The title will get changed as soon as I can think of one. This is my first day back to work after an almost 2-week vacation. I'm still trying to wake up!
I did get a couple of days at my house to build, away from the busy, but great festivities of Christmas Eve, Christmas, and the wedding we had on NYE.
After the axles, you move onto Bag C which is the VFD transmission. This is a decently specced version of the VFD with the standard 6% overdrive.
Sustenance provided by Warheads Sour Holiday Mix Gummy Candy from my sweet girlfriend who gave me 12 Days of Christmas gifts, like she does for her son, leading up to the big day.
Motor plate is aluminum, as it should always be, but gears are sintered.
The included pinion is 13T and I will start here.
The VFD cap with the faux gear shifters is optional. Seriously, Vanquish? In order to get this part, you have to buy the VPS10131 parts tree the includes useless items such as the plastic motor plate, plastic standoffs, plastic spur gear hub, and bearing retainers for this transmission. Come on Vanquish.
The transmission bolts to the skid plate and then the sliders bolt onto the skid plate. Finally, the electronics tray bolts to the sliders. It makes kind of a skid.
I skipped Bag E which is the S8E shocks and moved onto Bag F which is the links. I used my Leaf Spring Mafia link tool, the newly acquired link tool bit (forget the brand, but they were clearing them out for something like $5) and the ProTek shock pliers (not shown). EDIT: the link tool is from Team Garage Hack. They were blowing these out for $8.95 and now appear to be sold out. They probably gave up on them because China copied the idea.
Now I think Vanquish's manual sucks in the links section. It mentions 114mm and 124mm, but nothing measures that - not the eye to eye, not the overall, and not the unthreaded part of the link. Where the heck are they pulling that measurement? Am I the only one that is lost?
Upon installation of the transmission and driveshafts, I found that the front driveshaft was dragging on the transfer case. I received a couple of helpful responses on Facebook telling me to check the orientation of the output shaft. After disassembly, I found the shaft to be installed correctly. No idea what caused this issue. I'm guessing it was a tolerance stack-up issue.
Before I tore the transmission apart, I was going to order the 21% overdrive kit. Then I membered ordering these gears for my VS4-10 Pro build which is still ongoing and has to be one of the all-time slowest builds in history. Low and behold, I had BNIP 21% OD gears! Winning!
A nice touch by Vanquish engineering was this thru-hole to allow access to the one hidden transmission mounting screw without having to remove the electonics tray.
It took me a minute to remember where these OD gears go. They should only fit in certain spots because of the gear spacing which is set by the bearing retainer plates. This photo is for reference showing the black machined OD gears next in with the stock sintered gears that already have some grease on them. Yes, I added grease to the OD gears as well after this photo was taken.
I also now had my Christmas gifts on hand so I could install the Fusion Pro 2300KV. I asked for the LCD Programming Box thinking it would work with the Fusion Pro, but I think I was wrong. I also asked for (2) packs of 1.9 Trepador tires, but only got (1) so I have to order another.
I didn't take any photos, but I had to hack the crap out link mount to get the Fusion Pro to clear. You always have to cut some of this link mount away to clear the Fusion Pro, but I seemed to have to cut a lot to completely clear the engine. I didn't want it touching the skid plate at all and causing the vibrations to be amplified by the chassis. The front driveshaft is very close to the transfer case, but I couldn't feel any dragging this time around.
Axles mounted to the links and we are starting to have something that looks like a vehicle!
