D4 Review
 

Coming soon! :)


Just dropped the car off with Mr.Price, team oOple driver, so he can install his brushless (which arrives tomorrow). And all being well we should have it going at Bury Metro National this weekend. John is a better driver than myself, having acheived F2 status and D final at a National in 4WD, so should be a good test pilot for the car (enabling me to concentrate on writing and photographing).
John came over and built 99% of the car himself whilst I took photos. The paint job is a bit average, done in a rush last night, but it's the same paint scheme as Johns oople review X-5 which he's piloted for the last year.

There are some things that are a bit odd (to us), the washers in the front hubs (why), the multi piece shock top-caps, the fairly average manual which only ever mentions screw sizes by a daft code number (meaning you have to keep looking at the key at the side) - but plenty of nice touches. Motor install isn't that good, it seemed we couldn't find an easy way to install the motor without removing the battery post - I'm sure it is possible but with our tools and combined brain power (!) we couldn't do it. Fine for brushless (which rarely moves) but something like a Reedy KR which needs a skim per run it would be a nightmare.
The LRP brushless motor I installed was a good fit, the Mamba Max was CLOSE but would fit with some persuasion. the new Mtroniks brushless motor I tried to fit was no where near fitting in the car, the chassis looks like it would need some dremeling to fit.

The undertray mounting is great (had to remove / reinstall a few times just for photos, and it takes seconds).
The quality of the plastic mouldings is really good also, and hardly ever needed any work. Indeed the quality of pretty much everything is at the very top.

Had a few doubts about the car before starting it, but I was reluctant to hand it over to John tonight since it looks rather nice and feels great quality. The car does look a lower spec than some other cars, I think because of the black alloy that is used in all the sparts of the car. It just looks like plastic to the casual voyeur and gives the car less of a 'tricked out' look that so many modern 4WD buggies enjoy. But I'm glad the purple is kept to a minimum.


Anyway - that's what we've been up to this week and why I've not been online much.

looks good, i'm liking those orange stickers!!!!;)

The orange is more orange than that - it's fluorescent stuff but I'm not good enough to photograph it properly! :)

I've just built mine. Got bored and had a bit of free time so I thought I'd get it built.
Went together very well indeed. The only part that got me frustrated was building the shocks, as they kept getting loads of lock and it took ages to get them right.

Other than that, everything was fine. It was nice to be able to build the suspension without having to file and sand everything too.

Picky attached, not rate good as i just got the camera and snapped it.

Now I can race 4wd, YAY!;)

Obviously it needs tyres on.
And I couldn't be arsed to paint the wing, but I think it needs it, so I'll do that tomorrow.

Yeah definitely needs your paint on there mate, I dont like the look of a clear wing - but it's much easier for racing than painting loads up.

We found the same with the shocks - they weren't as easy as some to get right. Probably not a trait of the design, more a certain lack of experience that we had with this type of shock. I just don't like multi piece top caps. I don't understand them or like them in any way - why not 1 bit of plastic?

The suspension did indeed go together really nicely with no hint of binding. I like the rubber hinge pin mountings - I guess these should also cut down on breakages by absorbing some of the shocks?!?
it's a cool feature I've not seen before anyway.

I wasn't sure about the shell, but I quite like it now. These things tend to grow on you when you have to sit down with an airbrush and look at them for a while.

The shocks build in pretty much the same way as the RB5's, but they went together beautifully, and when I saw them in the instructions I thought the same thing would be the case here. But, I've got them right now.

I liked the shel from when Adam brought the first proto' for me to paint, but it is a pain to paint though :D . Wish I'd gone for a more simple design like yours, but I wanted it to match the RB5.;)

Yeah - I looked at it last night, already late in the night, and thought NAH! there's no way I'm staying up all night painting. So a simple stripe around the side was all I could mange.. The blue has a bit of work in it (chrome, faskrome, transp-blue, pactra blue, faskolor irridescent blue, irridescent purple, transp-grey) It looks a bit plain in the photo, but the blue has a lot of shading.


The Kyosho shocks I found the collars very tight - which could lead to the top caps spinning - the HB's were better in this regard, but still I prefer a simpler design than this.

i found shocks easier to bleed via top cap ;)

yeah thats what I ended up doing too, 'cos once tightened up, I could only undo the tops.

:) I too ended up doing my shocks via the top, I've got too used to Tamiya TC shocks.
As far as the undertray goes after 1 meeting with it held in place with the supplied double sided tape I decided to get a body reamer and put holes in it to allow two of the rear gearbox screws to hold it at the back and used one of the servo mount screws on the side. Slightly more fiddly than double sided tape but won't go off like the tape and need replacing.
Has anyone re-drilled their chassis to move the battery post over and allow easier access to the motor, I was thinking of trying this but I didn't know if it would cause problems holding the cells in?
Jimmy, the rubber hinge pin mountings are actually an HPI part off their nitro car so if you need spares or replacements the part number listed in the manual is an HPI part number not a Hot Bodies. Just for future reference as the man in my LHS couldn't find a price for them under HB but found it by part number under HPI.
telboy, to someone with little imagination and even less practical talent your shell looks great and worthy of the effort that it undoubtedly took.:)

The unfussy paint job really shows off the shape of the body shell. I never realised the shell's side pods were shaped like that at the front. The shell looks really good.

Elliott.

I like half clear wings :): http://www.oople.com/forums/attachme...6&d=1181337645

How did the car go at Bury Jimmy??

It went pretty well to be honest, John was racing it and didn't do as well as he'd hoped but thats what you get driving a brand new car for the very first time at a big race meeting where you don't get much opportunity to play around with setups! :D Sorry John!.

John ran the front diff all day until the final, when he swapped to a front one-way diff. The car definitely LOOKED nicer with the one way but john felt it was a bit harder, which I guess it would be.
The final was good, john kept powering away from everyone else, then making a mistake and getting pressured.. I think in the end he won his final fairly easily.

The damage was a cracked front shock tower (common at bury) and a rear hub. The rear hub broke because the stock ball stud was too short for the height it was set at (about 3mm! - as high as possible). So, not a fault of the car really. We borrowed a hub and some new longer ball studs from mr.Skelding who was rather lovely to us :p

i've ran both the one way and the diff, car was definately quicker with the one way but alot easier to drive with the diff. Will be giving the one way shaft a go next regionals to see if i can have the best of both worlds!! Also i have pred ball joints on the inside rear camber link, to lower the ball joint without having to dremel the mount(weaker, thanks go out to mr Yardy). Found this helped handling alot.
Can't wait for the review!!!!

Good idea with the inner mounts. John had it so it was barely half a mm from touching the wheel on the outer link - so lowering the inner is the next move, I will look into that, nice one.

What set up did he run, springs etc as i am at kiddy in a fortnight, and Bury looks like the same sort of surface?
Thank mr Yardy for that idea on the link, not me!!;)

I am not quite there with the setup yet, however it is going in the correct direction. I'll be doing a mini race report with setups etc hopefully this week sometime.

Heyup John.

Looks nice that does fella.

Hopefully see it running at the York regional ?

Will be nice to see you driving something that doesn't sound like it's trying to eat itself from the inside ! (X-5, obviously)

Andy