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Everything posted by DeBruce

  1. I was going to say earlier that the title post for this thread is not quite correct as these are the add on carbon fibre chassis kit 53100 which is not the same (writing different) as the original Evo chassis plates. It's not good news for some sellers that have had these up on eBay for eye watering prices. Good for those wanting to hop up a Top Force though.
  14. Thanks! Next step is the assembly of the gearbox. I used new A tree parts as I want this new model to be very clean. Here you can see the new A parts tree. First job is the attach the motor plate which attaches to the side of the gear box with three long screws. I was able to reuse these from the original car. Next step is the build up the gear differential. Despite the original gears being in good condition, I bought a new gear set online which can be seen here. This was mainly because the main TTC clutch assembly and spur gear had been replaced in my car and I wanted to return to original condition. In the set I also got all the parts for the gear diff so it made sense to build this up as he picture below you can see the gear diff case and cover and the metal diff gears in a separate plastic bag. I used Tamiya TRF VG Gear Differential Grease, part 42212 to grease the diff. It's easy to build, with a lower central gear going in first, then the four surrounding gears and finally a top central gear which all drop into place in the gear casing. Then you add on the top cover and secure down with the four small screws. The finished assembly looks like this.
  15. Here is a picture of the differential. In the super astute it's a gear differential and you can see the internal gears in this picture. Again the diff is full of dirty grease but I found upon removing the gears, that they were in excellent condition, showing this gear diff, with a little grease, is tough and well up to its task. There was no evidence of wear on any of the gears. Also linked here is an excellent video for understanding how gear diffs actually work. It's from the 1930's but don't let that put you off. It's the first video I've seen that actually let me understand the mechanical principles.
  16. So it's been a long time coming but I've finally gathered the majority of the bits to rebuild this (particular thanks to pUs for helping me source some very difficult to find parts) and so we begin with the gearbox... This is what we had to start with. Lots of very old and very dirty grease in there. The screw holes have been damaged in the casing as the screws have been over tightened. One thing I have found throughout this strip down is that the plastics are cracked or damaged where self tapping screws are used. In order to eliminate this, I have read about a hot screwing technique where a soldering iron is used to heat the screw in position in the plastic until it just starts to smoke. The screw is then screwed in whilst hot, melting a thread in the plastic. This eliminates the stress cracks that form when a self tapping screw is inserted into cold plastic and in my opinion is a good idea. With the inspection cover off, I found that the gears inside were in very good condition. Since this is an Astute that has had a very hard life, this is a good indicator that the main gears are more than fit for the task with a little grease applied. The motor plate cleaned up nicely be used again. You can see the marking SA for Super Astute for the unique motor plate for this variant of the car. Next is the main shaft. On this car the shaft seems to have held up and isn't bent of distorted so for this original build I will be reusing it.
  17. I used 54154 on my Astute - there's a close up pic of it on my build thread which is not that far down from this one if you want to take a look. Question - is that front shock tower mount a special? The standard Super Astute part doesn't have that reinforcement bar higher up that your part has?
  18. Still looking for Super Astute lower arms if anyone can help...
  19. Thanks Kontemax. Actually the chassis plate for the SA has the two additional holes in it for the front battery mount that are not present on the Astute plate. Sooooo... should I buy an available Astute plate and drill it? It wouldn't technically be correct but who would know? Could I live with myself knowing it wasn't technically the correct part? Is there something wrong with me that this kind of detail bothers me? Also agree about the gearbox casing. The SA one seems to have an additional hole in one side that you fit the A3 part and main shaft into, whereas I don't think the Astute has this. This is because the SA main shaft actually rotates as part of the slipper clutch design and so needs a bearing on both sides to rotate inside. On the Astute the gearbox shaft is fixed and I think the spur gear spins on the shaft as there is no clutch assembly as part of it.
  20. Yep I've already got the gearbox internals and ordered the slipper parts - just waiting for them to come. Going to rebuild it as per the manual! Interesting to know where the parts came from though. This car had been raced hard - to be honest there's not going to be much left of the original chassis when it's finished.
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