More thunderfoot clips after modications

[MUD4FUN]

After getting loads of great advice, including some excellent articles on this site (including the latest tyre test one) I made some changes to my thunderfoot project.

I removed the foam inserts from my IMEX Swamp Dawgs, I cut off all the smaller blocks to give better bite, I installed a 3.1:1 reduction unit giving me 65:1 overall gearing. I also added lead rings inside the tyres, these are taped around the wheel. I also added lead sheet wrapped around my axles to lower the CoG even futher. I fitted a saddle pack to spread the weight more evenly and I changed the shock geometry to give less torque twist.

The result is in this (poor quality) movie. I don't think it performs too bad for a single motor, shaft driven 2.2" tyres truck. The fence posts in this vid are set at 45 degrees and you can see the back end of the truck squatting down with the torque required to shift its 3.5Kg mass up the slope. The vid also shows it pulling an old victorian house brick which weighs 3Kg.

http://www.rcpics.net/img/38202

[EeePee]

Please, take all of the country music! The entire UK can have it!!!

Good progress!

Those bumpers saved ya a few times...

[rckjeep]

finally a video with some good tunes. I'm tired of every video having speed/death/crap metal edited in.

How about some blues or classic rock.

[CrawlinForLife]

Looking better, but time to work on getting more flex out of it. Don't know if the shocks are just too stiff or what, but it reminds me of a Mack truck trying to wheel lol.

[MUD4FUN]

Many thanks Guys

CrawlinForLife - the lack of flex at the moment is down to two main things:

1) The single inline motor/shaft driven arrangment gave me lots of grief with torque twist, so much so that I could hold the truck and apply power and the wheels at opposite corners of the truck would compress the shocks completely and clamp the axle up against the chassis. I resolved some of this by reducing driveline angles (at the expensive of some clearance), increasing wheelbase slightly (more loss of clearance) and finally added firmer shocks to the two corners prone to the torque twist problem. This has cured most of the twist but left me with little articulation on two corners but fine on the other two! In the movie you'll notice that if I approach an obstacle with the LHS front wheel it articulates differently to the same obstacle with the RHS!!!

2) The vehicle isn't fitted with a shell/roll cage or interior detail yet which will all weigh a fair bit so that'll help compress the slightly firm springs.

Thunderfoot wasn't built to be an extreme crawler, simply a scale looking Land Rover monster truck with better off road performance than a stock Clod, Blackfoot, TLT etc. I think I achieved that OK but now after using it I'm hooked on crawling and I want much better performance.......

I'm now building a new truck with transverse motors in the axles with a much lower CoG. However, I'm sticking to the 2.2" tyres as I like the challenge of being able to conquer obstacles on 2.2's that other trucks with Clod or Maxx sized tyres even struggle with. True, it'll never beat them outright but sometimes it is more fun to try!!