Baby Blue - The Ascent-18

[Gramps]

Blue didn't want to to share a thread with his brother. He felt he needed his own thread. Do here we go.


My original thought when I bought it was to leave it stock, but that didn't last long. I think it all started when I broke the lower rear link on the 1st crawl. Drew up some new links in CAD and 3D printed them in PETG.



From there I started moving the esc & battery to the sliders. I de-cased the esc to save a little weight, also covered it in Conformal Coating to protect it from mositure. It had some on it but I put another good coat on it. After it dried for several hours I double sided taped it to the slider.


For the battery I ordered some Orvonic 300mah 2s batteries that fit very nice on the slider. Used some rubber bands to secure it in place. While I was at it I replaced the JST's with XT30's. The Orvonic's came with PH2.0 connectors so they needed to be replaced anyway.


With the battery & esc to the sliders I then removed the front & rear trays. Didn't care for the flex in the frame so I 3D printed some braces to replace the trays. This saved several grams of up high weight.


With all this I shaved about 27 grams of weight and now have a 54/46 from bias. The next planned upgrade is tires and wheels. Also ordered a DinkyRC ESCape32 esc for it, not that it really need it I just wanted to try one and decided to put it in the Ascent-18 along with a Flysky rx bound to the MT12

 

[hnoroian]

I’ve been looking and wanted to ask, how are the shocks looking?

 

[B-MOW71]

Baby Blue is looking good. I like what you've done to it so far. Nice way to shave weight. I'm taking notes!;-)

 

[Gramps]

I’ve been looking and wanted to ask, how are the shocks looking?

The shocks work well and mine have not leaked on either of my Ascent18's. My only complaint is the bottom ball cups which pop onto a ball that also holds the lower link on. I thought I could drill a hole in it so I could just removed the ball screw with a hex driver. The theory was good but the shock end would not go behind the portal box. I ended up just popping them on with some needle nose pliers. This might have never bother me if I hadn't needed to replace the rear link.

The shocks seem to work well might have been nice if they used the threaded body with the adjustments for preload but it's so well balanced that maybe not needed. Out of the box it's 50/50 front to rear and 50/50 right to left.

 

[Gramps]

Putting Baby Blue on a diet turned out to be a bad idea. After de-casing the esc and moving it to the slider and dumping the 750mah battery and going with a 300 mah also mounted no the slider, then removing the front and rear trays I had her down to 403 grams. Took her for a little spin on the rocks and to my surprise she crawled worse than stock. Wasn't like terrible but just looked unstable and without footing. Stock it's a bit unstable at times but not like this.

To add some weight back I went with some OGRC steel wheels with brass rings, used the brass rings in the front and 3D printed some rings for the back to try. Mounted some DJCrawler tires 62x25 on them. This brought the weight up to 458 grams with 56/44 bias. The DJCrawler tires came with 2 sets of foams, soft and firm to start I went soft in all 4 tires





Took her out yesterday for another run and she was much more planted and was crawling over almost everything as long as the driver was paying attention and choosing the right line. Did notice some fender rub coming from the flairs so last night I trimmed a little off them and reshaped them some. I started by putting pieces of 1/4" masking tape along the contour. Then cut off what ever was showing, this moved them closer to the body and reshaped them a bit. A little sanding to finish them up and them were ready to go. At full compression they will still rub some but not catch on the tread.





After sanding and doing a little more reshaping, took a black magic marker and made them black.



All the YT video review mentioned the turning radius, in real life it didn't seem that great to me, not bad but not great either. Yesterday it crossed my mind that maybe the D/R was off so I stopped and hit the right D/R button it make a couple of beeps and stopped. Afterwards it had much better turning. I'm thinking it came that way.

The next step is new electronics, hoping for even better slow crawl.

 

[Gramps]

Don't really have any complaints about the stock tx/rx other than it's another TX to keep track of so I swapped out the tx/rx for a DinkyRC ESCape32 esc and a small Flysky rx to go with the MT12. Decided to try them on the front tray to add a little wieght to the front. With them install there the weight bias is 57/43. My concern is that I think the Ascent18 likes its weight low so we'll see how true that is. Drove it a little around the house but need to take it to the rocks. The low end resolution is as good as stock if not a little better, the ESCape32 would probably make a bigger difference in a different vehicle like a SCX24 v1 or v3 or even the TRX4m and it might end up in one of those down the road.

 

[JatoTheRipper]

I love the ol' intention to leave it stock. That always turns into modifying the first and then buying a second to keep it stock...then that one usually doesn't remain stock either.

 

[Gramps]

I love the ol' intention to leave it stock. That always turns into modifying the first and then buying a second to keep it stock...then that one usually doesn't remain stock either.

LOL I bought the Graphite one to leave stock. We'll see how that goes :ror:

 

[B-MOW71]

Oh the addiction! I know exactly how “leaving it stock” goes![emoji1787]

Nice mods gramps. Lil’ rigs are looking great!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Gramps]

Oh the addiction! I know exactly how “leaving it stock” goes![emoji1787]

Nice mods gramps. Lil’ rigs are looking great!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Thanks, I'm really enjoying working on them.

 

[Gramps]

Thought the boat sliders on the Ascent-18 were a little low and would be better if they were level with the center skid plate. So after several prototype I finally came up with one that I thought would work. I both Blue & Red out and tried out the sliders. Bule had the new 3D printed sliders and Red was stock. I couldn't really tell that much difference but I do think the Blue slide over some stuff better than Red. One run probably isn't enough to really tell if they will be better so time will tell.

 

[Gramps]

Have never has a brushless motor in a crawler no matter what size. Had to see for myself if all the hype was true. This may not have been the best vehicle to try it on because the Ascent18 already has pretty good slow control out of the box.

Picked up a Furitek Micro Komoto TRX4m edition powered by the ESCape32. It was a direct bolt in and every thing was fine except the included Allen key was the wrong size way to small. Transmission is easy to get in and out. You do have to remove the cover plate and all the gears to get to the motor screws.



I should have weighed the 2 motors but I didn't, I'd say the Komoto is lighter




As far as slow crawl see for yourself.
https://youtu.be/a-C9FJzFneg

Didn't crawl like this when I 1st installed it but after some tuning of the ESCape32 with some help from their Discord server got it. Still haven't taken it out on the rocks yet but guessing it will do fine.

 

[Ynad]

Yep, it is slow. Love that esc in my ripper, and I got 4500kv.

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[NWCT24CRAWL]

Well guys I think the wife would kill me . So I just get to look at your rigs .

 

[hnoroian]

Well guys I think the wife would kill me . So I just get to look at your rigs .

This is the reason I usually have my stuff delivered to my school.