Kinda newbie Mod/build thread, enjoy :D

[The Crawl Space]

I did a good amount of research, talked to a couple dudes at the local hobby shops and got myself hooked up with a Exceed Mad Torque crawler.

I know some people are going to diss out on the cheap, no name crawlers but I'm attempting to stay under a budget and maybe use my engineering and fabrication skills to make this thing into a pretty decent rig and just have fun with it on the weekends I believe it falls under the Super Class of crawlers so thats why I'm posting here.

Call this intial post of this thread a review of sorts but I plan to make many mods and changes in the future. Anyway, on to the pictures...

Here it is out of the box.

A side by side to a Electrix Ruckus, not too much bigger.

Out of the box there were some small issues that needed to be addressed after a quick maiden run around the living room. The shock mounts close to the end of the motors where rubbing on the wire leads due to the factory position of the shocks.

I moved the top shock mounts to the outside of the frame for a quick fix.

The tires are fairly sticky in my opinion but needed some love to get more of a bite. this is the out of the box shot of the tires. A little rigid for my taste and what I've seen on other crawlers.

There was no "vent holes" in the wheels and I felt the foam needed a little more give so I broke down all the wheel sets and got work with drill and a razor, ghetto style

hand drilled vent holes in the wheels.

Got a little more "squat" out of the tires, I plan to add some weight on all 4 corners in the next round of mods.

I adjusted the lower links in the rear to clock the rear motor above the axle more for clearance. (I believe I'm using the "clock" term properly, plz. correct me if I'm wrong.)

Thats all I've got for now. The vehicle remains pretty much out of the box stock at this point.

Future mod/build plans include

-Bigger, better front steering servo than this little guy...

-Possible rear steer.
-Possible tuber chassis to bring to bring the wheel base out to max 18"
-Longer shocks.
-High turn motors.
-Skid plates for motors

Hit me up with any words of advice and constructive criticism

 

[The Crawl Space]

Day 2.
Took my rig out for its maiden run outside today. It was a snow day here in Colorado and it was cold!

Theres a rock bed on the porperty line of my apartment complex and it looks like a good test area. Got the rig going and handled the rocks pretty well for my first run with a rock crawler I think.

She did well even on the old snow/ice mounds from the last snow we had.

Got some pretty decent articulation despite the cold weather, the rig did tend to bounce along some what. I figure it was a the shock oil getting cold.

The stock "mini" servo handled pretty well and got me where I wanted to go. The mod to the stock tire foam did help get more rubber on the rocks I'm happy to say

I figured I should get on changing out the stock shock oil since the suspension was alost solid when I was done with my run.

My god! What a mess!!! The stock oil was like spun honey even after warming up in the house for a few hours!!!

I drained and cleaned all the old shock oil out and found a half bottle of Losi 30wt. I had lying around. I did a couple tests and found that if I removed the washer from the shaft it reloaded much smoother and faster.

Put everything back together and she handled 10 times better even on the slick rocks and snow dust.

Going to try and run this weekend at a couple different places this week and see how it does.

Word.

 

[lud98r]

Good to see your enjoying yourself and having fun, thats what its all about afterall.

 

[GREEDY GENIUS]

with some new add ons and some of your fab work,im sure it will look and run just fine.I bought the madstone 8 crawler and already dumped 4 times the money into it than what i've paid for it but i love it and it will give any crawler a run for its money.good luck with it and post more pics when u can.

 

[The Crawl Space]

Good to see your enjoying yourself and having fun, thats what its all about afterall.

Absolutely, I wanted to start with something fairly basic and laid out before I get too crazy, lol.

Thanks for checking out my thread

 

[The Crawl Space]

with some new add ons and some of your fab work,im sure it will look and run just fine.I bought the madstone 8 crawler and already dumped 4 times the money into it than what i've paid for it but i love it and it will give any crawler a run for its money.good luck with it and post more pics when u can.

She's doing good so far. It handles my little test area I have outside my place very well in my opinion

I'm trying to stick to a "bare bones" budget but it looks like I might have to make some "adjustments" to said budget, lol.

I got a couple ideas in the works and I'll be posting up pictures from todays run with my custom skid plates installed and more updates.

Thanks for checking out my thread, do you have a thread for your maxstone, I'd like to check it out.

 

[The Crawl Space]

Day 3.
Much warmer today and no snow on the rocks
Heres some pics of my rig with the cleaned up shocks on the more "challenging portion" of my little test area outside my pad.

Got much better articulation with the new shock oil

Tree hugger or is it takin leak, you decide...

Today I decided to take care of one of the initial issues I had with this crawler, motor rock rash.
The motors aren't clocked up above the axle too much so they get hit almost as much as the axles do.

I did the run around to Harbor Freight, Home Depot and Hobby Town (the closest hobby store in my area :/ ) for parts and materials. Couldn't really find parts that would bolt on or any anything that I could mod to work. What I was really looking for some delrin stock or a small sheet of aluminum but suppliers like that are closed on the weekends :/

(Trying to make this story short, lol.) SO after a little brain racking I came up with this for material

Its a large electrical project box from RadioShack, list $6.99 Its made of ABS plastic and measures 8"x6"x3" more than enough material for skid plates

I found ABS fairly easy to work with, its flexible but I have a trick to make it very ridgid.

Cut out rough pieces with a razor knife, you'll see the one side of the plastic has ribs, I put those on the under side.

I filed and formed the plastic into more "custom" looking pieces, drilled mounting holes in the plate and the diff housing and fastened with 3m screws. looked good

So to make ABS plastic a little more ridgid I apply some low heat directly to the plastic with a heat gun.
I guess the molecules rearrange from the heat or something but it works and now the plastic is hard and you can shape it as well while its being heated.
This is the rear skid plate. (I ran out of black screws :/ )

and they held up pretty well

So there ya go, custom skid plates for under $10 and 30 mins of your time.
I still have a most of the project box intact and ready for any other mods that may come up.
Thanks to everyone that has checked out my thread and especially the guys that left comments, thank you.
I got into this hobby when I was a kid for the creativity aspect of it and I'm still loving this time around too

 

[GREEDY GENIUS]

keep up the good work and enjoy every part of it.Im new to rcc but i love everything about these rigs and im learning as im going.good luck and nice pics.

 

[monkeyracer]

I've got one of these coming my way this week, and I plan to post a very thorough thread about these vehicles, as well as a few easy/cheap things to do to them to make them a little better.

One thing to note; I don't think our local guys care as much, but these wheels are not legal for USRCCA super class comps (too small). Although I don't think too many people will be taking these to national events, it's good to know.

Once I get mine, I will post the thread, and maybe we can meet up to get some crawling going.

 

[The Crawl Space]

keep up the good work and enjoy every part of it.Im new to rcc but i love everything about these rigs and im learning as im going.good luck and nice pics.

Thanks man, I'm new to the crawler aspect of RC and I can see how people get obsesed over it, lol. I've got a couple mods in the works but I'm keepin 'em under wraps til its complete

 

[The Crawl Space]

I've got one of these coming my way this week, and I plan to post a very thorough thread about these vehicles, as well as a few easy/cheap things to do to them to make them a little better.

One thing to note; I don't think our local guys care as much, but these wheels are not legal for USRCCA super class comps (too small). Although I don't think too many people will be taking these to national events, it's good to know.

Once I get mine, I will post the thread, and maybe we can meet up to get some crawling going.

Right on, thanks for checking out my thread here. I'm new to RC crawling so I wanted to start cheap to see if I liked it and so far its been a blast!

I looked up the super class rules and I have plans to hook up some bigger shoes on the corners and make it super class legal in case I have an inkling to comp it

I'm down to meet up for some runs when you get your rig, hit me with a PM.

 

[baddman]

Vey nice work! I have one I've been meaning to work on for my cuz. Be careful to big of a tire might break an axle

 

[The Crawl Space]

Vey nice work! I have one I've been meaning to work on for my cuz. Be careful to big of a tire might break an axle

hey, thanks for checking out my mod/build, whatever thread here, lol. Def. going to watch the axles when I get bigger tires, thanks for the heads up

 

[The Crawl Space]

Alrighty!!! Time to get going on some mods here
Many thanks to dstrbd1 for sending me some chassis parts so I could really get into this thing.

As it stands, this rig is pretty much stock with a few tweaks to get it over the rocks a little better, but thats all about to change now...

So we take all this...

And this... (Pro-Line Tuber Frame for AX10.)

and this thing, and hopefully make something pretty cool

I dig the look of the tuber style frames, but my budget is limited so I went with the Pro-line Tuber, $35.

The AX10 chassis plates are supposed to bolt right on, but I didn't like how much the chassis plates "hung" below the tuber frame.

Broke out the multi-tool and got to work. Cut slots in the frame pan so the chassis plates would sit into the frame more.

Had to drill some new holes in the chassis plates to mate the plates and frame together solid.

The rear quarter of the frame pan needed a little trim to make room for the shocks and get a more "trick" look per say.

This is the multi-tool I use, 50 bucks at a hardware store, Li-Ion and all the blades you need, does a pretty good job

Got the top of the frame and frame pan bolted up and looking go so far...

Did some mock ups with the links and shocks and found a clearance issue with the front frame tubes binding up the shocks.

The tubes sit towards the outside of the underside of the frame and needed to moved inward. Heatgun time!

A couple twitsts and turns and some burnt fingers and we have this...

Full clearance for the front and rear shocks and its starting to look like something.

Got both axles on and she measures right at 18" hex to hex

Slapped the wheels on and its almost done

A sexy articulation shot if you will

Got a ton more flex and clearance with the new chassis mod

Like I said earlier, I'm on a budget so I use Nimh batteries, yeah yeah, I know :/ but anyway I consider the battery as the COG.
I initially wanted to put the battery in the front quater of the frame the bring weight over the front axle but had a problem with clearance and anymore cutting on the frame would compromise structual integrity.

So I had to go with frames battery tray and set the COG higher from the stock COG= possible problem on the the rocks.

Had to cut the battery cover a bit to make it easier to install and remove.

Tucked the spedo and RX on the skid plate, slapped on the battery cover and off we go!

Sexy time!!!

Despite the slightly higher COG the larger foot print helped balance everything out and she handled great. Got right over everything no problems.

Had a couple roll overs but with the new frame the rig rolls like an AX10 and I can gun the throttle and get it back on its wheels, couldn't do it in stock form

Specs of new chassis mod.
18" wheelbase from 16.5" stock wheel base
10" of articulation from 9" stock flex
5.25" ground clearance from 4" stock clearance
Looks pretty badass so far

Linkage geometry got weird with the new chassis but easily fixed with spacers in the stock links and clocked up the motors a bit more and got a little more steering some how too ?!?!

Going out to Lutz Rocks for a real test drive and see how she does on big rocks.

Thanks to everyone that has checked out thread. Positive questions, comments are concerns are always appreciated

 

[XtrmTJ]

WoW :shock: That is just flat Sexxy ! "thumbsup" Great job ! I like the tuber look !

 

[GREEDY GENIUS]

looking good man,keep it up...it could get expensive if you let it.pretty soon your gunna wanna jump up to better motors,ESC's...servos etc.but your off to a good start,love the tube look.

 

[dstrbd1]

Looks good man. Glad I could help

 

[The Crawl Space]

WoW :shock: That is just flat Sexxy ! "thumbsup" Great job ! I like the tuber look !

looking good man,keep it up...it could get expensive if you let it.pretty soon your gunna wanna jump up to better motors,ESC's...servos etc.but your off to a good start,love the tube look.

Looks good man. Glad I could help

Thanks guys, appreciate the kind words and help. Keep an eye out for XtrmTJ Mad Torque, he's got some great plans for his rig

I hear ya Greedy, I got my wishlist and I'm keeping with my budget
A new servo is hopefully showing up on Monday and I'll be getting to work on a rear steer set-up.
I'll post pics, but I do have a quick video of my run at Lutz Rocks in Arvada, CO. Enjoy everyone.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fzMxwACiE5s
Thanks to my lovely wife and assistant, Tiffany for shooting the video "thumbsup""thumbsup"

 

[The Crawl Space]

Mod update... uh, whatever. I lost count already, lol.
Got a new servo in the mail this past week and got to work on the 4WS.
On to the pics, enjoy.

Its a cheapy, but it works for now. Installed on the front axle.

Rear axle with solid steel linkage.

Did a quick set-up with the stock servo on the back, doesn't look too good :x

I figure I needed to reverse the servos drive for it to work the right way and keep all the linkage low. Soldering this little thing was like brain surgery, but I got it done fairly quickly

I cut down the servo mount posts on the axle and restaleed the servo plate.

 

[Abavuso]

I was thinkin about picking up one of these for the price as a cheep step into the super arena to see if i like it.

Heres what i was wondering, will the stock esc handle 2s lipo? And do the axles seam to flex since they are plastic?