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why i love locked diffs.....turn a TC(touring car/onroad sedan) into a Soldier!

that there is a Traxxas 4tec, previously an onroad sedan, intended to go fast and handle like its "on rails",but with a few changes, ( both diffs locked, and a severe gearing adjustment - down to 20:1 using a 70t 32p spur and 7t 32p pinion coupled with the tranny's 2:1 internal ratio) it takes to the dirt with a tenacity before unseen ! lol. it lacks monster ground clearance, but its got monster guts.....the guts of a fearless soldier ! i shortened the wheelbase a bit by putting the rear suspension arms on backwards - it required hacking up the rear shock mount and mounting it in a new location, but it turned out ok - the mount is a bit weak, but if it breaks ill rig up an aluminum replacement. right now its got a 11t pinion, good for 12.72:1 - we know i can go lower if i need to, lol, but the tires (from a Monogram Tornado 4wd buggy, as well as a clone of said buggy, lol - dont ask ) are pretty small, so that ratio gets plenty of torque to the ground - had to enlarge the hole in the chassis under the motor, as well as elongate the motor mounting slots, to fit the 70t + 11t combo, but the motor (johnson "sealed can") takes in the dirt and spits it right back out, lol. and one might think these belt drive trannies are weak, but consider that the number of cogs on these pulleys that are in constant contack with the drivebelts far outnumbers the number of teeth that are in constant mesh in your average geared tranny - more surface area = less likelyhood of strippage - and i dont see these drivebelts snapping anytime soon - very beefy tranny in my opinion - ill twist a slider before anything else gives, lol

next planned mod are 2.2wheels with stampede tires. i need wheels that will widen this thing as much as possible, plus gotta get stampede axles, cuz none of the 2.2 wheels i have will allow the locknut to fully tighten onto the threads - axles are too short.....

time to badmouth traxxas.....lol...in the course of regular adjustments, i managed to strip out parts of both the diffs in this thing - they are made of a cheap diecast metal - shame on traxxas ! lol - so after i striped the first one, i drove the car as a 2wd for months - then while adjusting the one remaining diff, i stripped it out too - so i got pissed and dumped the car in drawer cuz i refused to pay money to replace those crappy parts that stripped - traxxas and that cheap metal, lol - so later when i saw the "scale offroading/crawling" being done with the tamiya TA02s and XCs, i knew id found a use for my 4tec, lol - and "soldier" was born - previously known as "project big spur" back when i was looking for a huge spur to use to gear this thing down - too bad the ta02 folks cant do that !always needing more torque - running for the Mag Mayhems ! :-P lol, but to be fair, yall have much better bodies than i do :-) and tires....and wheels.......but the XC guys got us both beat !

the moral of this story - lock all this ya diffs and take to the dirt! take to the hills! turning radius be damned! hahaha

f u email me, and please feel free to do so, include a reference to RC or this site in the "SUBJECT". i get alot of spam, so if i see a strange email address with no subject, or a subject that says "hi" or "hello", etc, im not going to read it - so u need to say something in the subject that makes it clear to me that your message isnt spam. ndumu@hotmail.com