OK, getting up to speed. I arrived home from work yesterday to find a large box in the livingroom---and NEXT to my mom was the box the Savage came in....HELLO??? IS THIS THING ON???? I'll be here all week!
Anyway. It was in a very nice package:
Upon opening it, I found plenty of goodies all neatly packaged. The bags were labeled fairly well and everything appeared intact:
So I meandered down to my work area which had been cleaned and organized with all my necessary tools. Looks like I didn't have quite enough room for it all:
The instructions were laid out well. But with all the upgrades included, there was a whole bag of parts and addendums. This included instructions for the dual disc brakes, cam-type servo saver and new air filter. The first step in the instructions is to build the diffs but HPI took care of that for me. I did open them for 2 reasons. First to double check and make sure the 4-spider mod was done which it was. Second was to swap out that scary green stuff for some 5K diff oil. It was murder getting that stuff out. I ended up using lighter fluid which broke down the grease quickly. Just remember, no smoking! After the diffs were back together, it was time to assemble the ends. In this case the front and rear are basically identical. I put the baseplates on the diff housings and installed the bulks. It comes with upgraded adjustable upper arms so I then put those together. What a pain in the ass. First it takes a minute to get used to the reverse threaded side of the turnbuckles. Then it took a little while to get them spaced just right. I decided to go with 1 degree of negative camber at this point. Easy to adjust later. Here are the diffs w/bulks, arms and hubs. Everyone was right. The outer bearings are a pain in the ass to install!
And the arms when they are assembled.
Then I took a bit of time to make sure the arms would move freely on the hingepins. I used a drill bit the same size as holes already and just shaved a little out of them until they floated freely on the pins but didn't wobble. Then it was a matter of putting the arms, hingepins, dogbones and bumper mounts on to complete the basic front/rear end.
Next I moved to the tranny. It again came completely assembled. But as an upgrade, a hardened outdrive for the front was included. That took about 4 seconds to replace and was the easiest upgrade to do. It also came with the dual brake mod. I took a little time just to make sure that was all aligned and I put a couple dabs of CA to hold the pads to the calipers. I didn't do the pen spring mod as I didn't have screws long enough to space the pads so the springs would fit. Perhaps later.
(forgot to turn on the Macro function on my camera!!!)
Then it was just a matter of mounting the engine plate to the tranny and getting the TVP's, handle and pipe hanger on there. This is where I really started to like the Savage. I love the TVP design. It's narrow and sleek and much cooler looking than the flat plate of my old Maxx.
That was it for last night. I have been working a bit tonight, but the only thing I've gotten done so far is installing the cam-type servo saver and getting the radio installed. So the radio box is done. I did find a few things that caught me off guard. First, the lid is narrow so draping the servo wires over the sides of the receiver doesn't really work. Secondly, if you use the grommets included with your servos when you mount them, it throws them all out of alignment and you can't get the lid on. So I pulled them off and all works well. My only concern right now is steering symmetry. It goes much farther one way than the other. I had to up my EPA to 125% in one direction and drop it to 75% in the other direction to get them about equal. We'll see how it works when the rig is done.
For now, it's an "Amazing Race 6" break. Then I'll go back down and get a few pics of the radio tray and then it gets mounted.
