My Christmas Twin Hammers DT

[SkiSteve]

New member here, 38yo structural engineer, i've been reading the forum and learning since Christmas, thanks for the tips! Here's my story unfortunately without photos as is appears i'm too new for that :(

This Christmas I was the very excited recipient of my first RC car in about 20 years, the Twin Hammers DT. What an awesome present for any bloke at Christmas, lucky me!

I thought I would share my experiences and mods here for anyone interested.

Christmas day was a blast but after a few batteries it became apparent that there were a few things with the truck that needed to be solved. Firstly I discovered the motor was connected backwards out of the box meaning I needed to servo reverse the speedo. That was easily solved by connecting the motor correctly. Next, I wanted to engage crawler mode on the ESC easily without taking the body off. For this I wired up a switch and installed next to the driver like a gear lever. Now I can switch to crawler mode easily.

I used to race buggies so the handling was top priority to make the truck driveable and less tippy. I needed a lower C of G so I fitted some Boom Racing beadlocks and trimmed the existing tire bead to fit. For future reference, can anyone tell me which tires fit these wheels easily??

Next I installed the sway bar kits and prevented the rear arm rotation with some plasic O rings cut from bike brake cable outer. Medium rear bar and soft front seems to work well. Thanks for the tip.

The battery sitting way out back and high does nothing to help the handling so I used the shift servo mounts that come with the truck to mount the battery tray inside on top of the steering servo and removed the spare tire. The C of G is now way lower and handling much improved!!

Next I wanted the 2 speed working without a new expensive transmitter so I hooked up an elastic band and old bent spoke mechanical shift that I can operate with the body on. The spoke hooks around the roll cage for low gear and the elastic holds it in high with the spoke released. It works great!! That also allowed me to change to a 30t pinion for more top end and still have a low gear for off road.

Next I need to fix the steering with some bell cranks, just waiting for Irie to come back to me. I'll also add a castle BEC and steering servo to get rid of all the slop in the output shaft

Let me know your thoughts on anything else I can do for improvement. Im happy to keep the front shocks as they are as they seem ok for general use

Photos to follow... When i'm allowed to post them!

[Dbx]

Remote manual shift sounds interesting! Use photobucket to share some pics with us.

[SkiSteve]

Photo links posted but I got a message to say they won't be displayed until a mod has approved. Is this standard for everyone or just for newbies?

[Fallen]

That's just for newbies. I don't know if it's time elapsed, or number of posts which you've made that determines the removal of your "newbie" label.

But once it is removed, you can post photos and see them immediately without moderation. The exception to this is when posting in the "For Sale" section of the forum. When you post threads there, they must always be moderated prior to being visible.

[SkiSteve]

I'd like to show you, but I think I need 30 posrts unless a moderator wants to clear them. After bashing around a box track for a few batteries today I now see why people get upright front shocks. I was very pleased with the centre of gravity mods and el cheapo 2 speed tho, it performed great!