Yale Veracitor Forklift 1/14 scale

[frizzen]

I'd been wanting an rc forklift for a pretty long while. Years ago many of the great 1/14 scale modelers around built some, and made Warehouses and Loading Docks to go along with their Semis.

However even the Carson Linde h40 is more than i want to spend to get one here. Do i really need one... Fork yeah!
I had picked up a static Bruder Linde H30 a while back, but it's been pretty slow to plan out converting all the lift functions to rc. Then with so much time spent watching Loading Wars / Loading Kings it looks like even more fun.

To save some conversion work, I picked up the NewRay Yale with pallet rack and some cargo. I sometimes run Yales at work, and it's a little bigger thar the Linde so i should have some room to work. It's based on something in the Yale Veracitor VX series, think looks really close to the VX50 to VX70s. I dunno, it's not the original run of these with Yale licensed livery and labels

They come set up as 3 channel binary control, runs on 3aa batterys, 9v in the tx. Not that impressive, but still kinda fun. I can see why the old reviews on these weren't great when they were still yellow and Yale branded. It had weak steering one direction, then it gave out within a week of getting it. Wasn't planning to upgrade until after the Lebanon IN meet, but it changed those plans. Nothing too crazy to start with because rush job, just parts i had on hand. 6ch rx, metal gear servo, 2 cheap escs, a blinky rotator light, some 3mm leds, 4aa rx pack.


I went back to look again at the several rc sparks videos of upgrading the Carson h40 Linde they run on the Loading stuff and went "similar but different".

https://youtu.be/JSBuD7sZwV8

https://youtu.be/QsLQpNzo_EI


One really nice thing about these Newray vs the Carson forks is the mast lift has retract springs instead of working on gravity, so i don't need to add weight to the fork rack that would take away from how much weight it can lift and still steer with a load on.


The small cheap no-name brushed escs are a good fit, as it's only pushing 130 motors. Steering servo took a setup i wasn't fully happy with and will probably change if i made another, but it kept it all below the battery rack and might even get me some high speed wobble.

I used a flysky "fs-x6b" rx, and it just happens that board uses the same mount spacing as some posts in the forklift. I don't actually reccomend it since you basically have to make power and ground bus and connect individual signal wires to evrything. I like plug&play rx options better.


Battery lives up in the forklifts counterweight, i knocked out the seperators and forward wall to shove battery through. Also hogged out the battery cover stiffeners a little so i wouldn't need to worry about pinching a wire. Stuck some micro JST connectors on because they look pretty similar to scaled down Anderson PowerPoles.

Had to put a yellow beacon on the ROPS... Safety Third.

It's not right to ever try to be a spotter for a forklift without having lights shining directly in your eyes, so i drilled out the square housings for some 3mm leds with some chrome paint, all wiring routed down a channel in the ROPS and tapped the yellow beacons harness for power with a resistor. White lights & beacon come on when model turned on.


It takes 3 screws to split the body off the chassis, and now disconnecting Light and Battery connectors to completely remove it.


Dropped a bruder figure in the seat, probably needs a seatbelt.

It's got a cup holder on the bulkhead, so i opened that up and shaved the bottom of a dollhouse coke bottle. Had to pop the cap and drill the mouth of the bottle.


Think i'm probably going to need to come up with some decals for this after i paint the black parts. Could use some weathering.


Later i'll set up another servo for rack tilt, and start working out how much ballast i'll need.


I'd thought about trying to go moving steering wheel, but don't think there's enough room to keep it looking right. I'd either have to lose the steering column, or put a bulky box on the bulkhead.


Still looks pretty similar to stock, wish i had the yellow Yale version, but i think i've got a pretty good plan for a company livery based off the orange-red

I should have screwed on the battery cover, but i was in a hurry with those pics

 

[frizzen]

I make NO claims this is the best way to mod one. This is my way, with only what i had on hand, on a tight schedule. "Yay the forklift is here! I will not mod anything on it until after the RC meet in a couple weeks. Ok it needs tighter steering. But I will not mod the electronics until after the meet. Oh *expletive* the steering died. Must Panic and upgrade it really fast!"

Woo! take it off!!!

I pulled the stock steering gearbox out, hogged out the fender liners to get tire clearance for more angle. I should have also trimmed the top steering retainer plate to get max angle. I matched servo horn length to the steering gear pin-fulcrum, made a J shape brass thing that pokes into the draglink. Draglink center hole was drilled to size for the brass J to take out the slop it would have had. I probably should put something like a fender liner around the servo and fwd side of fenders to help keep stuff out

Hoist & Drive motors and gearboxes are stock, i just added escs. The top of my gearboxes have 'H' and 'D' written for 'Hoist' and 'Drive' to make assembly and later Mx easier knowing which esc does what. I took the power switch wires from one esc and hooked it up to my stock power switch on bottom.
I pulled Red wire out of rx plug on other esc so it's not going to have 2 bec fight and free the magic smoke. Both esc hook up parallel to the battery.

For Rack-Tilt this way, the body needs modified a little. i removed the U shape piece with the "rack cylinders" and dumped the springs. I cut slots in the rack cylinders, and drilled holes in the "rack tilt actuator rams", passed a rod through the actuators to be a crossbar. Made the rack cylinders silver or chrome. Found a place to stick a servo on the hoist/drive gearbox, made a linkage with a Z-bend and a loopy thing to hold the crossbar. I need to put a sleeve or something on the crossbar to keep the linkage from moving sideways. The body had some supports that i had to cut for clearance of my crossbar, study the pics, be sure to keep the parts that hold the U shape. Make sure crossbar isn't too long and binds on outer sides of body.

*** added ***. If i were smarter my Rack-tilt would probably be done with a continious rotation servo mounted vertically with a linkage running to the same style actuators. This way when moved it would just cycle rack fwd and back, and should hold location where ever stopped. My current setup is normally tipped slightly aft, but 'about' vertical, until you push and hold rack one way. Or i could have put it on ch 5 or 6 and configured it as a Pot channel.
***

I also opened up the slot in front of body where the hoist string exits and travels up to ease body remove / install.

Again, pretty sure i wouldn't suggest this RX since it was made for quads with flight controllers, but it works well enough to make Power and Ground busses to connect all outputs, then take a signal wire to each component. Adds unnecicary complexity. But i had that Rx, and it didn't work for a TTTT i wanted to make.

Cram everything you can under the rx board. Make sure the escs aren't going to interfere with the side steps in body. Stuff the extra wiring up under the seat when installing body. If you cut out part of battery compartment, take the lid off to help see what binds as it closes.

Think it through, test fit often, don't do something you can't undo unless you're sure.

I think i mentioned cutting out the 3aa battery rack to hold a 4aa rx pack. I know it could take bigger mAh lipo than these nimh. It's got some runtime, but i'm not trying to make driving this thing a Job. I'm not getting paid to run this

I'm also going to put some lead in the chassis later. Won't go too crazy, it's only like 130 size motors with a 700mAh battery

 

[frizzen]

These really let you go nuts flexing your scaleness

Found a couple logos i'm trying do decide between, fixed the stripe, made a bigger rack, made some wood pallets, scrounging some cargo...

Anyway, let's go to an RC meet...
Somebody brought some docks

They also had one of the old Robbie forklifts, so i got to check that out a little.


Anyway, i snuck over and put some stuff on them to operate my fork. Turns out 'loading docks' are not good at being 'warehouses'.

I also need to mod a little more to crank my steering even tighter, it's much better than stock, but for tight use it probably needs somewhere between drift car and shopping cart.


A 3D printed porta potty?!?!* I need one those!!!

Anyway, i ran through some batteries, and moved on to other stuff i brought. Then going through pics later Huh, that one on the Right is the same model but its not my fork? Mine has the Yale blackout stripe.

 

[frizzen]

Sooo, nobody likes forklifts?

The world had been too serious, take a couple minutes to try to have a laugh.

Here's a forklift operator who had only worked with pallets trying to learn to handle paper Mega rolls that are about the weight limit without going to a locked clutch.

https://youtu.be/x1aHqFgxA9U

Yes, this is a joke about the reaction of Americans to the Covid-19 flu. I don't know why they picked Toilet Paper as the scarce commodity. Realizing that 2020 was going to be an interesting year. The insanity kept going.

 

[AK KRAWLER]

I think it is pretty frizzen cool :lmao:

Honestly, way cooler than anything I have modded, or built.

Keep up the great work "thumbsup"

 

[Goro Majima]

You done a good job with it in my books. I have that smaller forklift as well. It's a tad bit smaller scale compared to 1/10 crawlers unfortunately. Plan was to weigh it down a ton and use it for flex test photos.

 

[frizzen]

Thanks AK krawler, these are more fun to mess with than you'd think.

Goro magima, thank you. You'd probably be a LOT better off with the Huina forklift to do crawler Flexing pics. I'm not sure how long the forks, rack and such on this rig would be able to hold up against a weighted 1:10 crawler. Posing crawler Flexing pics with 1/18 or 1/24 trucks would be a safer fit.

I've been having too much fun making and moving different types of cargo. Good thing i don't understand what this Air-freight company *really* does, that could be limiting...

Next time i'm inside this machine, i really should figure out how to lock or tighten the clutch for the hoist system.

If anybody else gets one of these, take the plastic Pallet Rack they come with and glue some strips of solder into the inside gaps in the channels. Even just doing the 4 legs up to the first shelf, and the bottom of the first shelf rails, makes a HUGE difference on if your operator lightly bumps it, or knocks over the rack.

I gave pics & dimensions to a guy over on Scale4x4 to CAD and print one of the 'forklift' industrial Propane canisters, never got back to me, then that site exploded. So... that's not gonna happen!

I'm not sure if i should try to make some rear lettering for the cove say YALE or YOLO

Anyway, the boss got mad they were taking too many restroom breaks, and said it needed moved

But when you've gotta go, ya gotta GO! Life, uh, finds a way

The 13th Dr Poo going back to the Turdis

I've been debating if i need to palletize some various SciFi droids and equipment.

 

[frizzen]

Forklift toy paradox

Sometimes brand new toys can become more fun if you make them harder to play with.

Friction motor Snowmobile, kinda fun for a few minutes. Rip out the spring motor, build a pallet, strap it down forever, add some detailing, suddenly much more fun to be had with it.

The tractor had a mower deck, ROPS, dorky action figure. Meh. Ditch the ROPS, make a pallet, chock it, strap it down, much cooler. Stick the mower deck on a pallet. Break it down into a mulitple-part order.

Also if a guy finds several of a nice looking cheap cargo, you can change up the difficulty a little. Like with these friction-motor Snowmobiles, Orange pallet has taller fork pockets than the Red one, since i grabbed a wrong dimention stick of a cut down 2x4 when i built the second. Yale and Linde forks fit almost to the rack, but its tighter. If you were doing it intentionally, maybe color-code ends of the cargo pallets for difficulty like they do with bike trails? (Blue/Green, Yellow, Orange, Red, Black.)

You also definately run into some oddities.
This dollhouse breakroom "Coffee machine / Water cooler" pallet weighs more than the "Kubota tractor" with overbuilt pallet, or the "Mopar 426 Hemi engine with accessories" pallet.

 

[Gula]

Ive driven forklifts for the last 20 years. Most have been Hyster 4-6K warehouse ones, and big articulated John Deere 944, and Caterpillar 10K forklifts. Operated a 50K lift king forklift a few times, once i was carrying 40K and everywhere the 8' tall 3' wide tires touched, left a 3" rut. I have one of the Golden bright 1/6 Forklifts thatI intend to give it a true hobby grade conversion.

Have you tried making some skids from popsicle sticks? Skid=pallet Pallet= USAF 463L pallet

 

[frizzen]

Gula, pretty awesome that sounds like several tons of experience!
I can't wait to start checking out what you do with that 1/6 scale machine.

i haven't used popsicle sticks, but i already have several home made pallets and skids in the pics. Running a 2x4" through a table-saw spits out a huge pile of 1/14 scale lumber, and a little sheet of thinnest hobby plywood you can find makes a lot of Slats or Plywood.

I have previously considered trying to make some Aircraft-cargo ULD Cans , or Aircraft loading pallets. Luckily some contracts changed and i don't have access to them anymore to get good measurements. (I don't really miss installing Cargo Locks into Seat tracks though.) Plus then some Sick part would be trying to convince me i needed to make a "K-Loader' to go between a Plane i don't have, and Semi-trailers i don't have.

Cool info out there about the 'USAF 463L pallet', i knew that AAR Mobility was involved with making some for Airlift, but i never dug that deep into them.

Lao Che Air-freight warehouse back on the 4th of May