New shell and new upgrades - we're on to PHASE II!

New Pro-Line Chevy Silverado Shell

One of my quickest and most slipshot works. Here's a Pro-Line Chevy Silverado shell painted in 3 colors with some inner-shell decals applied from Orion. The shell looks great, and it's one of the few times I have chosen to go with lighter colors - but I had a problem with the shell hitting the RB86 pipe because it was a little narrow.

I didn't want to do it, but I ended up cutting away part of the right side of the shell to accomodate the pipe. The end result was actually quite cool as the pipe seems to merge with the dragon decal on the side so when the truck runs it looks like the exhaust is coming out of the dragon's nose. You can see what I mean in the third picture. Fire breathing dragon!!! YEAH!

On the last picture you can see a little personal touch added. Team TNT is the unofficial name of the bashing group we have that meets every weekend. It's become somewhat of a famous club locally now.

How MTs should look!

Here are some quick pics of the truck after a gruelling session at a local track. Traction was great that day, but so was the dirt-factor! lol! I also burned out my slipper clutch on this outing. Be sure to tighten your slipper setting (tighten fullt, then loosen 1/4 turn) and check the setting from time to time.

New rims and upgrades

New dish-wheels for the Savage! Took several hours but I finally managed to get the tires off the old rims (the hexes were starting to round out. Hopefully these new PRO-LINE velocities will do better. It's also amazing how some soap and water can bring a dirty basher shell back to life!

I've also added some Hot Bodies hop-ups like the clamp on hexes and the fantastic brake pads. Will take pics of those next time if I remember. :)

Heavy Duty Steering Links!

During a recent bash session, one of the rear ball ends on the steering links popped off when I landed badly. After that, it seemed to pop-off quite easily. I took a look and realized that the plastic used for the rod-end was really soft and flexible. I wanted to just change out the rod-end, but the stock savage uses a rather short link-rod and very unique long rod-ends - which meant that just swapping rod-ends and retaining the stock link-rod would result in a steering link that's just too short.

I decided to put my new-found link making skills (see project HOOF) to use and I made some heavy duty steering links out of 1/4" aluminum rod. I shined them up for good looks and used Kyosho 6.8 rodends. These Kyosho rod-ends have worked great on my TXT, Clod and Dominator, I've little doubt they'd hold up very well - incidentally, the stock balls are 6.8 so no new balls were needed.

For added protection, I added another conical washer and M3 washer with a longer screw to ensure the rodend is fully captured. There's little chance it's gonna pop-off now! (see picture 2).

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