Well, so I finally got mine together and did a first test run. I am a little concerned about putting it into a real bind right now since to get the pinion to mesh with the knock-off Chilux OD-3 transmission I am running, I literally had to put the pinion set screw at the very end of the motor shaft. The 2.3mm motor shaft isn't particularly confidence inspiring and I am worried about the pinion spreading away from the spur inside the trans and skipping/stripping teeth.
The parts I used to make it work were a Traxxas Latrax 14 T pinion I had to drill out with a #43 drill (I was dumb, there are plenty of 2.3mm pinions available), a Chinese motor adapter off AliExpress ($2.50 vs $10 HW wants), and I swapped to an XT60 connector and added a JST connector to work with my direct power servo. If I were starting from scratch, I would go with an XT30, but my batteries are all XT60s and I already had a bunch of female XT60 connectors.
XT60 connectors are suprisingly heavy compared to XT30 connectors in addition to the added bulk:
The weight of the Team Brood Ravage 5 slot 11T motor, HW1080 G1, and BS6 receiver the new combo is replacing:
The weight of the new Fusion Mini16 and FS2A receiver (pre-assembly):
A 171g weight savings!
After a quick run in the living room, the pinion worked itself off the motor, so I re-cleaned everything and filled the pinion with threadlocker in an attempt to keep it from rocking on the motor shaft and working itself loose again. I can easily mill .150" off the motor mounting face of the OD-3 trans which i will probably end up doing to get the pinion slid down for full engagement with the motor shaft.
Based on
Holmes motor speed chart I figured my Team Brood Ravage (machine wound) 5 slot 11T motor was equivalent to ~2500kV and since I was running a 17T pinion, I needed to go with a 14T pinion with the Fusion Mini16 (3000kV) to end up with the same wheels speed. My crawl ratio with the 14T pinion is at 82.8:1 in the front and 108.1:1 in the rear. This video is on 3S and I lost a bit of wheel speed. I think I will try out a 15T or 16T pinion. The low speed creep is definitely better than the old setup, I am just not sure how well it will do when I get it really bound up.