TC02C exposed spur and pinion
 

Hi ,I've been building up a TC02C and it has an exposed spur and pinion gear ,how vulnerable are they to dirt ingress ,specifically sand ? I'm planning on taking it to track days at an outdoor astro track and i think that should be pretty safe ...but the only place to practice/bash locally to me is sandy and I'm just wondering how abrasive it will be .I made the mistake when cutting out the body of following the suggested cut lines and that leaves quite an opening around the gears but I could have cut it leaving it far more covered so I'm tempted to get another body shell and cutting it differently to use off track ,but am I worrying about nothing ?

Ahhh
 

Yes it will be a problem. Sand will eat away at the spur and pinion in seconds. You should got a gear cover with your kit. Check the manual for the part number and order one before using the buggy outside. It will be far cheaper to get the cover than to keep replacing the spur or pinion.

PS It sounds as though you have used an Evo shell, which will not have the bulges to form the gear cover. I used the narrow pre-Evo shell but mount it further back so that the integral gear cover lined up with the slipper. The front flares out a bit but nothing to worry about.

Thanks guy's ,I have been trying to modify the gear cover used on the rest of the range ,cutting it a bit here and there ,covering the holes with plasticard ,I drilled and tappped a mounting hole beyond the pinion into the motor plate but no matter how I fettle it when i test drive it I can stilll hear it rub just a little and it sets off my OCD ,looks like new shell will be on order soon .
I have the Lupus/Mad Monkey chassis and body ,does the genuine TC02C shell/chassis offer more protection to the gear train or are they much the same ?

Oh dear!

The new oOple forum seems to have lost the ability to edit a post. It just replaced the text instead. :(

So I'll start again. The TC02C does not have a separate gear cover, it is an integral part of the body shell. Also, there are no fixing points on the motor plate to mount a gear cover either.

If you have the correct body shell then it will keep enough of the sand out to keep your gears healthy.

The two shells, now in the previous post, show "Penguins" two versions of shell for the pre-Evo verions of this buggy. The yellow one fits the narrow, TC02C, and the other one fits the wider, Lupuz/Mad Monkey. They are both in the order of £12.

The yellow shell now has cutouts in it, to accommodate a gear cover, which I needed to fit after switching to an Avid slipper. Prior to that no cover was used as the spur gear was well clear of the shell.

It now looks like this:

Thanks again Clive I'll look them up .

I'd say that there was no difference with regard to protection of the gears. The narrow chassis gives a lot less space to fit all the other kit in and unless you have a newish ESC (small footprint) there may not be too many options on where it can go.

I also started with the Lupuz and then switched directly to the Evo chassis but with my pre-evo rear end on it. If you are handy with a file you just need to remove 1mm from the innermost T-Plate fixing points. I'm still using the same chassis so I now have to put 1mm spacers in there. ;-)

If you are over Southport way you can have my Lupuz shell for nowt. Not sure what it would cost to post.

I'm down south near guildford ,I had a bit of a surf about but cannot find the penguine body listed ,probably discontinud I guess ,I found one on Ebay the same as i have for 13 quid delivered so I think I'll order up one from there but I appreciate the offer .

That's probably the same thing. I think it is Steve Haskins who makes them.

Thanks

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/X2c-Team-C...8AAMXQlgtStyx-

I think that this is the narrow version and I can't see the Lupuz one. Perhaps he has stopped doing that one. :(

Body
 

I've got a brand new Team C TC02C body its in the packet. Part number TB201C if you want it. I'll do it for £13 posted. Let me know if your interested.:thumbsup:
I'll send a pic if you need it.

Double damned , I just ordered the one i found on ebay otherwise i'd have taken you up on that ,but just to add to it I had one last go at fettling the gear cover i modified and now I have it working properly so I don't need the new shell anyway ,it can't happen any other way ,I guess it just needed a cash sacrifice to the rc gods ,often the way I find .If its a clear lexan body I might take it off your hands if you still have it next month but cash is always short and I can't afford it this month .

I think that the one Chris has is for the narrow TC02C.

It will not fit the wide Lupuz chassis. Well not too well anyway. :)

I think you right it does look narrow.

Nevermind ,thanks anyway .

Just send Steve Haskins a message. He'll still have the mold for it if guess. Not seeing him until next weekend but could ask him then (if I remember).

Thanks but I have it sorted now .

Guys beware - im sure its not BRCA legal to have your spur gear exposed

Agreed but if the body shell covers it then that is enough.

I suppose it would come down to the semantics of what "exposed" actually means. The motor plate definitely doesn't need to be covered if it's a lay-down car, as the back of the shell does that job, but a few cars that have raced in Europe - namely the first SRX-2 MH prototype and the first factory B5M conversions - have had gaping holes at the back that left the spur more than visible. It's definitely illegal to have a spur protruding from the car, but exposed doesn't necessarily mean it protrudes.

Take Cragg's B5M as an example. This is his car alongside the others at the Worlds warm-up - I would expect such a rule to be widely enforced across all governing bodies, I haven't actually read the JMRCA regulations - but it's quite clear that the spur sits exposed to the naked eye, and definitely has no form of external protection. It looks to fully clear the main chassis plate before the rear arm too, so I would say that it's protruding.

Attachment 87748

If you look at the car when it ran at Kidderminster, however, you'll see it has a gear cover of sorts that just goes over the top of the spur, but it leaves the pads and the top shaft/spring/nut exposed - it may well not even fully cover the edge of the spur, it's hard to tell from the angle. Clearly this has been done to make it fully legal for BRCA meetings, but if you take the regulations at face value, it doesn't really meet "closed and protected". It's only partially closed at best, and certainly isn't fully protected.

Attachment 87749

The bottom line in the case of the OP is that a gear cover is advisable, but not strictly necessary. Because it's not a lay-down car, there will be more spur exposed than the example above, but I have seen several people run cars like that, indoors and outdoors. Whether it's legal or not is a different matter. If you ever want to race with the car, it would be daft not to run one, and for a BRCA meeting you would definitely need to do something. If for whatever reason you can't source a particular gear cover, or have a unique motor plate/gearbox, a shell that doesn't cover the back end fully, it looks to be entirely possible to fashion something that makes the car legal. A bent strip of lexan attached to the back of the motor plate that comes down over the edge of the spur would be along the lines of the above photo, so that would likely be legal. The rule is just open to interpretation, so it would be entirely dependent on whoever is scrutineering your car and how they interpret the wording.

I know it seems a bit trivial for such a basic thing, but there's a fine line between falling foul of it and being legal. In the OP's case it's easy to stay legal, and it's the easiest thing to do, but the wider rule is an interesting thing to analyse.

Good detective work there Felix.

Personnally I would say that if the marshals are likely to get their fingers on rotating machinery then it needs more in the way of guarding! When an eight year old marshal loses the end of a finger and the parents bring legal action I guess we will find out what was really meant. :rolleyes:

Dadio, for his part, was only ever suggesting that he might run without a gear cover for bashing purposes but Chris Larner advised that his spur and pinion would suffer in a dusty environment.