Update...
Okay, I spent several hours last night re-doing all of my electronics. I didn't see the little diagram in the manual about leaving enough room for the battery box in front of the esc if you mounted it on the receiver box. Duh. And of course the MambaX is WAY bigger than the RTR speed controller so that creates a whole 'nother set of challenges.
I spent quite some time trying to figure out where to put it elsewhere, but nothing seemed satisfactory, plus I would run into motor lead and battery lead problems if it got too far away from the front of the rig. I was concerned about not having enough mounting surface to hold it if I crossed it on the receiver box all the way to the rear. Plus, it covers the screws for the cover, so once it's mounted on there with tape, it would have to be peeled off to open the radio box. Kind of a hassle. Mounting it beside the motor/trans unit is a potential spot, but you would have to either mount it in there AFTER the cage is on, or build some kind of platform so you COULD get the cage on. I didn't like the options, and then my power leads would be too short anyway.
It's all very fiddly. And since I was going to have to more or less button everything up permanently with the esc mounted on the radio box I went ahead and broke out the Castle-Link, downloaded the program, and connected it to my Surface Tablet with Win10 - works great!. Oh my, what a very cool little setup that is. I went thru all the settings best as I could, set the bec, speeds, cutoff, and configured the rock-racer/crawler mode with 50% drag brake and a linear step on my aux1 radio channel. Very very cool the way that works. So now at 50% drag braking it switches to crawl mode for instant reverse, and I can run the drag brake all the way to 100% or all the way off. I had assumed it was just a switch from one to the other, but no, with a linear channel mode it is completely variable from zero to 100% with the instant reverse kicking in at 50%. As a network admin and working with so many programs and computers, it always amazes me how people figure this stuff out. Figuring it out how they explain is another challenge all together. But I now have a very good understanding of how it works, even the basic setup with the transmitter and Castle in programming mode. Gave me a headache, but I got it. LOL
I don't think I'll need the quick linking harness, but if I have to make any programming changes it would be a real hassle, so I may end up ordering one in anyway. I'll only have to take it apart one more time. :roll:
I went ahead and made up a power lead for the fourth channel so I could connect lights or whatever later without having to undo the receiver box setup. And then tidied up all the wiring, mounted the on/off switch pointing down beside the radio box so it's easy to switch on and off under the rig, but tucked up enough it won't drag on the rocks.
The HH servo is WAY stupid fast, amazing. I did have to re-set the steering link to the last mounting hole on the servo arm, but in setting up travel it goes from stop to stop - REALLY FAST!! LOL And the TrailmasterProBLX is silent and starts very slow - I set the throttle curve down a bit on it for a slow start, and it sings at full throttle. It's easy to see what the aux channel does with the drag brake and reverse with the pinion backed off the spur. Very impressive.
This thing is ready to rock and roll. The missing cross member and radio box support will be here today, I've decided to go ahead and use it. Once everything is buttoned up it's ready for a maiden run. Building this one was WAY WAY more difficult than the standard crawlers, Axial for Vaterra. I'm a little more excited about the the prospects of running it, now that it's all sorted. "thumbsup"
