Autolanka Rc Build Thread

[Davy]

One last set of photos and a video.

And finally, a video of the first start-up and drive.

Note that you can hear a rattle during the initial start up, and I found that it was the prop shaft touching the servo mount as it spins. I adjusted that.

And that folks is the end of the build.

Edited July 18, 2017 by Davy
Fixed broken image links

[sathyajithj99]

1 hour ago, Davy said:

One last set of photos and a video.

And finally, a video of the first start-up and drive.

Note that you can hear a rattle during the initial start up, and I found that it was the prop shaft touching the servo mount as it spins. I adjusted that.

And that folks is the end of the build.

Nice work Davy. Is that white Lancer yours?

[Davy]

1 minute ago, sathyajithj99 said:

Nice work Davy. Is that white Lancer yours?

Thanks! And yes, that's mine. An attempt at trying to make it seem like the proportions of both cars are the same.  

[terrabytetango]

I'll  try and get a video of my Hyper 10TT this Sunday. It busted a pinion gear due to mesh issues rising from a 3mm to 5mm shaft sleeve, but I ignored it and drove it anyway. Going to return it to the stock pinion (much slower).

[Pericles]

Looking good on all Davy.

Edited July 16, 2016 by Pericles

[Davy]

4 hours ago, Pericles said:

Looking good on all Davy.

Thanks Peri.

[ferrarif50]

awesome!

[Davy]

Bumping up this thread again to share some updates!  

It’s been exactly a year since I got my Tamiya TT-02, and I’ve been loving it! I’ve mainly been driving it around on empty car parks, roads and my most favourite – a basement car park that has a polished concrete floor which allows you to do a lot of drifting!  I have used it for about a hour every fortnight or so, have crashed it several times and have had to clean the mud, dust and debris on occasion. It’s been running quite well for an all-plastic entry level RC car. From the start, I always wanted to upgrade it as I may have mentioned in my previous posts and I finally got the chance to do it.

The stock shocks were basically two plastic rods put together and a very stiff spring. This was not the best and contributed towards a very bumpy car and vague steering. I wanted to upgrade them first. So I got hold of a set of aluminium oil-filled dampers by Yeah Racing. I matched the length of the dampers to the stock ones to make sure I have the same level of control over ride height.

 

The top right box (on the second photo) has all the parts required to assemble one shock. They’re to be assembled, oil filled, air bled out and installed. Took me about 3 hours to assemble everything, mainly because the shocks were to be left upright for air bubbles to float to the top of the oil and then removed.

Once they were installed on the car, handling was improved dramatically. I just couldn’t believe how well the car hug the ground compared to how bad it bumped around before. The video below which I recorded shows how well the dampers absorb the shock. With the stock ones, the car bounces multiple times before settling down.

 

I also got a stack of other parts that I got down from rcMart and a few sourced locally. Stuck to one brand – Yeah Racing because I was so pleased with the dampers.

Stay tuned!

Edited July 18, 2017 by Davy
Fixed broken image links

[Davy]

Top left photo is all the parts that went into the build:

- Adjustable front and rear upper arms

- Front and rear lower arms

- Main prop shaft and prop shaft joints

- Front and rear knuckles

- Drive shafts and related components

- Steering bridge

- Adjustable steering tie rods

 

Top middle and right photo:

Deconstruction, and cleaning up dust, dirt and grime. A good blast of WD-40 and a wipe did the trick.

 

Bottom left photo:
All stock components removed from the car.

 

Bottom middle photo:

Installation of the prop shaft and joints

 

Bottom right photo:

Completed rear end

 

More close-ups of the parts:

 

And the finished product:

 

It took me close to 4 hours to strip the car completely and install everything. Spent a couple of hours on top of that performing wheel alignment (now that upper arms and steering are adjustable). Following the specs in the installation instructions caused the car to be lowered. Since this is a rally spec chassis, I had to make sure I didn't deviate too much from the original height. The following photo with all parts installed according to the upgrade part specs. This is a bit too low for my liking. Would be ideal for a drift car though. The specs even gave the wheels a lot of negative camber and toe-in which I later corrected. 

After hours of adjusting, this is what I ended up with. Outward appearance is still the same:

Hoping to take it for a spin this weekend!  

One thing yet to do is upgrade the bushings and bearings, I noticed that the stock plastic bushes had a bit of wear in them and thought of upgrading them to a ball bearing kit. The steering bridge kit already came with ball bearings (and is now so smooth - even the turning radius is shorter now), so the only bearings I need to upgrade are the 8 bearings on the drive line. Upgrade #1 for the future.

The kit also came with 5.5 mm hex nuts for the wheels, but once they were installed, the wheels didn't sit flush with the wheel well, so I decided to go back to stock ones. Will probably go for a set of 7 mm ones later. This is upgrade #2.

Also coming up is another build! During my recent visit home, I pulled out some old boxes of mine that were in storage at home and found my good old Ford F-150 truck! From memory, I got this truck when I was 12 years old or so. The circuit is fried and I couldn't source a battery for it, so I had to stop playing with it. After being kept in storage for over 2 decades, the tyres have become so hard, I had to use a hacksaw to cut them out of the rims. This truck has a two speed transmission. Hoping to bring it back to it's former glory. Will share updates when I begin the restoration.

 

Edited July 18, 2017 by Davy
Fixed broken image links

[Davy]

Unveiling the newest addition!  Traxxas TRX4. This was introduced by Traxxas this year and only released a couple of months ago. Traxxas not being into the scale truck scene all along, their first scale trail/crawler - this defender is quite impressive. The detail in this thing is just mind blowing, and the extent they've gone to with creating a perfect scale truck... I can only say they've achieved it.

Click the link above to their webpage to see the features and watch the video below.

This is a RTR truck, so it came all assembled and with all the equipment (except batteries and charger), so not a build per say, but just wanted to share it here since I will be doing some future mods and upgrades to this. I think the link and the video say it all, but let me know if you guys have any questions - happy to answer them.  

Cheers!

PS: Feel free to share your RC cars and updates on this thread. Surely it can't be just @terrabytetango and I who are into RC. 

Edited July 20, 2017 by Davy
Added more information

[terrabytetango]

On 20/07/2017 at 6:52 PM, Davy said:

PS: Feel free to share your RC cars and updates on this thread. Surely it can't be just @terrabytetango and I who are into RC. 

Pericles used to be in R/C too ages ago.

[Pericles]

On 7/20/2017 at 6:52 PM, Davy said:

Unveiling the newest addition!  Traxxas TRX4. This was introduced by Traxxas this year and only released a couple of months ago. Traxxas not being into the scale truck scene all along, their first scale trail/crawler - this defender is quite impressive. The detail in this thing is just mind blowing, and the extent they've gone to with creating a perfect scale truck... I can only say they've achieved it.

Click the link above to their webpage to see the features and watch the video below.

This is a RTR truck, so it came all assembled and with all the equipment (except batteries and charger), so not a build per say, but just wanted to share it here since I will be doing some future mods and upgrades to this. I think the link and the video say it all, but let me know if you guys have any questions - happy to answer them.  

Cheers!

PS: Feel free to share your RC cars and updates on this thread. Surely it can't be just @terrabytetango and I who are into RC. 

Wow, that is pretty darn cool.

On 7/27/2017 at 1:21 PM, terrabytetango said:

Pericles used to be in R/C too ages ago.

I picked up other expensive hobbies, something had to go  

[Davy]

5 hours ago, Pericles said:

Wow, that is pretty darn cool.

I picked up other expensive hobbies, something had to go  

Thanks Peri. I'm absolutely loving it! Already ordered a second set of rims and thinking of ordering a lighting kit as well.  

Some updates on the Tamiya:

I may have said earlier that I want to drift the car although it's a rally spec Subaru. So I got myself another set of wheels. Planning to install plastic drift tyres on them. They were black, but I loved the design, so I got them with the intention of painting them in gold. This is how that went, some primer and then gold.

 

The offset of these rims are a bit lower than the original Subaru ones, so they sit perfectly flush with the wheel arch. They don't look perfect with the rally spec tyres with that really coarse tread, but will look okay once the drift tyres are installed. The car looks wider with these on as well. 

Installing the rims gave me an idea, why not paint the brake discs in silver (they're black out of the box), so I did!

 

Due to the less number of spokes in new rims, the discs can nicely be seen through them. A bit more detail on an already detailed car.  

[Davy]

Ford F-150 Build

I began the restoration of my Ford F-150 1/12 scale truck. I took everything apart and cleaned the chassis and prepped it to receive the new electrics and suspension. Here are all the parts in the chassis:

The circuit board is just specially made for this truck, so no replacements to be found. I will have to hook up a receiver with an ESC to get it to drive the motor. The white plastic thing on top of the circuit board is the steering servo. It's actually a small motor coupled with a few arms to convert radial motion to lateral motion. I'm going to replace this with a regular servo. I will have to fabricate or buy matching steering arms and linkages as well. 

The motor: the one that's on the truck works, but it's a low voltage motor (6V by the looks). I connected it to one of my RC batteries, it ran and started to give a burning smell when I realised it's a motor rated for a lower voltage, so I may have to either make a voltage converter circuit or find a 7.2V - 7.4V motor of equal size. The motor mounts directly to the transmission, so if I'm unable to find one, I will have to do major fabrication work on the transmission housing. Fingers crossed on this.

Also, note the rims - I'm gonna have the time of my life trying to find tyres that match because of the difference in diameter between the inner and outer sides of the rim.  I think I will have to settle for new rims altogether + tyres.

So bottom line, this is what I ended up deciding on:

- Traxxas XL5 ESC

- 540 7.4V motor (Tamiya or Traxxas)

- Savox steering and shift servos (shift servo will be a smaller one)

- Traxxas 3 channel radio system (drive, steering and transmission)

 

The rear axle with two speed transmission. The red switch is to switch between low and high gears. I'm hoping to hook up a servo to this switch so that I can remotely switch gears from the transmitter.

 

Inside the transmission. I have never opened up this transmission, and for something that's over 20 years old and after being bashed really hard, I was surprised to see how good it still looks. The gears look brand new and still has the new plastic smell that immediately took me back to the first day I got this.  The shafts are copper and the red switch is actually the shift fork inside the transmission. Such a simple design. 

 

Edited August 1, 2017 by Davy

[Komisiripala]

my god. just my god. that subie. damn. i took a day off form work to read this! 

[Davy]

21 minutes ago, Komisiripala said:

my god. just my god. that subie. damn. i took a day off form work to read this! 

Thanks man!  

[Pericles]

On 8/1/2017 at 5:25 PM, Davy said:

Ford F-150 Build

I began the restoration of my Ford F-150 1/12 scale truck. I took everything apart and cleaned the chassis and prepped it to receive the new electrics and suspension. Here are all the parts in the chassis:

The circuit board is just specially made for this truck, so no replacements to be found. I will have to hook up a receiver with an ESC to get it to drive the motor. The white plastic thing on top of the circuit board is the steering servo. It's actually a small motor coupled with a few arms to convert radial motion to lateral motion. I'm going to replace this with a regular servo. I will have to fabricate or buy matching steering arms and linkages as well. 

The motor: the one that's on the truck works, but it's a low voltage motor (6V by the looks). I connected it to one of my RC batteries, it ran and started to give a burning smell when I realised it's a motor rated for a lower voltage, so I may have to either make a voltage converter circuit or find a 7.2V - 7.4V motor of equal size. The motor mounts directly to the transmission, so if I'm unable to find one, I will have to do major fabrication work on the transmission housing. Fingers crossed on this.

Also, note the rims - I'm gonna have the time of my life trying to find tyres that match because of the difference in diameter between the inner and outer sides of the rim.  I think I will have to settle for new rims altogether + tyres.

So bottom line, this is what I ended up deciding on:

- Traxxas XL5 ESC

- 540 7.4V motor (Tamiya or Traxxas)

- Savox steering and shift servos (shift servo will be a smaller one)

- Traxxas 3 channel radio system (drive, steering and transmission)

 

The rear axle with two speed transmission. The red switch is to switch between low and high gears. I'm hoping to hook up a servo to this switch so that I can remotely switch gears from the transmitter.

 

Inside the transmission. I have never opened up this transmission, and for something that's over 20 years old and after being bashed really hard, I was surprised to see how good it still looks. The gears look brand new and still has the new plastic smell that immediately took me back to the first day I got this.  The shafts are copper and the red switch is actually the shift fork inside the transmission. Such a simple design. 

 

Traxxas FTW

[Davy]

1 hour ago, Pericles said:

Traxxas FTW

 After buying the Traxxas Defender, I'm in love with the brand!

I haven't made much progress on the F-150 unfortunately. Personal commitments. But fear not! It shall be on its wheels again!