Just wanted to show you guys what a few parts and couple of minutes can do to a street tuned Jato out of the box. First of all the Jato is a RWD Stadium truck with rockets out of the box for speed. Comes with Anaconda street tires a level suspension and about 1.5" of ground clearance. Keep this in mind when you look at the jato with some off road tuning. (PS: I am ordering a 20t CB for the stock 54t and keeping its 2 speed Tranny, Due to high speed driving and its ability to fly over bumps like a rocket propelled Ferrari runnin jet fuel. I have to replace the gear box do to some mounts breaking. Also i need more low end power for the new Tires.) With the Body on for the cool looks, notice the rear driver side tire a little crooked! ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Nice little shot under the hood of a dirty Jato, ( at least you can tell i use it) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Camera a little fuzzy, but you can barely see that the mount is busted (just above the axle) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Side shot with the body, wasnt paying attention the order i put the pics in, Oh Well!. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- There we go, to give you an idea of how much more clearance was added, Front rims are stock rims for the Jato, had to order new fronts and glue the tires, Rear were already assembled. My T-Maxx 3.3 is to the left of the front helps with size comparison. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Not much better, but you can see where the Mount is busted if you look just to the left of the top of the spring on the shock. There should be a protruding piece of plastic with 5 holes. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ I will add some more pics to this thread as i break more parts and do some more replacements. Stay tuned ("tuned" now thats funny)
As parts begin to break i will be replacing key structural components with their aluminum upgrade such as Steering, and linkages. I will continue to use plastic or carbon parts on the Front and Rear arms. The only reason for this is that aluminum parts however strong will do more damage by breaking more parts at once. Plastic and Carbon flexes more which is good for the off road bashing it will receive. If your gonna stick to stadium tracks or controlled tracks you want to replace heavy parts with the lighter counter parts. The risk of crashing is magnitudes lower than that of free driving wherever you go. Parts that will be replaced Clutch- you want heavy duty, high tolerance clutch pads. There is a lot of torque that the 3.3 motor can dish out, and ive already replaced my T-Maxx clutch. When that baby gets hot it will slip. And off road running takes its toll, you want a tight but giving clutch, you dont want to burn out your motor. Landings with a loose clutch will make your truck feel like something is broke. Too tight and you will shatter the plastic gears in the tranny. Only you can find the right tension for your truck just have to drive it. (listen for motor cutoff on the landings usually too tight) Inner Gears for the transmission- change plastic gears to steel gears for the two speed. Will allow for more torque resistance for a heavy throttle. I am gonna stick with the two speed rather than convert to single, i like to go fast and the two speed gives me that. Axles- Upgrade from the Tele-Plastic to the steel Constant Velocity axles. Carriers- The tires take a lot impact off road, My truck will be ran in the desert where sagebrush and mounds will flip the truck. We also just extended our gravel track (yesturday) with more turns and straigts. Rocks can get lodged in the wheels and lock up tires. Using the aluminum carriers will save the mounts from breaking. I recommend using plastic ball caps, they are cheaper to replace than complete links or arms. I highly recommend that you think about your gear ratio when thinking about larger tires. Out of the box the Jato 24/54 will reach 60+ after breakin and minor tuning. (mine hit 68mph with 600ft of runway 5000 ft elev. Police Radar) I am gearing my jato down for power to the wheels, it puts more stress on the Tranny but i havnt broke it yet. (20T Clutchbell) Changing the spur gear will put less stress on the tranny and motor and save a little more top speed. (Math can be confusing for gearing as well as how power is dispersed so we keep it simple) When i break more things i will add the parts i replace as i go, can think about the important ones at the moment.
In light of recent events, the CB that i ordered was the wrong part in the right package. I had received a 17T CB for whatever model. When i ordered a 20T CB for the jato. Second thing i realized that i had lost my brake disk. You can see that its not there in the images above. Third, i forgot that i bent one of the real axle spindles so i ordered those along with the brakes. As for the gear box the only thing i had to modify was the brake rod. Since on the original gearbox the rod sat a little deeper, the new gearbox it was flush on the inside. So i ran over to dads house and used his dremel to grind a few mm off the rod and voila fit like a glove. Oh, after racing my tmaxx at the track i busted a shock. so i took to the spring boot and head off my jato and put it on my maxx so that i still had a car to drive.
