For the longest time i’ve been a bit of a control freak. No, not the kind that ruins relationships, although i could argue that spending too much on this particular hobby could very well result in a divorce or two… Anyways, In the midst of all the crazy stuff that’s happening in the world, I’ve decided to actually get off my butt and start working on some RC Projects again. Not because I want to go racing again… Gosh, i’m not really into that sort of financial masochism just yet, rather I want to get back into designing parts for my buggies and such, as well as just rebuilding some of my cars to make them usable again. Mostly because I want an excuse to not doomscroll myself to death here.
So, i’ll be posting some regular updates on a few of the RC Projects i’m working on. Mostly as an itemised list to show you where things are at. These won’t be frequent, as they will mostly be updated whenever I feel like ’em, but it just shows that i’m at least making a little progress on this front.
So, what’s in the garage?
The current fleet of RCs I have so far include:
- Traxxas 1/16 Revo VXL Mini Monster Truck
- Yokomo YZ4SF 1/10 4WD Buggy
- Tamiya DN01 Zahhak / TRF201
- TeslaRCs 1/10 Cybertruck AWD
Traxxas 1/16 Revo VXL
This particular truck is working. It has a Hacker Skalar 17.5T motor under the hood, hooked up to a Hobbywing Quicrun 120A ESC. It is currently controlled by a Futaba 3PV Radio which I just recently purchased. Whilst it is drivable in its current state, It requires the following work to be done:
- Purchase and install replacement radio box, battery doors and door retainer clips
- Purchase and install second Savox waterproof servo
- Purchase and Install Hot Racing front and rear differentials
- Purchase and Install GPM Racing front, centre and rear driveshafts
- Purchase and Install Hot Racing Steel gearbox gears
- Purchase and Install Robinson Racing Gen3 Slipper
- Purchase, paint and install JConcepts Illuzion Hi-Flow truck body.
- Purchase and install race-grade tires (Pro-Line Blockades ideally) and mount them to dish wheels.
Yokomo YZ4SF Buggy
This particular buggy is working, however I am not going to be performing any work to this vehicle as it is presently retired as a racing vehicle. I would eventually like to find another couple of bodies for it and have them in storage ready to go. I need to find replacement spur gears for the centre differential, but these are not essential right now. For now at least? It’s a shelf queen. The 4PK SR radio I have will also likely be retired alongside this buggy as recievers for this radio are getting hard to find.
Tamiya DN01 Zahhak/TRF201
This particular buggy is a rolling chassis. There is a servo in it, and the drivetrain is mostly intact. I need to do the following to this buggy to make it work, with the goal of it being a basher and novice-class race buggy. It will use a lot of 3D printed CF Nylon parts.
- Purchase compatible slipper clutch kit and rear hexes
- 3D Print TA06 rear diff housing again with the correct Z-Offset to not have it look all weird and line-ey.
- Design and print front solid A-Arms to take DT04 front hub carriers and hexes whilst retaining the stock track width
- Design and print front bumper and reinforcement plate
- Purchase Pro-Line front rear dish wheels and fit Three-rib, Trencher (rear) and Blockade (also rear) tires.
- Design and print solid A-Arms for the rear,
- Find a more modern rear upright that’ll fit the stock driveshafts
- Make a cast of the existing DT03 Sand Viper body for the purposes of cloning said body if need be
- Fully re-model all the parts to store in an archive for future printing
- Install compatible aluminium shocks
- Install Hobbywing 17.5T motor and ESC kit, Futaba receiver to suit the 3PV
TeslaRCs 1/10 Cybertruck
This particular car is under construction as i’ve had to make some pretty significant modifications to the original design to make it reach my goals. In lieu of the brushed electronics, i’ve decided to opt for Brushless electronics, in the form of two Hobbywing Quicrun 120A Speed controllers and two Tamiya TBLM-02S 17.5t motors. It has some pretty significant problems at the moment, but I’ll list what I need to fix below:
- Print rear-top cover from CF Nylon
- Re-print drivetrain gears due to extrusion issues
- a leaky nozzle caused filament to stick onto the nozzle and glass it up, resulting in some chunks of filament breaking off and ending up in the print, thus causing binding issues with the gears. The mesh is extremely tight, which causes the drivetrain to run excessively loud, we’re talking to the tune of about 90-100dBA.
- Install driveshafts, ballends, servo, tires and springs
- These have all been ordered from Aliexpress and are currently on the way in.
- Design and install Lift Kit
- the stock 96mm tires are… well, underwhelming to say the least. I want to at least be able to install 110mm scale crawler tires underneath the wheel arches, to be able to get some true-to-scale Goodyear Wranglers or BF Goodrich tires (The tires used on the OEM Cybertruck) on the wheels. I’d say about a 5mm lift should do the trick, and this could easily be doable with a 3D printed part set.
The biggest point of Progress that I have made with this kit, is a completely redesigned centre chassis, that allows my brushless Hobbywing electronics to drop in with no issues. Because I opted for CF Nylon as the chassis material, I can effectively cut back on the needed material amount vs. the stock chassis. I do need to design a variant with a little more side-shell reinforcement, due to flex in the shell itself, but ironically enough I think the body of the truck will practically eliminate the need for me to worry about this. TeslaRCs did a pretty decent job in designing the skateboard chassis around the stock body.
So yeah, that’s the state of the fleet, I Guess. I’ll post more as I do more work to these cars, and hopefully will actually get around to taking some photos of them. I did write this as kinda-sort-of-a spur of the moment thing, so i’ll do my best to plan things a bit better this time.
Beano out.