Bolink Digger, the off-road Jerobee

After the body repairs and charging the battery, I took it out for a drive today. The lawn was still wet and the grass a little longer than in the summer time. The car is very fast at full throttle and can do wheelys. The steering is responsive but can give some difficulties because the car jumps a lot up and down due to the lack of (rear) suspension. Otherwise, the tyres grip well. It did a roll twice but that did not harm anything: due to the rather round shape and the fact that the body is attached with 3 points, nothing moves. The cheap ESC works well. I noticed that the shim of the right rear bearing moved around and I noticed there was again some up and down play of the rear axle on that side.

After trials, the car was soaking wet. I took the body off and and dried the chassis with compressed air to remove water, grass and some mud. The sponge tyres need drying.

This 44 years old car is just to have some fun and by no means for any competition like the Jerobee pan cars.

Inside the body, a car interior with driver made of thin black plastic was fixed with tape. It was left black and was totally invisible from the outside looking through the windows. After dusting it off, I could remove some dents and gave the whole some colour: driver, seats and floor. I like the transmission tunnel!!

Nice color, nice detail. Ought to show up now. You painted that by hand and with what?

rsv1cox wrote:Nice color, nice detail.  Ought to show up now.  You painted that by hand and with what?  

Yes Bob, painted by hand and with a very fine paint brush. I used Humbrol modelling paint.  The black lines were drawn with a marker.

Some pictures of the finished car

Nice! So glad that you did not overdo or change that body. Flaws show character, perhaps an over-used and under-appreciated term but still true. I'm sure that you are very happy with it as you should be.

Thanks guys. Yes, I only repaired the cracks in way of the running boards and the spot where they join the rear mud guards. I reinforced the holes for the body posts with epoxy on the inside and the interior was stuck in with duck tape. I had to adjust the edges a bit for a better fit inside the body.

Very nice Lieven!! I'm curious about the steering link. Did you add a "servo-saver" with that new servo? If not; you may want to add one. It's basically a shock-absorber that protects the servo's gears from the jarring that the steering linkage encounters on an off-road model such as this.

(old servo)



(new servo)

Thanks Roddie, you mean one of these:



That's the servo saver on my Jerobee Corvette. There should be one on there in theory. Jerobee and thus Bolink relies on the kink in the drag link to absorb shocks and protect the servo gears.




It is difficult to buy a servo saver on ebay or similar. The servo shafts are not standard and differ from make to make. I used the same drag link on the Diggers as it came with. I just rebent it to fit the ball joints. The kink is not so pronounced and the drag link is thicker also.

You may be fine with what you have. I did a search.. and didn't realize that there are so many types.

(see HERE)

The Dubro cat. #120 uses a simple "single-arm" horn (user supplied) which might work for you.

I had a look as well on the internet and some servo savers are said to be universal.
I haven't thought about the spring system for steering purposes. I used it for throttle and brake servos but it would be very good for steering as well. I didn't know Dubro made such things. I always made these myself with ballpoint springs.