Smokin' Joe
Quarry Creeper
I decided to upgrade the steering on my son's Everest 10. This review is specific to the Everest 10, but my guess is it should also largely apply to the Gen 7 as well. I found one of the cheaper ways to accomplish this was to replace the front axle. It should also add some weight and durability (hopefully) as well.
I bought an unbranded CNC machined front axle off of ebay. It was $49. My initial impression is good. It is fully aluminum and came with the entire axle assembly (including an aluminum servo horn). Screws are stainless internal hex screws. The gears came with ample lube and there even appears to be thread lock on some of the screws. It has a huge increase in steering angle over stock due to using high clearance knuckles and CVDs.
Installation was fairly straight forward. It was plug and play apart from the drive shaft connection. It uses a pin through style attachment for the drive shaft. The drive shaft on my E10 was a set screw style. I drilled a hole through my drive shaft and then used a traxxas pin (TRA5145) to attach it (I already had modified one of my drive shafts for a prior project so this part of the project was already done). I also had to grind off the front lip of my driveshaft to get it to fit properly. It is possible you could get around some of these issues by replacing the gears with the ones from your stock axle, but I didn't try this. The only other issue was that the track width seemed to be slightly narrower than the stock width. Because of this and its increased steering angle, I added wheel wideners to increase the front track and keep the wheels from hitting the shocks on full lock.
I haven't had a chance to run it yet as I've been busy with other things and I also need to fix an issue with the esc before the rig is functional. I'll add impressions once we've had a chance to run it. I'll also add pictures in a post below.
I bought an unbranded CNC machined front axle off of ebay. It was $49. My initial impression is good. It is fully aluminum and came with the entire axle assembly (including an aluminum servo horn). Screws are stainless internal hex screws. The gears came with ample lube and there even appears to be thread lock on some of the screws. It has a huge increase in steering angle over stock due to using high clearance knuckles and CVDs.
Installation was fairly straight forward. It was plug and play apart from the drive shaft connection. It uses a pin through style attachment for the drive shaft. The drive shaft on my E10 was a set screw style. I drilled a hole through my drive shaft and then used a traxxas pin (TRA5145) to attach it (I already had modified one of my drive shafts for a prior project so this part of the project was already done). I also had to grind off the front lip of my driveshaft to get it to fit properly. It is possible you could get around some of these issues by replacing the gears with the ones from your stock axle, but I didn't try this. The only other issue was that the track width seemed to be slightly narrower than the stock width. Because of this and its increased steering angle, I added wheel wideners to increase the front track and keep the wheels from hitting the shocks on full lock.
I haven't had a chance to run it yet as I've been busy with other things and I also need to fix an issue with the esc before the rig is functional. I'll add impressions once we've had a chance to run it. I'll also add pictures in a post below.
