First off, the Tamiya TRF511 was taken off the shelf. It's been sitting there ever since my 23mm tall saddle pack lipos were decommissioned and I bought some 25mm tall LRP ones. The reason is that the taller packs didn't fit in the 511. I've seen some very creative solutions to fit the taller packs and the one I liked best was to slightly shift the packs back to clear the center bulkheads. These would shift the weight backwards as well which in my opinion is a good thing for the somewhat aggressive 511 buggy. So I machined the outer Lipo retainers, a center "spacer" as well as new battery straps.
The other advantage is that this mod allows me to use the heavier 5000mah packs which are about 35g heavier than my previous packs. I used to run 45g of weight around the batteries so now I can remove most of that *and* gain more runtime.
Next up the TRF502 also got a new mod. After the recent race I found that I could use a tad more low speed steering. I've heard about the mods that Lee Martin in Europe had done to give the 502 better steering geometry like the 511. So I machined a center steering link to move the ball studs forwards and slightly outwards to allow the 502 to get similar ackerman as the 511.
Lastly, the 2WD section also got some of my attention. I've always wanted to get the Cougar to work better on the dirt tracks that we run on and I've suspected that the loose rear on the car is generally due to weight distribution. I wanted to move weight more to the rear so I decided to go to a saddle layout. Schumacher sells their own version of these as an option but I went ahead to machine my own. Preliminary tests show that the car is a *lot* more planted but the rear shocks now need tuning as they are way too soft for the increased rear weight bias.
Here's a before/after view...
BEFORE
AFTER
Testing to be done on all cars as soon as I get the chance! :)
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