Another King Kong RC CA-10 build!

[JennyC6]

Dropped the hammer yesterday morning. Tons of stuff en-route, and I reckon I'll do a build log of it here. Hopefully, between everything I ordered and everything I already have on hand, I can get this thing running. Aside from the truck, I have procured:

1x Hitex HS-77 low profile servo(I wanted a low profile steering servo to make room for scale underhood details, I also wanted a slow servo because these trucks lack power steering in real life and I lack the software adjustments to replicate that in my radio's software. This thing's only 22 bucks, too, which is nice.)

1x aluminum servo saver(HS77 is a bit of a fragile one, what with plastic gears and all, so I'm employing this to protect it from impacts)

1x CC SV3 brushless ESC

1x CC 1406 sensored Brushless motor, 5700kv, combo deal with the ESC

1x 9t 32p pinion

1x 10t 32p pinion

1x 11t 32p pinion

1x 12t 32p pinion

2x Gens Ace 2s 50c 5,000mAh lipo packs, hardcase of course. Got them for 60 as a pair deal.

1x Deans parallell Y harness

1x Tamiya to Deans adapter, which I'll be snipping and using to put a Deans connector on my ESC

1x 6" Gordon Freeman figure(Driver)

1x 6" Duke Nukem figure(Passenger)

1x Metric allen driver set

1x precision nutdriver set

1x Spektrum AR-600 receiver(Already have it, pulled from the 40 size trainer I've had hanging on my wall for 6 or 7 years)

1x tube of threadlocker

1x big-arse tub of wheel bearing grease(From my garage, figure this stuff will come in handy for lubricating those steel gears and for letting me get some limited slip action in the diff if I decide to, can also use this to help water-resist the radio box, front wheel bearings, and steering servo)


Future plans:

* From Shapeways, the bits and bobbins to put a scale Flathead V8 in the nose. Gonna go all out on the scale details under the hood, if nowhere else.

* Probably some better tires. I had them in my eBay cart but opted to hold on them until I've had a chance to drive it on the stock tires.

* Something for the bed. Cargo, maybe a lovely 1/12th ZU-23-2 AA gun from Shapeways, who knows.

* Rig a pintle hook hitch to the back, or at least something similar. Decided to keep the cargo box it comes with, but I'm still gonna want to pull trailers with it. ATees included, for free, a set of four rod ends that would work well for this. All I'd have to do is mount a suitably sized L-shaped stud on the rear of the chassis and thread a nut on.

* Light, sound kit

* Maybe FPV? If I can find a suitably small camera that isn't fisheyed and doesn't look like it was used to record someone's home movies in 1984, anyway.

* Might also get a 13t 32p pinion? The kit comes with a 14t pinion...and I'll run it with this pinion to see how the motor and ESC get on...having a 13t pinion means I have tons of options to fine tune the gearing in it.

* Build a scale garage to park it in when I'm not running it, prolly atop my dresser in my bedroom since that's where I store and service my RCs anyway.

* Build an assortment of trailers for it to pull. Some of them will be semi trailers, some full trailers. I'm thinking the full trailers will be pulled on a detachable dolly like one might find between two 20' pup trailers on a bigrig, rather than a more permanent fixture, but I haven't really sat down to design those yet.

* Winches. One on the front bumper, one in the cargo box. Being a 2WD truck with an open diff, one would expect it to be prone to getting stuck, so self-recovery is a wonderful thing to have.

* Some sort of magnetic attachment on the front that I can use when my nitro models nose up onto something, since none of them can reverse. Idea would be I could nose up to the rear bumper of the nitro model, the magnets cling together, I can reverse the car away from the obstacle, then blip the throttle of the nitro car while the drag brake on the CA-10 holds it firm to tug the magnets apart. Or maybe a servo-operated hook-and-loop coupler? I could use the winch in a pinch if I wanted to, but that'd be a bit of a faff to hook up to a 1/10 touring car, 1/10 short course truck(Same batch of orders that got the CA-10 also got me a mint SC10GT), a 1/8 live axle monster truck compared to a magnet or a servo-operated hook and loop coupling.

* Perhaps a different transmission. Tamiya 3-speed? RC4WD CVT? 4WD conversion? Cable-locking rear axle? There's plenty of driveline upgrade paths available to me in the future.


Overall, I'm quite excited. Lot of firsts for me. First hobby grade electric model(I've run nothing but nitro since I got into hobby grade RC in 2003!), first kit build, first scale rig, first time focusing on detail and appearance. And, like my other models, itt'l be a handful if I dip into the meaty end of the throttle, but I love that and I can always just throttle back.

 

[thead]

where did you find a good price on one and in stock?

 

[JennyC6]

Got mine at ATees for about 300.

 

[thead]

ok,thanks.everytime i looked they were out of stock.

 

[Nissan231]

I sooo want to see someone do a 4wd conversion on one of these.

 

[JennyC6]

ok,thanks.everytime i looked they were out of stock.

Yeah they went in and out of stock four or five times in the two weeks I was waiting on my tax return. These things seem to be selling like hotcakes.'

Edit: As of 7AM CST These kits are #1 on ATees' 'Best Selling' thing on the homepage. These guys hit the ground running and I hope this company comes out with even more awesome kits in the future. Also nice to see a steady stream of parts getting released. Wheels/hubs first, then the entire transmission, now the ring-and-pinion set available.

I sooo want to see someone do a 4wd conversion on one of these.

It'd be pretty easy, if pricey, to do. You'd just need an X-fer case and a pair of cable-locking 1/14 truck axles. And a second set of rear drive hubs with hexes, since these have bearing hubs for the steer tires as-is. What's really neat is that the wheels and the hubs are seperate parts, that the wheels bolt on with eight lug bolts just like on the 1:1.

 

[JennyC6]

Right! It came in yesterday. Took a few pics, only now getting around to posting them!

First thing I did was put the hubs on the axles, and assemble the tires.

Wiring beneath the truck. Yes, everything clears fine. Yes, it's close quarters.

Electronics went under the seat.

Not the sort of thing one normally expects to see in the front of a truck like this, but there it is, nestled in nice and cozy.


Got it to a driveable state, proceeded to do exactly that. The tires aren't that bad, actually. I was expecting them to be trash but they bite in pretty good. May not replace them after all. And I'm lovin' the build so far! So hard to resist the urge to drive the thing in order to work on it some more :lmao:

Got more building and more driving in today, too, but I haven't gotten pics yet.

 

[JennyC6]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOwtz393Td4


Got it out in the yard again! And this time I remembered to record some of the fun! These things are an absolute blast! Also, how do I embed the video properly? I've tried all the usual vB tags and nothing seems to work. Disabled in this subforum?

 

[JennyC6]

And here's how one gets 10,000mAh worth of lipos snugged into one of these trucks. They're friction fit, tight enough to not slide out/bounce around but loose enough that I can slide them out if need be. Bullet connectors on the end of their cables, too. Harness is a parallel one, so ESC still only sees 2s.

Runtime estimate of....what, 4 hours? 5? Something crazy like that? Exactly what I wanted!


And, yes, they are hardcase packs. I'm not buying softcase lipos for anything surface.

 

[JennyC6]

Progress update:

* One layer of paint is down, still deciding where to go from here.

* Bed is put on

* Head/tail lights sort of fitted and working(They're on when the truck's on and off when it's off, no controller yet)

* Built a trailer out of lego

* Fuel tank, spare tire are now fitted in alternate locations.

 

[JennyC6]

Loads of progress has been made...but not documented...since I last posted here. Been lazy on that front. Things I've done since last post:

* ESC swapped out for a Mamba Micro X Crawler Edition, so now it's running sensored. New mounting point as well, this ESC's small enough to glue to the firewall. I do have a bit of a cable management issue, though, currently the motor leads are bundled up and just kinda crammed in on the driver's side of the motor. NEed to find a better place for them. Maybe they'll fit under the dash? Don't wanna shorten them if I don't have to as I may end up using this motor and/or ESC in a different build that might need the longer wires after all.

* Found two weak links in the driveline. If you run brushless, replace the plastic driveshaft with a hardened steel one of your choice, and go for a LESU 1/14 truck axle. The yokes on the plastic shaft got too springy to stay onto the u-joint on mine, and I lunched two ring gears in the stock axle with my brushless power. I will admit both times I chipped teeth off where when I was trying to do donuts, but be aware that the axle's not quite bulletproof if you're brushless and any sudden shocks to the system...in my case it was when the truck slid out of gravel and onto hard pavement during the donuts...risk popping something in the back end. Brushed, however? You'll probably torque out before you break the gears.

* Redone the battery cabling. Gone is that horrible looking twist-and-tape splice and the Deans connectors throughout, now it's got soldered in Y-harnesses...well actually T-harnesses as the two become one right at the batteries...that go straight from the ESC into the 4mm bullet connectors the batteries themselves have.

* I've put a physical switch in the main 'in' line from the batteries so I can leave them plugged in all the time without the ESC's quiescent current discharging them. It only has to make or break a couple hundred milliamps as the system's under minimal load when I'm switching it, and it's rated 120v 6a(Scavenged it from an old computer power supply) so it should be able to carry the 12-15 amps at 8 volts or so this thing'll be pulling on occasion. I don't anticipate sustaining even that much, probably in the 6-7 amp range continuous. And so far so good on that front, it gets kinda warm but it's not getting hot enough to melt the electrical tape insulating it.

* There's now a Castle 40mm fan in the grille pulling air back. This thing moves some air, I can feel it pouring out underneath over the axle, and with the ESC on the firewall directly behind it, the air has no choice but to keep that, the motor, and the master power switch cool! Which is good, because technically speaking, I'm overloading this ESC by a couple orders of magnitude...

* Did some weathering. Over the months, that pristine metal coloring got a LOT of wear and tear on it, rubbing off where the vehicle frequently contacted things, and yesterday I broke out the Testors Enamels, a paintbrush, and touched it up with rust color. Then kinda went on, rusting up the undercarriage, bed hardware, etc. It may not be perfect but I'm chuffed to bits about how it came out!