oh gawd, not another front arm!!

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emu67

Member
Messages
19
Location
Henderville
Well shoot - out in the desert and I hit a rock just right. I was only going 1/4 speed, not too fast and it just snapped the front arm. I think I'm up to 6 broken front arms now! Okay, if I break 2 more arms then I'm either going to buy the $70 aluminum arms or just fix the arms and sell it. This thing is drving me nuts that the plastic arms are so brittle.
 
I've hear of people boiling plastic arms to reduce brittleness, other than that send Rob some pics, if it's a manufacturing defect i'm sure he would like to get it resolved.
 
I've busted two, one right one left, in the same spot as emu but the first one was a head on with my baja and the other was planting into a hill at about 30mph
 
Here's the pictures of the break. Hope it's clear that the arms break where they connect to the chasis. All of the 6 front arms I've broken break at this spot. The breaks come from an impact of a rock on the arm or missed jumps where the vehicle lands on the tire, coming from the front. Hope someone out there makes arms from a more flexible material, kind of like the baja 5b arms.

DSC_0212-vi.jpg
DSC_0213-vi.jpg
DSC_0214-vi.jpg
DSC_0215-vi.jpg


Note sure if pictures are coming up :no: but here's the link to my fotki account:

http://public.fotki.com/FJCLUB/goingrcing/brokenarm/
 
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I took a look at the pictures. I don't see any mfg. defect with those. We have ran one of the original buggys for months & broke 1 arm. It was in a crash & that is to be expected. When considering the damage on these vehicles. Take into consideration the speeds & size of obstacles compared to a real vehicle. A 1/5 scale vehicle that is running 30m.p.h. is running a scale speed of 150m.p.h.. On top of that you can't hit things & expect the vehicles not to break. A simple 4" rock to these is almost 2' in scale size. Consider the damage if you were running your 1:1 vehicle through a 5' deep ditch time after time. Well it might make a second time. Consider once again, this ditch is only 1' to the R/C. Now how many times have we all ran for hours through a 1' deep ditch or hole, that would absolutely kill a 1:1 vehicle.

Definitely not dogging anyone, but keep from hitting things & see if the arms break then.
 
Bear in mind if you moved to alloy arms, what would break then.... One reason I've kept the plastic arms is to have a weak spot and save breaking something else. :)
 
I've thought about that too but these things aren't exactly scale replica's. While I think taking on rock at 30 mph is too much to ask for, I certainly think the arm ought to be able to handle a rock going about 10 mph. At any rate, I'm more disappointed that someone hasn't come up with a solution for a more flexible arm so the rampage can take some abuse. My baja is almost the same weight and it's smacked and hit things and rarely breaks arms and when it does, it breaks them in the center of the arm and not the connection point at the chasis.

I've been thinking about the alloy arms and it seems that the two aluminum supports are the main things keeping the arm in place so I figure it would be the aluminum supports that become deformed as the alloy arms take their beating.

Be great to hear from the guys running alloy arms how their buggies are doing.

Oh - as far as manufacturer defect? I don't think there is any, either. I think it could be a better design though, maybe a more robust connection point or at least a more flexible plastic.
 
That's where all my front arms broke. Pictures are of the same arm. I'm at least symmetrical...3 broke on the left, 3 on the right.

I wonder why my pics didn't show in my post?
 
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I boiled my one replacement arm and I still have one un-boiled arm on the buggy. Funny thing is that I've been out twice, had some crashes, and both the boiled and unboiled arms are still ok. Maybe the boiling worked by osmosis or something lol.

I seem to remember 10 minutes being a magic number...but I'm only 75% sure.
 
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emu67 said:
I boiled my one replacement arm and I still have one un-boiled arm on the buggy. Funny thing is that I've been out twice, had some crashes, and both the boiled and unboiled arms are still ok. Maybe the boiling worked by osmosis or something lol.

I seem to remember 10 minutes being a magic number...but I'm only 75% sure.
Click to expand...

Or until they change shape?:clown:
 
I just boil the water, toss the parts in, turn off the heat and cover the pot with a lid. The glass pots hold heat for a long time. I leave until I need another cup of coffee and have a reason to go to the kitchen
 
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