down by 10-12 Amps and I lost a few MPH top speed, my 45 shore ones seem to grip better tho (there available in 25,35,45,60 shore) so acceleration hasn't suffered, I will be getting that speed back and more with LiPo soon so I haven't regeared but a bigger pinion could be used, if you want to check on Brian's Calculator my callipers make the Tarmac IIs 3.769" and the RoadRages 4.3165"


I received my Flightpower 4s 4350 in the post yesterday, I ran the storage charge down at low throttle then charged up and ran it hard, from the start I thought I had blown something, it accelerated away slower than before and released a puff of smoke, I ran over and disconnected finding that the smoke had stopped and everything was still cool, it turns out the pinion had slipped and was burning off the threadlock causing the smoke, a quick reaplication of threadlock and retightening the grubscrew with the other end of the allenkey had it going again.

Holy [expletive of your choice]ing hell this things FAST and then some, easily half as fast again over the old setup despite the smaller tyres, I may get used to the power at some point but for now I think a 3s pack would have been enough, I need to set up some punch control on the MM and put my throttle thumb in some serious precision training as it will spin the wheels at what used to be its top speed.

[nativepaul]

I switched back to its original off-road tyres today for a bit of fun in the park, I was glad to find that the adjustments that I have made to get it handling well on-road haven't affected its off-road performance too badly, it still handles great.

It's a shame I dont have a camera man, it looked awesome with roostertails coming up from all 4 wheels.

I was getting some nasty coging toward the end of the run, and it wasn't until I brought it back to me that I Discovered why, It had nearly doubled its weight with all the mud and grass all over it and it was completely enclosing the rear suspension and driveshafts making the rear wheels quite hard to turn.

Mud, mud, glorious mud.

Poor ESC, there's some driveshafts in there somewhere.
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b3...Picture119.jpg
Special racing mud this stuff, it lowers my CoG.


Well I learnt my lesson and I won't be taking it off road in the wet again, even after over an hour of cleaning it's still the dirtiest its ever been, and its been off-road in the dry a few times before.




I chucked a couple of buckets of water over it and gave it a good scrubbing then I ran it again (on-road) and the cogging has gone back to normal, the MM seems to have lived through its torture session with no long term side effects, its a sturdy little fellow.

[nativepaul]

I got Mike to make me a diff top brace and a 3mm spacer to go under the front diff mount so I could get rid of the bodged up 3mm nuts acting as spacers and re-drilled top brace with only 3 screws attached as pictured earlier in the thread (very nice work Mike thanks).

[nativepaul]

I blew my MM, I was running ovals in the road and suddenly under braking my brakes stopped working and I went flying into a kerb head on, bent a lower front hinge pin and MM works only intermittently now.

[nativepaul]

I am getting an XT8 truggy for Xmas so this buggy will only ever be see on-road use now and is undergoing an extensive lightening and stiffening program currently with a carbon chassis, braces, towers, battery tray etc and a smaller motor, I'm tempted by smaller LiPos too but I have so many 4s 5000mAh packs I'm doubtful that will happen.

So that's the end of the Lightning 2 Pro off/on road buggy.

Watch this space for the birth of the new Lightning 2 Pro Carbon Rallygame on-road conversion!

[nativepaul]

I am waiting for 3.5mm carbon for the chassis and shock towers, but I have some 2mm on hand for the rest of it, I hope to have more updates with carbon replacements for plenty of the alloy stuff soon

I made a new servo top plate.




Ackerman plate, I've now sanded all of the forward adjustment holes off.




I cut out parts for a new battery tray that is not only much lighter but will lower the CoG too, as the alloy tray I have at the moment is raised off the chassis on spacers by about 5mm to clear the mudguards, I will mill groves in the chassis to hold it in position at the bottom.




I made a full front diff/steering post/centre diff/rear diff top plate that stiffens the chassis a lot over the regular front and rear braces, but with a significant weight saving.




Motor mount lightened from this,

to this,

As well as the material reduction around the motor to make it more like Mikes current mounts I removed 3mm from the bottom so i no longer have to use the spacer mike made me under the front centre diff upright lowering the CoG as well as weighing less and removed about 3.5mm from the top of both the motor mount and the front centre diff upright so the new long chassis top plate sits flat from the rear diff case across the centre diff to the steering bellcrank posts.