Damage Report (3 November 2001)

The report is divided into the following sections:

The Damage:
Today I was initiated - into the club of TXT-1 owners who have bashed their trucks hard enough to strip out a ball-end from the suspension link. I had freshly charged packs and went off to my regular bashing haunt - only to find that it was closed for "upgrading works". So I was left with just trying doing some speed runs and jumps on the street outside my house.

I was having fun driving the truck in reverse (the rear right wheel lifts off the ground!) when I discovered that steering wasn't that easy... then bam... the truck backed into a drain at about 60% throttle.

Damage report:

• The ball that threaded into the rear bumper for rear-steering lockout had come loose. The material the bumper is made off is flexible so this wasn't too much of a surprise. The short threaded portion didn't really provide much anchoring power anyway.
• The universal driveshaft came loose at the axle joint. No biggie - just needed to re-attach and tighten the grub screw again.
• The universal shaft could not have come off if all the suspension links had remained intact. Sure enough, one of the ballends had been stripped off the threaded rod. Again, this was not a surprise - while Tamiya was thoughtful to provide these slop-free rod-ends, the material they were molded from wasn't very strong. Quite a few guys have experienced this when running the trucks hard.
• My anti-sway bar for the rear was bent out of shape.

Now for the fix! :)

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The Fix:
Some of the parts were easy to fix. I replaced the rear lockout threaded ball with a ball and screw - just made sure that the screw was long enough to give it more anchoring power. I think on a hard crash it'll still strip out though... but it'll hold for now. (and probably for a long time too if I stay away from driving in reverse...). The universal was re-attached and the anti-sway bar was bent back to shape with the front one as a guide. The suspension link took a little longer to fix.

I decided to replace all the suspension rod-ends with the stronger Kyosho ones. Here's what was needed:

92841 Flanged Ball can be replaced with the following parts

The fix is easy actually and mainly involves replacing all the rod-ends with the Kyosho ones and the balls with either the Flanged Balls (92841) or the Hard Balls (W0137). When using the Hard balls, remember to use conical washers between the balls and attaching surfaces to give the joint a greater range of movement. Countersunk screws are used over normal capped screws for the same purpose.

One important thing to note however, is that the Kyosho rod-ends are longer than the stock Tamiya ones. To maintain the same wheelbase, I did the following:

For all lower suspension links, remove the black spacers that go on the threaded rods before the rod-ends do. WIthout these spacers, the Kyosho ends fit on without modification.

For the upper suspension links, you will need to cut away 3mm of the Kyosho rod-end to make it the right length. Use a sharp hobby knife and the material is actually very easy to cut. Measure to ensure that length is correct. If it's just a little long, a little sanding (I used 240 grit paper followed by 600 grit) is all that's needed to get the size just right.

Remember to use thread lock when threading the threaded rods into the suspension link-rod.

It may sound easy but I took over 4 hrs to complete the whole job (with a few short breaks in between though) and fingers were a little sore after all the rod-end work.

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Conclusion
The TXT-1 is a very tough truck out of the box, but it still has it's weak spots - one such spot is the rod-ends in the suspension links. As I mentioned earlier, I was very happy with the slop-free rod-ends that Tamiya included in the kit, but as many have discovered, the material that these rod-ends are made off are a little on the soft side and on hard bashing (or accidents) the rod-ends can strip clean off the threaded rods.

Changing these rod-ends doesn't take a genius, but I really think it would be easier just installing them from the very start. If you have the spare cash when buying the kit, invest in these and put them on from the start... you won't regret it.

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Pictures
Check out the pics of the damage and fix:

Damage pic	Parts pic	Upper mounts fixed	Lower mounts fixed	Chassis connections

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