Whilst me waits for the Mamba X to be examined by the doctors at Castle, I continued on with the install of the dig. What, exactly, does "dig" mean? Or is it an acronym - DIG?
Anyway...let's make like a Bob and be a builder.
Here's the dig out of the package.
You can see the machining marks through the anodizing on this part. It look really cool to me.
The dogs and shaft are separate pieces that are held together by a cross pin screw. This is kind of wobbly which I didn't expect. It shouldn't cause any issues though.
Once again, the anodizing is less than stellar.
The rearmost bearing plate goes into the dig housing as seen here.
I feel you have to know how a dig works in order to install it. It doesn't come with instructions. In one of his videos, Harley mentions the shift linkage should be made to match the dimensions in the instructions, but I'm not sure where you can find those...
These two take-off parts won't be used with the dig so keep them safe in your safe keeping spot.
Here the dig is installed onto the stock transmission. Notice anything odd? The recesses for the screws in the transmission aren't nearly large enough. The stock screw heads do a very nice job of digging into the dig case and destroying the anodizing. This is aggravating. If this is just a defective part and not typical then it's not big deal. But if this is how they all are it is totally unacceptable. I know I'm not alone with this problem. There's at least one other like this on this forum. I have not reached out to Vanquish customer service about this issue.
Here's the bottom of the dig. You can see another screw that dug into the dig housing.
Also, the dig is open on the bottom for rocks and debris to find a home in there. I'm not sure why they'd do this... Maybe it's a large drain for any pebbles that make their way in via the top. That's my best guess.
One thing that concerns me about this dig is that the back half, which contains the shift lever, comes assembled and it doesn't appear to be serviceable. The shift lever already has lots of slop and that's only going to get worse with wear.
My transmission was loud so while it was out to install the dig I readjusted the mesh. It was a little tight at spots before I readjusted it. Hopefully it's not too loose in the other spots. Something definitely isn't true here.
Then you put the transmission back into the chassis. It is a good looking unit.
Next you get your servo for the dig. I'll be using this servo I had lying around. This servo had gussets on the top and those will need to be cut off in order to work in this application.
I also had to enlarge the slots on the servo because the Vanquish mount was much narrower than the hole spacing on this servo.
The Vanquish 24mm servo horn centered perfectly on this servo. :shock: That never happens for me.
And here's the linkage I mentioned earlier in this post. You can also see the gussets have been removed.
Here's the servo installed and the linkage connected to the dig.
This is how my linkage runs.
The dig seems very smooth and I'm hoping it works as well as advertised. My only other experience with a dig is in my Capra. While I like it there, it really isn't reliable. I usually have to back up to disengage the locked wheels and that makes it pretty useless in some situations.
