Leftovers

Oh man, real life really caught up with me.

Here it is : Project Leftovers

Even though i haven’t been posting anything , I have been fidling with RCs , SCX10 got front axle rebuild, the Wratih is in a state of disassembly, waiting for the body, the Ascender got a new body and is waiting for cage work. The small orlando F150 needs painting . Enough apologising .

Project Leftovers is a MST CMX kit with various bits and bobs that got leftover from other projects. It will finally put a home under the FJ40 .

leftovers parts :

• Hitec 5646 WP
• Axial AE2 ESC
• Castle 10 AMP BEC
• Snow Leopard 35t motor
• RC4wd 1.55 Dirtgrafbers with stamped steel wheels
• Driveshafts from SCx10
• Radio link receiver.

New parts:

• CMX 532143 Kit chassis without the body
• Bearings from Rcbearings.co.uk
• Steath mount from eBay

Build commences tomorrow!

Season Recap 2015 aka the post G6 carnage report !

Here it is the end of the season recap.

I managed to finish more events that i started in but i still DNFed in both G6 this year, in Austria after gate 1 because of a stupid stupid error with the soldering on the transmitter (note to self , bring spare car next year and change transmitter) and in Italy , about 20 gates before the end because of a broken panhard mount, but i had lots of fun that day and i did loose my fear of water.

But on the other hand, Mojca won both the women’s classes and is the Driving Diva of Europe 2015 !!!!!!!

We also competed in our first Sorcca event , and we did fine, i managed a clean second stage but badly explained rules by the italians meant first stage was a write off .

I also attended the ASTS final in Retz and it is still amazing . Lukas set a super difficult course .

So lessons learned :

• always carry a plastic bag with you
• buy proper transmitter
• build even tougher
• build trucks to the rules
• bring a spare car
• and spare everything if possible
• buy better tent pegs for Ersberg !
• those pesky scale nuts
• night runs are awesome !

Cue the pictures, mostly courtesy of Sandra, my dedicated Polish photographer.

 

 

Czech CEST 2015

Yesterday we got back from a 4 day trip to  the Czech event in Central European Scale Trophy in Dekanske Skaly in the Czech Republic. It was a blast !

I got Second place in Class 2 / Ultimate and so did the team we were in . If Mojca didn’t get the penalised for lacking lights and accessories she would have won the class as she had a clean event and i had 3 gate touches .

We started after a group of LandRovers which were nice and all, but they had to winch themselves all over the place, which takes time. So the stage lasted 4 hours instead of 1.

Nothing broke on both our trucks. Mojca’s winch got snagged at one point, but she did manage to fix it .

The Cherokee can keep up with class 2 vehicles even though the tires are lower , the TCS skid plate helps a lot .

I feel i have to practice a bit more on the steeper decent, thats the only area I had issues with because of lack of confidence in me and not the truck.

The Servo Winch works great , only thing I could want is a bit more line speed.

Its time to start preparing for the next one , the Austrian G6 in 4 weeks time .

EDIT:

a video of almost all video material I made before my Xiaomi YI lost power.

 

 

Tiny Screws !

Mojca surprised me with this the other week !

The Orlando OH35PO1 kit 1/35 scaler , i wanted it for my birthday but there was a delay in shipping and I thought she had forgotten it.

the parts themselves are really well labeled in bags with specific steps. the manual is in Chinese, but the technical drawings are almost on Tamiya level , so nothing to complain about there.

the differentials are locked  but really tiny , most parts are smaller than the drawing in the manual.

The axle comes with dogbanes  for steering  and lots of tiny tiny screws . keep a magnet tray handy because if you drop a screw on the floor, its gone forever.

The only issue i had with model was that one of the links came without the threads , i just ordered a whole link set on Banggood for around 2eur shipped.

Tiny links.

Screwing in these ballcups was a pain . Mojca did most of them , as the included hex didn’t fit exactly , so a combination of needle nose pliers and the hex key was used. Also note the drilled hole you have to do with the included pin wise.

The chassis is moulded toggedther with the front fender walls.

the rear assembled axle with links.

and the front with the tiny servo , note the different than normal servo plug, if used with normal esc , you have to buy a step down voltage adapter as 2s will fry the servo. The steering link might not be installed correctly.

The motor is the same dimension as used in the 3 racing servo winch . the chassis itself acts as the transmission case. i like the design.

1:1 Zombie cat is supervising the construction process.

the shocks are also tiny and friction based, they were a pain to put together .

the shock angles on the front are very lay down , the designer has put a lot of thought into it as you can see most 1:10 crawler methods being used in a smaller scale.

and the final hard body put together , its leaning because it out of balance as only the motor is installed at the moment as the esc is still in the postal system somewhere.

Even though i was cursing a bit about the tiny screws it was a fun build . It will also be the first hard body i will try painting . More on this later .

if you want to get your own , just search for Orlandoo on Banggood , also Hobbyking has started carrying them recently.

 

 

Heat wave

The current heat wave of 35 degrees celsius is putting a serious dent into my life , not to mention RC .

But we did manage a nice 2 hour trail and crawl at an amazing location on Vrsic pass.

its a nice very nice location accessible by car an hour and something away from Ljubljana. the mountain pass is at 1611 meters height, so the temperature was a nice 25 degrees celsius.

we made it up a trail for about 150 meters then turned back on a different route . the terrain was nice, quite steep , lots of rocks and lots of fine dust which wrecked havoc with traction at points.

Mojca is running a new set of the 1.9 Falken wild peaks on her G6 jeep and the extra height was quite noticeable compared to the Cherokee. I had to use the throttle on some sections to slide it over. Mojca also runs a new Tower Pro MG968 DIGI 2 servo. with its 24kgs of torque it was so strong it first bent the rod end on the steering link, then eventually it broke it . The whole link will get replaced with the traxxas revo rod ends. Mojca is finally getting used to the sliders which don’t bend.

 

Whilst Mojca was having problems with the rod end popping of , i popped a bead . I guess the nuts got loose, but I reseated the bead on the trail and made it fine to the end. The tires are getting pretty chewed up, Thew will have to last for the Czech event , but for the G6 pair, a new set should be on order .

It was a great little Sunday trip, which served as an indicator on what to fix and tweak before the Czech event .

 

 

The season begins

its a late start, but the first trail of the season is complete .

The bluemonkey CMS on the Cherokee works great , did not notice a lack of performance. It performed just as good it did with a servo on axle at last years G6 . i will go with a stronger servo in the future, the CMS does seem a bit more taxing on it.

the DivaMobil (working name) performs great , the small tweaks it got during the building and the great foams from CI make it a great climber, also its making me want new tires on the Cherokee. The extra height makes a difference . Mojca’s driving is also really good, a couple more tweaks and it will be ready for G6 glory (its a bit top heavy at the moment)

The Winch motor went dead ,so no winching this time . The inner fenders passed the test and need painting . the rear brace needs a bit of fiddling with, also some new tires and shocks will be ordered soon.

On the DivaMobil there is an extensive list of things to be done : , the front lights, fit the winch , make the inner fenders, lower the COG …

 

 

Guards and Controllers

Since my Scx10 runs the mirrored transmission i cannot use the stock gear guard , so i took advantage of the 15% easter discount at CKRC and ordered an Vanquish one, which can be run mirrored. It arrived on the same day as the HEYOK 4amp Winch controller.

please ignore the bad wiring on the HEYOK controller, thats my work , not Al’s. It works lovely , just need to stuff it into the electronics box.

 

The Vanquish gear guard consists of a motor plate with an extra 4th hole for better alignment, spacers and the cover itself . the installation is a simple bolt on job.

I also swapped over the 35t Torque master expert from the Wraith into the Cherokee. I rechecked the brushes and it seems the grinding sound has disappeared at least for now.

 

 

The state of the projects

Its time for a status update on whats what.

the Cherokee is kinda finished but looks in pieces.

i need to install the new servo winch controller when it arrives as the small 10A ESC went up in smoke after I installed the Locked up RC spool and line

 

The servo is sitting on a bracket ,so the spool is raised out of the way of the panhard. I also went with some new winch line

i fiddled around with the panhard some more and i think i have the desired rod length and angle , i might change it to a solid rod instead of the threaded rod one.

There is also Mojca’s SCX10 for the new season , which she built herself. a detailed writeup on it will follow when its completed, it should be very capable.

There is also my new project , the FJ40 Ascender . Not much done to it yet, but I really enjoyed building the kit itself . 

it might have a few shortcomings , but look at that steering angle out of the box !

Fancy Foams & Fancy Wheel Hubs

its been too long , i apologise ! i was really busy with work . The postman has been busy too 😀

Finally pulled the plug on the Crawler Innovations 4.25″ – 4.19″ Deuces Wild Closed cell foams

 

The install is simple, i had to enlarge the inside to fit the wheel weights . it was really easy with a Dremel and sanding drum.

the foams are waterproof, but need the tires to be vented ,  which was a weird psychological hurdle .

i used a cheap hole punch to put in 3x2mm holes into the centre of the tire.

the star cut 2.2 foams i used before have deformed after a year

the DW foams are even firmer than the old foams, but i can still trip the forward ribs to increase forward bite.

Rogue Elements did one last run of their wheel hub covers , they are super nice, really impressed with the details. they will replace the TSS covers on the Cherokee

CMS preview

2015 is the year the Cherokee gets finished.

here is a sneak peek whats in store after i get back from Qatar in February.