FH questions

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Dont touch my nipple

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maryland
Is this truck tough, if I roll it will the rollcage be damaged? I don;t plan to be too hard on it, but if I accidently clip an object I would rather nothing break but I want to keep the breakage to a minimum. I do not want to spend over around $700. This would be my 1st large scale, should I start with the Smartech Bigfoot or just buy a used Baja or FG from the start? Are slides almost as fun as the baja with this truck? I want to do alot of drifting/sliding with this truck and I don't want it to roll. I do want a reliable truck that I wont want to sell after a month. I see alot of people selling their firehammer and buying bajas, but I think I want a MT and don't want to pay crazy prices..

Thanks for reading..
 
rolled FH

I have rolled mine in the street and off roading .a few scratches but that it I take mine out thrashing all the time one tough truck:rock-on:
 
That's a tough one. I like my Firehammer, but like any other RC, there will be a weakness. If there is one out there that doesn't have some sort of weakness somewhere, I'd love to know.

I blew my differential out last week, how, I don't know. From what I understand the differential housings are weak, but they are weak on the FG's as well (again, from what I understand through forums). So I'm replacing the housing with an alloy housing. You'll also want a steel pinion gear and metal motor mount as well.

As for clipping objects and breaking a part or rolling and breaking a part, anything can break on anything at any time. I broke the head off my servo when I went into a chainlink fence. I wasn't going full speed, but I was surprised that the servo saver didn't take the brunt of the collision.

By the way, I'm not here to plug them, but TQRcracing.com has a deal going on their Mutilator 6. I believe it is exactly like the Duratrax Firehammer except for the wheels/tires. $499 isn't a bad intro price with radio and $699 with a 2.4ghz radio is pretty awesome too. TQRCRACING is one of the sponsors on this forum. See the right side of the screen.

Link
 
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i would also be lying if i said i hadn't broken my Smartech bigfoot. But like CSP said with any R/C no matter the cost breakage is too be expected. After all the manufactures couldnt go putting a product on the market that never broke, they make most of the money from parts being sold.

I also have the baja 5b, i am not real hard on it but i am alot harder on it compared to the Smartech big foot. I haven had to replace anything on it, i wore down a set of rear tires, i actually wore them out during normal use, not doing donuts and powerslides repeatedly. I have done them but i don't just keep doing them over and over on dry pavement. Other than the tires and a steering servo that is all i had to do with the baja. The steering servo was totally my bad i hit a concrete drainage pipe with the right front wheel at a fair bit of speed.

The baja buggy is fun to drive in stock form. It really lacks luster in the jumping department, but powerslides, donuts, burnouts, just all out WFO driving its awesome.

I cant really tell you which one to get. I like both of my vehicles and wouldnt have any others. Budget wise however the buggy while more expensive in the beginning is much cheaper to hop up than the DTX and SMT trucks. They use some of the available FG hop up parts which are crazy expensive. I want so badly to hop my truck up with a few beefy aluminum parts but i never get any futher than seeing the price and going screw that its fine the way it is, which it really is ok but it has such potential.

best thing to do with the truck if you get one, get a heavy clutch spring and light weight clutch shoes, and either x can or gut your stock muffler such an improvement in performance. If you can find a reasonablely priced adjustable clutch go for that instead of the shoes and spring. you would not believe how much power these things have if you regulate at what RPM the clutch locks in. get it close to 8 or 9k and they will nearly stand on the rear wheels when they take off. same with the buggy or any other rc car for that matter. clutch mods help so much with the bottom end lag that most of the rc cars suffer from. they are almost unbearable in stock form, any of the rc models. the fgs come with a 26cc instead of 23 and that helps but with the stock can and stock clutch they too lag terribly.
 
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you sound like me when i was shopping for my first large scaler. I had my heart set on the FH MT. I put it to a poll between my friends and co workers, they all agreed that the Baja 5b was a better choice that was purely based on performance and looks. And they were correct the Baja is attractive and it does perform really well. I enjoy my baja every time i run it, it never gets old even when i run the same track over and over its still fun to this day.

I did recently buy the cheaper version of the DTX FH MT, i bought the Smartech Big foot. I must say that straight out of the box with no modifications its a total piece to put it plainly. But with a few simple modifications some costing money some free. It is a pretty not bad ride. Fun factor is way up there. Its not the strongest truck though you can tell just by looking at it. Some thing to expect to brake if you run it straight out of the box without looking it over. A complete front end if you run without a fail safe, the smartech radio system has the range of a radio shack model, well at least mine does. The diff ring gear and the transmission jack shaft gear seem to be missaligned on all the trucks from the factory for what ever reason, loosen the motor mount bolts and straighten that up or you will trash both gears and possibly a complete diff. The steering servo saver is improperly named, should be steering servo killer. don't know what can be done about it besides driving carefully and not having the "saver" activate and decapitate the servo. Dial out alot of the brake or you will spend an entire tank of gas trying not to spin the truck around every time you apply the brakes.
 
The only problem I have witht he baja is, it is a buggy and I do not know how well it will do grass..? How much ground clearance does it have? It wouldnt see much dirt mainly grass so I want it to be fairly high up. I guess running in a large open space would let me break less parts. I know all RC's break, but some easier than others. I guess I have been spoiled with my savage.
 
it does very well on grass. like in the average front or back yard or soccer or football field. But if you drive into a field with grass say higher than 6 inches the buggy will be stopped in its tracks. The same it true for the truck.
 
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Comparing them to the durability of the average savage monster truck. i would say that the smartech monster is as tough as the savage. the buggy its a lot tougher, you could run the savage and buggy head on into each other and i would be willing to bet that the savage will get the worse end of the deal. Ok bad example the buggy does weight almost twice as much. Well you could run the buggy head on into a standard wooden tember used th hold a mail box up and it would be more likely that the pole would shift that it would be that the buggy would brake. Same for the monster truck, im talking a square hit dead center of the front bumper. If you clip any thing with a front wheel of any car or truck its going to brake.
 
ok i have the perfect way to explain the baja buggy. Have you ever driven a 2wd Losi or Associated buggy electric. Thats exactly the way the baja buggy handles only multiply the power and size by a ton. First thing i thought when i drove the baja was "wow this thing handles like my old Losi buggy"! not a 1/8th scale now, a 2wd electric buggy. the only difference is the acceleration is not as good but its good compared to most of the clone 1/5th scales out now.
 
the baja will rip up any thing its on, cept maybe a hay, wheat or corn field.

but i think the hay and wheat fields would be hard pressed to stop it. lol


3.5 inches of ground clearance in normal stance. fully adjusted it can make it 4.75 inches almost the whole lenth. You wont regret buying a baja, except maybe the fact that you ll want to throw more money at it than you care to know about. Not becuase you Need to ( other than the few known issues ), but becuz you ll Want to, its so damn durable out of the box its crazy. yes it does have its issues. but they are far less problematic than most any other on the current market.
 
I will wait awhile and see if any good baja deals pop up on ebay, but most of them are upgraded quite a bit so they are kinda pricey. I think any 1/5 will be better than nitro anyway. What mods do you think the Smartech could use to make it as fun as the baja? So far i see metal pinion and motor mounts. The Firehammer line does look to be pretty durable as well, but the baja looks like more fun to drive.
 
Im not sure why the motor mounts are changed, i haven't seen any signs of wear on my truck. The metal pinion gear for sure, i don't know how much load that plastic gear will hold with all the heat thats being transfered from the clutch bell. After that all you need is a good pipe to pick up the low end on the truck and its a blast to drive.

Mine is completely stock and i just love driving it. i don't know what it is about the truck but its really fun to drive, i usually don't get out the baja unless there is another one to run with. I will run the truck any time any where. I guess its just the raceyness of the baja that makes it feel more like it should be in competition than on the bashing grounds. the truck is just an all out basher not really race quality stuff, however im sure you could race it no problem.
 
You just said yours is completly stock, but here is a quote from you- "I must say that straight out of the box with no modifications its a total piece to put it plainly".. Can the truck really slide like the buggy and can it handle as well?
Is there any chance you could take a vid because there are no good vids of these trucks but so many good baja vids. Thanks..
 
The MT does look like fun, just to run over anything in your path. Which I like. :ph34r: The metal mounts were suggested to me because they said the mounts allowed the motor to shift and strip gears. If I get the steel pinion will it strip the plastic spur? What should i check over once I get it? Also with a pipe like the jetpro i am pretty sure you need the metal mounts due to the extra weight on the mounts.
 
let me explain that. out of the box with no mods means just open the box charge the battery gas and go. it accelerates very slowly, the linkage for the throttle and brakes is way off. the can muffler has like 2 pounds of crap in it.

i adjusted the throttle/brake linkage so that it doesn't grab the brakes so hard, keeps it from spinning around when you slam on the brakes.

I took all the material out of the muffler the steel mesh and the what looks like fiberglass mesh. total improvement in performance. not as good as i tuned pipe but it is better.

i also pulled the clutch off i installed a heavier spring a 7500rpm clutch spring available at davesmotors.com to be exact, i then used a bench mount grinder to grind off most of the material on the clutch shoes to make them lighter and harder for the motor to sling out. that makes the clutch kick out at about 8000rpm where the motor starts making its power.

the buggy will do donuts all day long on the dirt but the truck seems to wanna go straight when you nail the throttle and turn the wheels in the dirt. even with the mods i have done. i don't understand what makes it do that, maybe the diff is setup differently than the buggy. i don't know.

as far as drifting i cannot make either one do it very well. the buggy spins around too easy and the truck wont slide well enough.

its really a matter of preference i guess. ill see what i can do about a video.

i know of a few videos of the carson comanche on youtube.com. just search up carson comanche on youtube and watch those its the same exact truck.
 
Parts for the Firehammer (places I have found), the Baja I know little about but you can get parts pretty much anywhere I believe:

TowerHobbies.com (they piss me off that everything is on backorder for so long)
tqrcracing.com (sells a similar clone)
advantagehobbies.com (same story as tower on parts)
omnimodels.com (same story as tower on parts)
ebay

There is also a site called fg-hopups.com that sells the steel pinions and engine mounts but when I tried to get them, he didn't have them and wouldn't tell me if was ever getting them in again.


For steel pinions:
Hobbythek in Germany. (shipping is outrageously high, but they get it to you in a week)
TQrcracing.com (in California, they are supposed to be getting these in)

For engine mounts:
Hobbythek
TQrcracing.com (in California, they are supposed to be getting these in)

For tuned pipes:
www.davesmotors.com

There are also some FG parts that will work with the Firehammer clones:

Crossreference
 
i think the truck is the better jumper, it lands the flattest without alot of work.

if parts availabilty is a concern then you might wanna go with the baja

they are both neck and neck on hop up parts availability

they are both pretty hot right now so getting parts is gonna be a pain untill they get enough made, or the popularity dies down.

with these being so affordable everyone is getting them. hop ups and spare parts are the first things people stock up on.

i don't think you will be displeased with either of them, they both have the strengths and weaknesses.

do a search on here and see whats good and whats not and go with what suits you best. Like i said though either one is not a bad choice, i drive the crap out of mine and there still here and i haven't had a moments thought of selling either one. only thought i had was maybe i should buy another one. not because im bored with these but because they are so fun that i wouldnt mind having more than i could drive. never been able to say that about nitro or electric models.

the biggest problem im having is with the reciever packs on both. they run so long on a tank of fuel that it makes it seem like the battery is not holding a charge. everytime i have to recharge im saying man i just charged this 3 or 4 tanks ago. but that was nearly 4hours of use so its not bad and it only takes 30 mins to charge it back up and go for another 4hours or so.
 
Do you think the baja pinions would fit the FH? Thanks for all the tips and links, is adjusting the spur mesh the same as nitros? What other meshes should I check? Do I need to cut holes in the body for cooling and can I refill and start with the body on?
 
baja pinions will not fit the firehammer, sorry. you don't need to cut holes in the body for cooling, the engines have a cooling fan mounted on the crank which draws in air from the bottom of the engine and blows it across the fins on the head. you will need to pull the covers off and check for grass ocasionally. Im not sure i know how you would adjust mesh between spur and pinion i don't think its possible. you just change gear combos and when you bolt them on the mesh is preset by the gear plate. on the truck you would need to check the mesh between the "lay" shaft pinion and the differential ring gear. The design on my truck doesn't allow the mesh between the lay shaft pinion and the diff ring to be pulled too tight, i losened the motor mount bolts and pull the motor and all as far back as i could and it was just perfect mesh so all i did was align the two gears and tighten every thing back up. the baja doesn't have any mesh that is adjustable. the baja you can start and refill with the body on the buggy. the truck you can only start with the body on to refill you will need to pull the body off. The smartech truck is the one im speaking of when i say the truck. Its pretty much the same as the firehammer truck. you may be able to fill the firehammer with the body on as it is made from the same stuff as the nitro cars and you can fold it up and get access to the fuel cap. If you have tough fingers you can take the fuel cap off the truck by hand, otherwise there is a key to remove the cap that is included in the trucks spare parts bag.
 
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