WLToys Clone Hammers Budget Build

[Jim85IROC]

I just started my newest budget build. For this one, I chose the WLToys 10428b. Last year when I was looking for a 2nd crawler for my son, this vehicle ended up losing out to the Gen7, which has proven to be a very capable vehicle for the money. Recently my daughter has been feeling left out of the action, so I needed to fix that problem! Rather than buy something that I'm already familiar with, I wanted something totally different, so the 10428b got the nod.

I picked it up from Gearbest for $130 thanks to the ever popular RC18OFF coupon code.
https://www.gearbest.com/catalog/pp_617902.html?lkid=12975616

Recently the kids had a day off from school, and the weather was nice enough to be able to take the RCs on a local hiking trail to see how the 10428b did. Overall it was a lot of fun, but it definitely has its limitations as a trail/crawl rig, since it's really more aimed at being a higher speed basher or jack of all trades type of vehicle. Since our primary usage will be trailing and crawling, the upgrades will focus on improving those characteristics.

Since I like how Harley does his upgrades based on a weekly budget, I decided to follow that approach, but with some very different limitations. Rather than $50/week for a seemingly unlimited number of weeks, I've decided to restrict my budget to $20/week, and with a maximum amount spent at $250 including the price of the vehicle itself. This is a VERY restrictive budget, and will force some of the upgrades to be handled in a DIY/Macguyver type of way.

As I make each week's upgrades, I'll post them in this thread. Right now I've got the kickoff video posted, and will post the first upgrade video next week.

Here's the kickoff video:

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[Jake]

Looking forward to seeing what all you do! My build is also a sort of budget build so I may adapt some of your ideas to mine if that's okay.

 

[Jim85IROC]

sure! I'm not putting this out there as a show and tell, but in hopes that others can use some of what I come up with. Anything that I 3D print for the build will be put up on Thingiverse, plus anything that I fabricate will be shown in detail so it can be replicated.

 

[jumper]

I have that same truck and have had it for a while now. Things I have ran into especially when things wear out.

The differential bearings are 12mm I think the vaterra are 13. When I stripped the rear ring and pinion due to bearing failure, I remember the vaterra wouldn't fit it was to large. Vaterra ring and pinion fit fine once you find a bearing that fits the housing.

Vaterra rear axle shafts fit fine, the stocker lasted for about a year before I bent one. I have not replaced a plastic part on that truck.

My shocks still hold fluid like a champ, I did do the shapeways HD steering with lay down shocks which a I like though its pretty crowded in there.

I upgraded to the metal trans gears because they were on sale (didn't need them) but the metal clutch/slider didnt jive well the square transmission shaft and ended up leaving the plastic china one in there, works fine and shift smooth just a fyi.

still running the stock pot metal front ring and pinion with a silly putty diff.

the CVDs and drive cups wear quite quickly on the WL the chrome metal is much softer than the black steel vaterra stuff but they lasted a good bit.

The stock electronics are actually decent just funky 5 wire stuff my kid drove 5 2200 packs through that thing a day for about two weeks before I put proper electronics in it. Since then its had a castle 3800 mmx combo in it and other than breaking CVD pins (often) this things is a great value in RC

 

[Jim85IROC]

Thanks for the info! My plan right now is to keep this one brushed, so hopefully that'll slow down the wear a bit.

 

[jumper]

if it wasn't for the funky radio gear, I would have left mine brushed for a while. Is your radio a futaba knock off? Mine was almost a direct copy of a 4pk. I searched all over to see if anyone had did a firmware update to run a regular receiver on it without any luck. I actually put all the electronics on ebay and they sold for 36 bucks. Plus that little battery they send with the kit is a trooper, mine still balances fine and has who knows how many cycles on it.

Also if I remember correctly the shifter servo horn is 25t. I put a bluebird servo in and didn't have to change the horn.

something else I just though of, the grill is just hot glued in, it wont fall off because its screwed to the cage, but the lexan pulls out from behind it and tears. I found a new body on bangood but its like 35 bucks which is a 1/3 of what I paid for the truck lol so for now its zip tied up like Frankenstein.

 

[Jim85IROC]

Yeah, this one has the nice 3-channel Futaba clone radio. I've done a lot of research about compatible receivers, and it appears that there's only 1, and it's vaporware. There is, however, some code on Github for an Arduino that is made to work with this protocol. Once I replace the electronics in this vehicle, I'm going to try and get it to work, but since I won't have the time to fool with it within the constraints of this budget build, I'm going to be forced to replace the radio when I upgrade the electronics.

 

[Rich Trujillo]

Frustrating that this company ripped off our design. :roll:

 

[Brake Weight]

Frustrating that this company ripped off our design. :roll:

It seems like there’s some sort of legal protocol that these Chinese companies follow. The THammers was not immediately copied. Nor was the LMcC, the Redcat Sumo, Axial Honcho, and numerous others.

Maybe 4-5 years from initial branded production release then it can be copied? Or is this coincidental?

 

[Jim85IROC]

It seems like there’s some sort of legal protocol that these Chinese companies follow. The THammers was not immediately copied. Nor was the LMcC, the Redcat Sumo, Axial Honcho, and numerous others.

Maybe 4-5 years from initial branded production release then it can be copied? Or is this coincidental?

I had always assumed that the design originated with the manufacturer (similar to how most of the ECX stuff is) and that Horizon's negiotated exclusivity period had expired, allowing the OEM to rebrand it, but Rich's comment seems to indicate that's not the case at all.

 

[StomperCrawler]

I thought if it wasn't patented then duplication was legal? But I think Jim's comments about allowing the reuse of molds in China after a number of client-manufacturer agreed-upon years also applies. Sucks if the manufacturer broke their agreement or the designs were stolen through espionage though.

BTW @Jumper: Hex pins (all pins, technically) can be replaced with hardened drill bits to make them last longer.

 

[Jim85IROC]

I thought if it wasn't patented then duplication was legal? But I think Jim's comments about allowing the reuse of molds in China after a number of client-manufacturer agreed-upon years also applies. Sucks if the manufacturer broke their agreement or the designs were stolen through espionage though.

I just can't believe that WLToys would go to such great lengths to copy the design down to the small mold details that you see all over the parts. Things like rod ends have exactly the same cosmetic details. Parts have the same mold lines, etc. When a company is going to build a cheap copy of something, they don't put that kind of effort into the tiny details. It seems way more likely that this vehicle is being made by the same OEM in the same molds. The unknown is why. Did Horizon's exclusivity run out, or did WLToys "steal" it? I don't know of any other spot-on clones that WLToys makes, so it still seems more likely to me that they were the OEM for the Twin Hammers.

Purely speculation on my part though.

 

[jumper]

BTW @Jumper: Hex pins (all pins, technically) can be replaced with hardened drill bits to make them last longer.

mine keeps popping the actual pins in the CVD's I found some 1.7mm ones made by HPI that fit with a little work that last longer than the vaterra ones. I even used some drive pins from GUNNAR that worked significantly better than stock, but a my 12yr old shows that truck very little mercy and has the when in doubt throttle out mentality!

 

[Jim85IROC]

For Week one, I went cheap, and spent $2 on Silly Putty for the front diff. The Silly Putty seems to be holding firm in my 45 degree basement. We'll see how firm it is when it's 80 degrees outside, but so far I'm real happy with the improvement.

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[Jim85IROC]

Week 2 was another fairly cheap week so that I can bankroll some of the cash that I'm going to need for some of the later updates, but this week I was able to make two very noticeable improvements to the truck:

I lowered the gear ratio to give more low speed resolution, and I reworked the shocks to give this vehicle some much needed damping.

First the gearing. This turned into an adventure. My plan was to just replace the stock pinion with something smaller. My plans took a detour when I couldn't get the set screw out of the pinion, and ended up stripping it. In order to get the pinion off I had to remove the motor from the mount, and subsequently stripped the screw that holds the motor in place too. Yay cheap hardware!

Eventually I got that all sorted out and got to focus on the pinion. In the process I discovered that the WLToys truck uses Mod .6 gears instead of the 48p that the rest of the developed world uses. Fortunately I had an 87 tooth ECX spur gear hanging around waiting for a job, so I was able to use that along with my normal 48p pinions. I settled on a 24 tooth pinion for now, which gives me a ratio of about 3.6:1, which is a lot lower than the 2.8:1 that the original gearing had.

With that all put together, I focused on the shocks. The front and rear had so much stiction that the suspension didn't even want to compress. Once it got past the stiction, the lack of damping made it extremely bouncy. I opened up all 4 shocks and found that they had a very small amount of very thick, sticky oil in them. I cleaned them all out, lubed everything with green snot, and filled them with 40 weight. I tried it out and the front was horribly under damped, and the rear seemed to be very over damped. I ended up needing to go all the way up to 3,000wt diff oil in the front shocks to get them to work decently. In the back I went down to 30wt (the lightest I had around) and they were still way too stiff. I took them apart, and enlarged the holes in the pistons. Still too stiff. Enlarged them some more, and now they're working reasonably well. I think they could still be enlarged a bit more, but they're at least working pretty well now. I still have some minor stiction in the shocks, but it's nowhere near as bad as they were.

Since last week was a $2 week, I brought a balance of $18 over into this week. This week I spent $5 on the pinion, $4 on the spur, and figure $1 for the shock oil, bringing this week to $10. That means that I'm going to carry a $28 balance over to next week. My total investment in the truck so far is $142.

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[Mic.]

Great update Jim, 8)
I had a similar problem with mine (10428B)
In the end i used a soldering iron to heat the set screw up enough to get it out,
They must use strong lock tight in china plus crap set screws
Mine too had set screws missing from the drive train :roll:

If your shocks leak try wrapping a bit of Teflon tape around the screw threads

I'm watching with interest
Ps: you can turn the lights out by pressing the back button on the remote,

 

[Jim85IROC]

I discovered the lights out thing completely by accident! I need to remember to hook the lights back up. I've had the body on and off so many times that I haven't bothered to reconnect them.

 

[Mic.]

Lol it was my wife who found mine messing with the transmitter (i thought she busted it rofl)

They will work on the other k949 too just need the right connector (i used the connector off a furibee f36 battery)

 

[makya]

I've been thinking about getting one of these myself, after owning the TH five or six times I always end up getting rid of it because I throw too much into it. It's too small to compete with trail rigs, but it's not scale enough to compare with tamiya-sized scale trucks. Having the clone version makes it easier to buy in and modify by spending $150 vs. $400 for an RTR.

I had always assumed that the design originated with the manufacturer (similar to how most of the ECX stuff is) and that Horizon's negiotated exclusivity period had expired, allowing the OEM to rebrand it, but Rich's comment seems to indicate that's not the case at all.

It can work both ways. The manufacturing company can have a design that they sell, either under their own brand or through exclusive contract with distributors, OR they can be contracted to produce a design that a distributor or brand brings to them. The catch is that if the client brings a design to the manufacturer in China, the only deterrent that the manufacturer has to keep from selling to other companies or territories is the contract itself.

So really, when it comes to importers bringing in clones to the US, it becomes an imperative to patent your product especially if you have contracted your manufacturing overseas. Then you can go after the companies selling that same design and stop them. When vaterra isn't doing something to stop the WL toys or feiyue clones, it tells me that they either didn't patent it, or aren't enforcing the patents they have.

 

[StomperCrawler]

Do these have plastic or metal diff gears? Lockers? Tranny gears? Are the tranny and diff outputs standard 5mm or something else? I'm assuming 12mm hexes for the wheels? Parts support available? Sorry for the legion of questions. LOLZ