In The Baja Gang!

[Pablo13]

Picked this up on the weekend for a resonable sum with a questionable clutch. My first fuel burner



Needed to make it my own. About an hour later I had removed panels, de stickered and scuffed up the clutch to get it working again


Green isn't my colour, so we broke out the oven cleaner and autosol and got all metal parts de anodised except the main chassis. Also took the opportunity to service the shocks which worked out, as one of the rears was dry. Added as much camber and castor to the front as I could while pulling it apart.


After that I turned my attention to the body. I tried some Carson Paint killer and began stripping it down.

It was alot of effort I think had I known how much, I'd have just bought a new body!

Did a little test colour scheme




Was not feeling. Stripped back and went again.....

Thanks for looking! Stay tuned, more incoming soon!

 

[Dunc2504]

Welcome !.
Nice work on the Baja !
Running a 29cc I would guess , The sky and your bank balance is the limit with modifications for these things.
Get out and enjoy the car.

 

[Pablo13]

Welcome !.
Nice work on the Baja !
Running a 29cc I would guess , The sky and your bank balance is the limit with modifications for these things.
Get out and enjoy the car.

Cheers Dunc! It's a 30.5cc at the moment, which is a breathed on 29, right? I'll have a tune and see what I can do with it, but longterm will throw something 34-35cc later on and see what that does. Yeah, a 30 year old design so plenty of aftermarket support by now! Banks already complaining Only had a few quick runs to check the clutch is working again and sure am looking forward to a propper bash with it!

 

[Pablo13]

So I settled on a orange/purple fade. Chucked a pair of super hogs on the rear, Taylor gas cap and some yellow on the lights for that hint of KC




After that I turned to the spoiler. I'm not a fan of the positioning of it, seems too low and out of the airflow. I'll prob revisit that, but in the meantime I used a cut down licence plate surround to make a bolt on duck tail extension part.


Sits nice a flush and conforms to the wings curve nicely


Added a pixelated 5B font on the sides for that retro feel


Now its starting to feel like its my car

 

[smokinwheel]

Hey, be careful about doing what you did, law enforcement might lock you up for " Mis-use of plates"

Looks great.

 

[zxb466]

Looking good!

 

[Pablo13]

Hey, be careful about doing what you did, law enforcement might lock you up for " Mis-use of plates"

Looks great.

They gotta catch me first!

Looking good!

Thanks Man!

Current parts haul


Trying my best to resist fitting it all before the first propper bash sesh. I wanna get a feel for it close to stock and can apprieciate the changes made

 

[Dunc2504]

So I settled on a orange/purple fade. Chucked a pair of super hogs on the rear, Taylor gas cap and some yellow on the lights for that hint of KC
View attachment 109055

View attachment 109056

After that I turned to the spoiler. I'm not a fan of the positioning of it, seems too low and out of the airflow. I'll prob revisit that, but in the meantime I used a cut down licence plate surround to make a bolt on duck tail extension part.
View attachment 109057

Sits nice a flush and conforms to the wings curve nicely
View attachment 109058

Added a pixelated 5B font on the sides for that retro feel
View attachment 109059

Now its starting to feel like its my car

I made my own out of carbon fiber matt and epoxy.

 

[Pablo13]

Very fancy....wanna make me one?

I think I'm actually more interested in your wheelie bar, are those intergrated shocks?

 

[Dunc2504]

T hey are adjuster bars for changing the height of the bar , Made it myself from carbon sheet and alloy mountings.
The things you can make for a Baja are endless if you have some equipment.

 

[Pablo13]

So I managed to resist fitting anything except the check straps and took it out for the first time stock and noticed a few things.

Has the turning circle of a bus - happy to have the sym steering to fit
Stock radio is slow to respond and looses signal - will swap out
It needs a bit more pep in its step - see below

All was going well and then I blew a rear shock and lost the spring somewhere, so will need to sort that out.


Did a bit of field tuning. Leaned out the carb a touch and it seemed to respond well with a slightly improved top end, then lost the silencer, and switched from the stock rears to the larger rolling radius superhogs, all of which must have added 0.5mph each mod

Once back and had inspected the damage, I decided to add more power

Tidied up the exhaust flange a bit, then port matched it to the gasket and plate



The plate itself matched the stock port on the bore pretty well so I left it there. Do have plans for a sidepipe later on, but this hopefully should wake it up a little more in the meantime.

Thanks for looking!

 

[Dunc2504]

I would bung in a rovan 36 with single ring piston , It is my standard go to engine for bashing .
Large volume shocks off of alliexpress seem good , though I had to change the seals for lip seals in mine (nice and cheap on ebay from a UK seller)
They have been great since .

 

[Pablo13]

I would bung in a rovan 36 with single ring piston , It is my standard go to engine for bashing .
Large volume shocks off of alliexpress seem good , though I had to change the seals for lip seals in mine (nice and cheap on ebay from a UK seller)
They have been great since .

Google is awash with twin ring engines, do you have a link? I've seen alot of people getting the twin and removing a ring.

I did a cry once, buy once and ordered some IRC big bores for the rears already. Hopefully they'll be here in time for the next bash on the weekend!

 

[Dunc2504]

Yeah !
Just one of them with a single ring piston , or lower ring removed is a good way to go.

 

[Pablo13]

So the Innovative RC big bores showed up, and got them on. The upper mounts needed the Rovan shock tower to be drilled out to work together nicely.


Then threw the gearing on. I also needed to grab the blackbone clutch bell to work with their pinion


I'd bought a new clutch in expectaion I'd need to change the original back from when I picked the car up. 8k spring in this one. Now was the time to thow it in, can also spot the Taylor clutch mount I fitted last time I was in here


It didnt stop there, I had to switch out the bearings in the carrier to match the 15mm shaft of the blackbone bell

Best I could find at short notice are 1mm less wide than stock. I'll have to come back and shim it down to loose some of the in and out play


As mentioned, the TX/RX was a bit junky. Luckily at the start of the year I decided to take up RC drifting (which is awesome and you should try it!), a side effect of that I eneded up purchasing a Futaba 6pv. Definately a step up from the Dumbo's I usually rock and more options and settings that will keep me busy for years to come. I went ahead and picked up the non electric car specific reciever for the Baja.


I managed to find a tiny lipo in my collection that fitted in the box to power things with. I did quiestion the capacity a little and may grab a pair or trio of batteries to run in parallel. Then, when I powered things up my mind was put to rest. The futaba displays RX voltage on screen with an adjutable low voltage alarm... pretty nifty


The car came with a spare Savox steering servo which is more likely to handle higher voltages than the stock so the sym steer stuff went in with it


I originally tried the stock throttle servo with the lipo set up As semi expected there was no movement and a handful of seconds later the magic smoke made its escape Are we in a better world for having one less 6v servo? I hope so

So I turned my attention to my crawlers. Looking a bit dusty and not turned a wheel recently, I seclected a victim and relieved it of its dig servo. Nothing too special, 15kg but rated to 7.4v I thought would be ok....and it was for a little while It worked fine when testing on a half charged lipo, but out in the field, plus a fully charged battery, a few min in and it gave up. The arm was seized solid and just the wiring for the servo was melted, all other wiring was fine. Learn from my mistakes people! So back to the crawler victim we went, fully raping it of all servos and putting it into full "nah, that one done work mate" shelf queen status. It's definately overkill for a throttle servo, but most importantly its HV rated.


And lastly made an order to Titracing for a few bits. Grabbed their spikes for the front which feel pretty good. I'd say their compound (by spike stiffness) is bit stiffer than a super hog, but not quite as stiff as an Akill. Somewhere in between. The inner metal beadlocks are also Tit racing and the outer is an Akill.


Thanks For Looking!

 

[Dunc2504]

Looking good , get out and run it now !

 

[Dunc2504]

Finished rebuilding my latest baja today .

 

[Pablo13]

Cool. I never knew FTX made a version!

 

[Dunc2504]

1/12 scale 4 wheel drive.
Must be quite rare coz finding spare parts is a nightmare.
Changed from brushed to brushless.

 

[Pablo13]

Made a video of the first shakedown run

Just minding my own, and more parts appear!

Kraken wider arms, FLM Lightweght shafts and some TZZ bling

Got to work and clearanced the front knuckles for more lock while everything was apart

Also modded the upper arm rod ends for maximum camber. The TZZ extended steering rods just about leave enough thread in the ends to feel comfortable even with the symetrical steering, will report back after I've done a few cartwheels


Added captured hinge pins on the front


Went the other way in the rear. With just the TZZ Spacers was coming out to 5 deg. Added the silver washers to bring it back a bit