Dodgy Graphite parts

[jimmy]

Whats all this I hear about the current XX4 graphite plastic parts ? aparently people are breaking a lot of things which were fine with the old car.

http://www.oople.com/rc/photos/southport280506/imagepages/southport4wd74.html

I have crashed my XX4 loads of times and broken nothing - but... and its a big but, I had 2 XX4's and the new one was sold after the review, the one I race is an old car with old graphite.

I wanted Ian to bring his vast array of broken bits for some photos! do it ian.

[barnyard]

the dodgy graphite only affects the new stuff sent out in the re-release kits hence your relic of a xx4 is fine.

This is also the reason new old stock of xx4 bits are fetching high premiums on fleebay compared to the new stuff.

the moral of the story is if you have a new kit bin it and dig the shed of a xx4 out of the loft and race that at least it will finish a race with 4 wheels

[DCM]

They had this years ago, when they sent out Graphite parts for the XX and all they did was SNAP, they had to change the graphite content in the plastic to make it a little less brittle, it didn't help that the parts were tested in the hot Southern Cali climate and then were breaking in out normal Early Spring cold.

One work-around was boiling the parts to aneal the parts a little, this helped a bit but didn't 'cure' the problem. It is a plastics composition issue.

[Rossco_4]

I think the problem with dodgy graphite parts comes and goes. I found when i 1st drove my re release xx4 i broke both front wishbones fairly quickly. Since then i have broken one or two more, however i didn't break any wishbones at all at the southport national at the weekend and the car certainly took its fair share of heavy impacts.

[barnyard]

its not particularly the composition of the materials used in the moulding its just that there are defects where fibres have not flowed through the mould correctly creating weak spots.