Drift Truck From Old RTR Bits + 3d Printing

[HumboldtEF]

I've had most of the guts from a Wraith RTR that I've wanted to slap together for a few years now. I have a skid, stock plastic links front and rear AR60 axles, a tranny with metal gears, Stock drive shaft and rear axle shaft, stock Wraith coil overs, SCX10.2 coil overs, front tires from the TRX4 and rear from the Gmade Gom.

I had some leftover electronics too, a HH 550 21T sealed can motor, HH HV500 servo and a 2 channel spektrum receiver that never has enough channels for my crawlers, and a TRX4 ESC setup for bashing (delayed reverse and no drag brake)

I started off printing a 2 piece chassis, I designed it quick and dirty with little concern for layout just something to hang the suspension from.
this was designed with the wraith suspension in mind, but this ended up weighing like 4 1/2 lbs and the springs were way too stiff and it handled like it had no shocks or springs at all.

I revised this one more time adding in a spot to run a dowel (I used a M3 threaded rod) from piece to piece, Its effectiveness was pretty poor.

I printed some 5x11mm bearing caps for the front axle (which has nothing powering it) to keep dirt and debris out of the pinion and axle ends.

I made an electronics tray and a battery tray that doubles as a crossmember

I learned that battery trays need to be stronger to withstand my drop test from 4' up, the weight of the battery was too much for the tray
The electronics tray was also too thin in areas and I broke it removing the support material, I redesigned this one as well to beef it up.

These were the first cross members

I redesigned it to have a bit more strength, and went from 20% infill to 50% and made the supports wider

I came up with a handy battery strap clamp with interlocking ridges so it doesnt need to loop around itself.

I lost a Wraith spring perch on a test drive so I designed new ones to print

Then switched over to SCX10.2 coil overs which suited the weight much better and it its a lot lower.
I also made a new shorter chassis that I could do in 1 peice

I have an old Cox 049 van body that looks kind of cool on this thing, Though I probably wont run it because it will get smashed up.

I have a metal 60T spur at the moment but I'd like to speed it up a bit, I've maxed out the pinion at a 16T so I've order up a 52T spur gear to get some more wheel speed. the metal spur is also chewing up my Pinion as its not hardened steel so this new plastic spur will also fix that issue.

So far this thing has been fairly fun to bash around, its so light that it does some really odd stuff where it will all of a sudden get traction and will bound forward. Might be from the long grass i'm driving on.

Its really just an experiment thats all for fun, I have no real goals just to mess around a bit.

 

[HumboldtEF]

I woke up this morning to find a ton of hail outside so I had to go for a little rip. We dont often get this much snow-ish materail were I'm at (sea level) so I had to go play in it!

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/lAwls11eWfQ" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lAwls11eWfQ&feature=youtu.be

 

[Gula]

Tower hobbies st15 truck tires are great for 2.2 drifting !

 

[HumboldtEF]

Seems like thats a discontinued truck, but what I can find looks look a stadium truck with a spiked tread tire. I'll probably stick to the numerous RTR tires I have, its kind of the theme here (cheap or leftover parts). Drifting is fairly easy even with offroad tires the only downfall is the side bite which makes it easy to roll when it grips.

I'm also not sure if I want this to be made for pavement only, dirt or both.

 

[soze]

Man, looks like you're having so much fun with that Prusa. I'll have to get into 3d printing sooner than later!

 

[HumboldtEF]

Man, looks like you're having so much fun with that Prusa. I'll have to get into 3d printing sooner than later!

I've had these parts ready to go for a few years now but the printer made it actually happen "thumbsup"

 

[Shinchu]

haha this thing is like a solid front axle version of my yeti... for $300 cheaper lol
i need to get vid shredding my backyard next time it rains haha


nice work! was steering angle pretty easy once you removed the axle shafts?
and try some PVC/ABS pipe over the tires

 

[HumboldtEF]

haha this thing is like a solid front axle version of my yeti... for $300 cheaper lol
i need to get vid shredding my backyard next time it rains haha


nice work! was steering angle pretty easy once you removed the axle shafts?
and try some PVC/ABS pipe over the tires

Thanks, I kind of chose that title to get your attention lol, I should have mentioned solid axle.

Steering is still limited by the cheesy stock steering link. It gets 45 degrees or close to it.

I'm not sure if I could make use of the crazy angle even if I had it, well not at the moment at least.

I did print up some solid PLA drift tires, only printed 2 though. they take like 6-7 hour to do solid.
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2705508

I tried the printed drift tires along with normal front tires and there was way too much grip up front, it just spun out no matter what I did. I need the grip to be equal for the front to co-operate I think.
I'd also like the tires to be big for the extra wheelspeed and at the time this was the only 2.2 sized one I could find, though I could probably design my own now.

 

[Shinchu]

spokes look awfully thin towards the hub. seriously just find PVC with an ID slightly smaller than those GOM tires.

btw supposed to rain next 2 days here in SD. time to charge up a 5500 3S lipo…
and yes you had me at "Drift Truck" lol

 

[HumboldtEF]

Yeah the design of those wheels is pretty terrible both in looks and strength, a few wall taps and they'll bust the spokes off.

Maybe I will take your advice but I may try to print up some sleeves to slide over the tires instead of searching for some in the right size.

 

[Shinchu]

any progress on this?

*cough*
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/4XC8cSWhMbU" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>

 

[HumboldtEF]

I watched that video when you posted it up, well I thought I did... is that a new video? EDIT, ah I just watched the FPV video

No progress since the last post, I have way too many irons in the fire right now.

 

[Gula]

Seems like thats a discontinued truck, but what I can find looks look a stadium truck with a spiked tread tire. I'll probably stick to the numerous RTR tires I have, its kind of the theme here (cheap or leftover parts). Drifting is fairly easy even with offroad tires the only downfall is the side bite which makes it easy to roll when it grips.

I'm also not sure if I want this to be made for pavement only, dirt or both.

Those spikes wear out in about 50rpm of axle spin. The tires themselves are hard as rock, like the cheap plastic sandbox toys. No chance of traction rolling. They provide a bit more grip than abs drift tires for the 1/10 sedans.

 

[HumboldtEF]

So I dusted this project off and decided to design up a new frame.

The vertical plates angle inwards so I could then mount the shocks where they are meant to go (I had them outboarded).

I also had to work up new battery and electronics trays. I also know I'm never going to put a body on it so I made up a sort of cab that mounts on top, its not an amazing look but being so skinny it never was going to be a that much of a looker.

It looks a ton better than it used to.

I took it out in my very overgrown yard getting bound up in the grass. I ended up smoking the motor I just swapped in Ironically it was a 20T Axial motor which is what comes stock in the Wraith. Its not good for a stock wraith or a stripped down one either lol too funny
I found the motor that came with the Gen 8 which is an unknown turn 550 (seriously why is it not listed somewhere?) and it held up to the abuse much better and hardly got warm though after letting the magic smoke out of the other motor I did go a bit easier on it. This motor was also a fair bit faster than the 20T axial motor which I did not expect.

I also swapped out the Axial Ripsaws which fun fact were designed by Harley as he mentioned on a recent live stream. I had some KR2's from a RTR Bomber and they look good and also narrowed up the track width quite a bit which looks cool but may not be the best for the application.

I weighed it and was kind of blown away. It weighs in at 5lb 3oz with a 3600 mah battery, a full lb lighter than my lightest scale rigs. Not having any axles up front must help. I'm also surprised how quiet it is as its running around, it reminded me of a friend's Wraith that was also way quieter than my heavily modded Wraith.

In the dirt its pretty fun to drift around but if you hit grass the tires tend to have a lot of side bite and roll the thing with ease. On pavement and polished concrete it drifts decent though without tons of steering angle up front it cant really hold a drift/angle well if at all.
One thing I did find pretty fun was just setting up some ramps and drifting over them at various similar to what it looks like when Hoonigan has guys on with Pre runners and ultra 4's.

I forgot to mention I swapped out the SCX10.2 shocks for some Gmade shocks which are too stiff for crawlers but fit this build pretty well. These shocks felt really good messing around with the ramps, almost trophy truck like in some situations.

With the new look I'm tempted to convert this to a crawler but that goes against the spirit of the Recycled build.


Now I just need to mow my lawn so I can stretch its legs

 

[soze]

Either way, it looks kinda cool! Hopefully I get to where you're at someday in regards to designing parts.

 

[HumboldtEF]

Either way, it looks kinda cool! Hopefully I get to where you're at someday in regards to designing parts.

Thanks Soze!



I'm sure you can do it too and I still have a lot to learn. Just try to start out simple, dont even expect to do complex stuff at first, just focus on learning the ropes slowly.



Early on (and still to this day) I tried to learn a new feature with every design rather than getting overwhelmed with too many features. Design stuff you dont actually need just to learn from it.


I found watching tutorials didn't help me a ton unless I actually opened up Fusion 360 to try it out. Some things just didn't make much sense until I did that. I had tried to listen to tutorials at work but it went in one ear and out the other lol

EDIT: and I guess the original design is a good example of this. First design was very simple, just flat and squared off with nothing complex at all. New design has a little more going on.

Oh and One last tip always keep in mind designing parts that will print easily. Like the cab/cage is a round profile but I put a flat bottom on these to make them print without issue, the underside of a curve never prints cleanly.

 

[soze]

Thanks Soze!



I'm sure you can do it too and I still have a lot to learn. Just try to start out simple, dont even expect to do complex stuff at first, just focus on learning the ropes slowly.



Early on (and still to this day) I tried to learn a new feature with every design rather than getting overwhelmed with too many features. Design stuff you dont actually need just to learn from it.


I found watching tutorials didn't help me a ton unless I actually opened up Fusion 360 to try it out. Some things just didn't make much sense until I did that. I had tried to listen to tutorials at work but it went in one ear and out the other lol

EDIT: and I guess the original design is a good example of this. First design was very simple, just flat and squared off with nothing complex at all. New design has a little more going on.

Oh and One last tip always keep in mind designing parts that will print easily. Like the cab/cage is a round profile but I put a flat bottom on these to make them print without issue, the underside of a curve never prints cleanly.

Yeah, as I've been printing things out, I've discovered the importance of positioning things in the slicer to print nicely. I have a few ideas of what I want to make in my head, but I just need to spend some time with fusion 360 and really just start creating stuff so that I can bring my ideas out to materialization.