the addiction continues.....

[jfz80]

I have a 1:1 addiction as well with a few Land Cruisers around here in various states of running order and now Ive ended up with an AXIAL after swearing I wouldnt. A good friend bought a couple of LOSI night crawlers for his two kids (yeah right ) and once I pulled the trigger a couple of weeks ago for the first time it was just a few days before I had one on the way.

Total newb all over again to R/C and electronics so bear with me. My first and last r/c was a Tamiya FOX over 20 yrs ago.

Have to give Matt at Anderson R/C a big thank you and recommendation for anyone else in the triad area needing some R/C parts and help. I had some glitches with a few used parts I purchased and with a little patience on both of our sides we got everything ironed out over the weekend. THANKS again matt :thumb:

whew... third build is a charm, no pics till this point

man, petrified wood has amazing traction

but its unforgiving; better keep wrenching and get that cage built

and the quicky course in the living room, rock to recliner to end table, down the sofa cushion and through the pile of shoes

:thatwaseasy:

 

[PuzoyAlex]

That looks great. I like the living room offroad course. You need to get the 80 series body next. I've been contemplating in getting back to R/C as well. I have a couple of nitro supermaxxes that I haven't touched in a couple of years. I definitely would like to get an axial or a CR-01.

 

[jfz80]

Check out RCuniverse.com classifieds. There were lots of folks wanting to trade rather than sell, and lots of people getting out of crawling thinking its too slow.

Went out and worked up the beginnings of a course this afternoon w/ the first t-shirt weather we've had in months.

we got the start of the rock garden

and then 50/50 obstacle; with alternate see-saw line

Hard times alley
(got dark)

Cedar Arch to TSL tightrope

to the Arc d' Interco (bell ringer in background)

and White Oak Ridge to the pit of dispair

 

[$out]

jason you have way to much time on your hands

looks great is that a turn key crawler or artr

 

[jfz80]

Thanks man and I know that all to well. So is the winter life of the self-employed landscape designer. Waiting on a signature that'll keep me mud free for a while; fingers crossed.

IT was an ARTR kit I bought used from a guy who bought it and a couple hundred dollars worth of accessories for his grandkid that never ran it. So I picked it up w/ all the goodies and started piecing it together. Im evil on shocks though..... bent the second set

 

[jfz80]

and continues....

whew spring was nice and now the summer lull.............


so been workin on the crawler a bit. New HD driveshafts, rearanged the links as they were the culprit to bending the rear shocks, swapped a medium spring on the torque side to prevent the cruiser lean, and then flipped it in the river on our club's casual outing to VA. DOH!!

came home thinkin i was due some major parts and ended up it worked great after a dry out minus a squeaky bearing or too. But no trip to the parts store is wasted

so I bought some rock lights; night crawlin rules !!!!
also picked up some longer upper links for when I do tear it down for waterproofing and gear swap so I can try and eliminate some torque steer in the rear.

 

[jfz80]

well too much fun at night and had a bad roll resulting in a sheared output shaft on the tcase

tore it down and was bummed cause the local RC stores dont carry much crawling stuff. But alas there is the crawlers forum and of course there is a homebrew fix to this. Take your time and you can get it just right for a permanent fix. Looks like ill be ordering the hardened tcase gears instead

 

[jfz80]

While it was apart I installed the slipper clutch as well. But with the wobble of the crooked output shaft and extended drive gear i cant run my HD shaft in the back for hitting the drive gear.

 

[jfz80]

I finally had it apart enough to do a full tear down and drill the axial side plates for some longer upper links front and rear. Went from 50mm post to 70mm post and measured back from the stock available locations, drilled one, then flipped and rotated to match the others. I now had to triangulate the upper links with a Y yoke and spacer to correct the pinion angles.

 

[jfz80]

I wanna lose some weight next and was gonna ditch the proline tuber body but
1-- I really like it
2-- the NiCds are waaaaay heavier
so i am thinking either micro nimh or lipos..... what do you guys like?
just not a big fan of risk of explosion and need for monitoring on the lipos

I did cleanly disect the tuber to lose some weight and sit lower on the chasis and overall im pleased with the outcome. Seems true though that sometimes you can have too much flex. Ive driven into some tough binds i dont think I would've with less flex.

The longer rear upper links 100% cured my torque steer (also installed transmission parts in case in reverse and swapped the motor to the lifted side)

 

[Gumby]

LiPo is the way to go. No explosion problems. Not too spendy. Way more power. Way less weight. Much smaller footprint. Go LiPo. You'll love it.

If your charger won't do Lipo the charger to get is linked on this forum someplace. It's brand name is Dual Power Multifunction Charger. It's rebranded under a bunch of names, and the price doubles every time someone else puts their name on it.

I busted my stock trans outputs and stripped the idler gear. Get metal gears and the stainless output and you'll be good.

 

[4rnr]

Thunder power AC6 I think

 

[concretejungle]

Gumby,

So when looking at these things as a "possible" purchase, a few things about Lipo have worried me....

First, i keep reading folks asking if they are overheating because of Lipos? Do you have to worry about overheating? I guess you just have to match your motor with the power output of the Lipo?

Also, i have heard several stating that they have run their Lipo down and could not bring it back..... so they said you should have a timer on your battery so after a while you should stop running it and put it on a charger to keep from running it down all the way.

What do you know about the lipo batteries and what do you suggest?

 

[4rnr]

What do you know about the lipo batteries and what do you suggest?

They are great and all the rc nuts blogging out of their parents basement have whipped up a bunch of fear about them burning your entire family while they sleep.

My ESC cuts out when the cells get to 3.0v per. But I did leave the car on in the bag for a few days and emptied it. I just put it on NIMH for 5 min and that jumped it up enough to switch my charger over to lipo.

The new Lipo chargers out there should make you feel better about all the "danger" around these batts. They monitor the cells, and can even monitor the temperature, any irregularity and they stop charging.

 

[Gumby]

My old ESC was having issues letting it run down too far and I had to jump start a bunch of them like John says above. A good ESC should shut off. If you don't have a good ESC you can get a little chip that sits in-line and does the same thing.

LiPo is the only way to go. 2Cell actually has a lot of advantages over 3Cell.