Broken Parts - Watch Out

Over the course of the first post on this blog until now, i have damaged and broken numerous parts on the Optima Mid. I will let you know which parts broke or bent and how to remedy them.

1. Graphite Chassis. Do not use this chassis if you intend to race hard, it will snap, look at this pic.

All i did was jump high and land hard, and i did slammed into hard packed jumps many times too. Graphite will crack, take my advice, stick with the OT-122 Aluminium chassis. Its heavy but it will never snap.

2. Stripped front gearbox threads. Fixing it is simple, see my previous entry about the bolt and nut method to secure the gearbox. Dont forget to seal the holes with silicon.

3. Cracked rear gearbox at 2 wingmounts. After several months of tumbles and rear wheelies, the wingmounts still last, but it teared the rear gearbox wing mount, exposing the rear tranny to dirt, and i have to open everything again to clean them up. Since i am using lazer ZX-R shock towers, i will replace the wing mounts with ZX-R mounts part number UMW-1. I think i should rename my car Turbo Optima Mid Special ZX-R.

4. Bent inner hingepins. Do yourself a favor, buy RCPS titanium hingepins ,and drill out the arms with the drill bit and instructions given. These hingepins wont bend.

5. Cracked rear gearbox mounts

I tried a new way to hold the rear arms without using e clips on the inside, by using airplane wheel retainers in the arms and e clips on the rear. So what happened was i was at glenmarie track jumping the car hard and hitting track barriers, and then suddenly my rear arms look like they came off. To my horror i found the screws holding the rear arm brace is still intact, but the plastic thats its screwed into, detached itself from the gearbox!

The solution to prevent this is simple, place pack the eclips at the rear of the arm brace, that way the load on the arms will be shared by the inner arm brace and not all loaded on the outer arm brace.