Team Durango’s Ryan Lutz often gets a lot of attention at the races as spectators watch his flat punched driving style tear through the field mostly in the A-mains, but at this years AMS 5.0 race in Cullman Alabama, Ryan received a lot more attention than usual in the pits. The attention was well deserved because on Ryan’s pit table was Team Durango’s new DNX8 prototype 1/8 Competition Nitro Buggy. Ryan is a great ambassador to the sport and his sponsors and he was more than happy to sit down with us and show us the new buggy and pass along some details. Check out the photos and captions to see what to expect from the new Team Durango buggy.
DETAIL GALLERY
So far Team Durango has one and a half years into the design of the DNX8 and the first version of the buggy actually hit the tracks around the Worlds in 2012. The car shown here has many Durango production parts on it, but there is still more work to go finalizing plastic parts.
The bare aluminum chassis will come anodized on final production models. Here you can see the engine is bolted in place with four countersunk screws. The diff mounts to a center plate that sits on top of the chassis plate. You can see the diff mount’s screw holes are slotted so gear-lash can be adjusted by moving the center diff.
Big 16mm bore shocks will damp the suspension front and rear. The towers looked like rough prototypes and will have inserts to adjust the upper inner hinge pin angle.
This isn’t a Team Durango tank, but the TD tank will be a clunk style and splash shields will be fitted to prevent accidental splashes from contaminating the clutch and brakes.
During the car’s design, TD engineers concentrated on a weight forward bias design. Here you can see the electronics packed in towards the front of the buggy.
As you can see, no more big aluminum bulkheads supporting the diff and in place is a more conventional diff case that supports the tower. There is a lot of material bracing in the case for support. The hinge pin braces feature cam style inserts to adjust anti-squat and toe. The rear brace didn’t look like a final production piece, but it should look close to what you see, including the body mount on the top of the brace.
TD has moved to a pivot ball front suspension set-up on the new buggy. Ryan says after lots of testing they found it to be the most consistent performing set-up on the majority of the tracks it was tested on. Here you can just about see the front diff cover screws. Just remove four screws and you can gain access to the diffs.
The 400g engine stays stationary in the buggy while the 100g center diff and mount assembly moves for mesh adjustment so in a hit, the engine won’t move.
The dual bell-crank steering assembly has a built in servo saver on the right side. An aluminum drag link features four holes to tune Ackermann.
