RC Vacation
On the first day of my vacation, I check the mail and the new battery pack I’d ordered for the Rustler at the beginning of the week had arrived. I immediately hop in the car and rush to M&M High Tech for a new charger in what would be the first of many visits over the next few days.
I get the charger home, get everything hooked up, have the battery charging, and call the Fat Man. Pack is all charged up, it’s a nice day, & I’m ready for some backyard bashing. The Rustler immediately starts freaking out & doing what it wants to do regardless of what I’m telling it to do with the controller, which is the exact opposite of the usual desired effect. So after spending close to an hour replacing the receiver, it’s finally ready to drive. I get a whopping 3 and a half minutes of blazing fast runtime when I clip the swingset with a back wheel and snap the a-arm mount right off the chassis. Back to M&M, four hours to replace, and I’m done for the night.
The next day we’re back in business again. We decide to go up behind the mall, which is one of my favorite places to run, to do some off-road bashing & jump some of the big shale piles. At one point I nearly took Paul’s head off from a jump that went somewhat unexpectedly. That pretty much sums up how the past few days have gone. Bad landings from attempting to make jumps that had undesirable consequences. To make a long story short, the broken parts list from the past couple days:
- 1 rear bearing carrier
- 1 rear A-arm
- 2 blown shock caps
- 1 cracked wheel
- Grand total of 6 trips to M&M for parts
Then, yesterday morning, while attempting to recreate the jump that broke a control arm on the Clodbuster, I managed to completely snap the chassis right in front of the gearbox. Unfortunately M&M didn’t have a chassis in stock. They ordered one for me, but it won’t be in until Wednesday. So after changing out all 4 a-arms with new RPM replacements & mounting all new wheels & tires, I came up with a quick and dirty patch job to keep it running until the new chassis arrives. I’ll just have to try to show some self-restraint for the next few days, which isn’t one of my strong suits.
But once Wednesday gets here & brings my new chassis along with it, before I take the time to switch everything over to it, I fully intend to stress test the hell out of my patch job and see what kind of abuse the old chassis is capable of withstanding.
