Wednesday, October 04, 2006

JATO- Crash

Ok, so, I have got the JATO all broken in and it's running great. Once again it is fast! I had my first bad crash with a broken part. I destroyed the rear "A" arm. I ran doen to the LHS and grabbed an aftermarket replacement from a company called "RPM" this "A" arm is made of better material than the stock part. The RPM part cost $12 for a pair. The install process was a real pain. I had to remove everything from the motor back to get at the shafts that hold "A" arm to the frame. (see pic) I had to buy more nitro fuel which was pretty pricey $34 a gallon sheesh! I bought an exaust deflector so that the unburnt fuel doesn't blow all over the rear wheel and rear axel, it really gets messy without it. I also orddered a new set of rims and tires. The stock rim for the JATO is a 2.8" rim which looks really good, but we are limited to only a handful of different tires and tread patterns. I opted for a 2.2" rim that allows me to choose from at least 30 different tire patterns. I went with the ProLine agitator rim and the ProLine MOAB tires. The MOAB tires have a more aggressive tread and have a larger total diameter (5") this will give me more clearance and a better traction in grass. One of the tricks of the tire mounting process is to wrap the inside of the tire with duct tape. Wrapping the inside of the tire prevents the tires from "Ballooning" at high RPM. Ballooning is when the centrifugal force stretches the rubber of the tire making it 2x it's original size, it can also cause the tire to explode. I will post more pics when I mount the new tires.





Money In the Jato Pit:

$42 Fuel and exaust deflector from LHS
$50 tires and Rims from amainhobbies.com

Total so far:
$641