OHO's Axial Wraith 3 point 0h!

[Oh How Original]

Been hankering after another Wraith for a good while now, so I've been buying bits and bobs, got a Hitec 5955, Castle BEC and a 4Ch Spektrum receiver, managed to pick up a good base of a roller from Gaz and bought the rest of the electrics, decided to do brushless with this one, in the hopes of the electrics lasting longer than 5 minutes which is how far I used to get on brushed gear, had a little money saved up and got a second hand roller instead of a kit, so put that saved cash towards electrics.
I've bought a HobbyWing 120a SCT-Pro ESC to pair to a 21.5t (roughly 2000kv I think) Tekin motor and a pair of Turnigy Heavy Duty 5000mAh 3s 60C LiPos.
Discovered in stock form they won't fit the front compartment of the Wraith so I've been modifying this evening, need to cut out a few bits tomorrow with the Dremel and I'm hoping that will do it and they'll slide in perfectly.
Also given it a quick clean over, trimmed the body shell parts and wrapped them in carbon for a cleaner look, just going to be doing subtle things like that to make it my own
Still awaiting some stuff arriving and have a few more things to buy that I'm hoping to grab second hand.
And hopefully the LiPos will land tomorrow so I can finally find out if they are going to fit or not.



When it arrived...







How it sat before I pulled it apart to modify






I also must just say a huge thank you to you guys who pointed me in the right direction with the electrics, when I was searching I started to think maybe brushless was beyond my reach financially, but after been given some excellent advice, hopefully, I will finally have my forever Wraith...

[Oh How Original]

Oh and I know the wheels and tyres are missing, I'm going to run my Proline beadlock rims with Flat Iron 2.2s just to get it moving, I'm not 100% decided on which tyre to go with yet.
Been offered some 2.2 HPI Rock Grabbers but I don't know what they perform like, if anyone could tell me?

[Oh How Original]

Got all the electrics in, well, temporarily anyway, they're just sat in the back for the moment, until I get these LiPos so I can test everything out, having give it a small run round my bedroom and felt the torque by trying to hold it, I don't even know if 3s is going to be necessary! So if they don't fit I might get some more 2s' and stick with those.
Also put the Savox 1258 just for testing because it's spare and my horn hasn't arrived for the Hitec yet, possibly going to do a bit of a garden test tomorrow.
I've double foamed the wheels/tyres and fit some black wheels on the tyres instead of the chrome ones I had, I think it looks better.



I also got some lights working as well but need to re-do them all because the light controller in at the moment isn't working, they're staying permanently on, I want the ability to turn them off so I'll eventually plumb all the new ones in.
Might even get a light bar or use one of my Axial ones with 5 spot lights.
See when I can be bothered to do more soldering.

[NWHavok]

Your rig is looking really good. Digging the carbon fiber side panel look. What did you use for inside the fender?

[Oh How Original]

They came with the truck, I believe they're made by RC4WD, they're definitely an off the shelf part, they aren't custom made, because they're vacuum formed from lexan and then brush painted to give a bit of a textured appearance, unfortunately it doesn't show up too well in the pictures.

[Oh How Original]

Gave this a little garden run today, felt like the slipper was loose, so took everything out to get to it and tightened it right up, decided to move all the electrics to under the bonnet while I was at it, sooo much better although I wish I could get it a bit neater, it's just cable tied right now.
Anyway went back out and something is still slipping but I can't see what, when turning the wheels by hand, nothing slips, when trying to climb something steep, if I give it too much power, it slips, so I'll have to see what it's like when I'm actually out on the trails, pretty happy with the torque and wheelspeed of 2s though, so if these 3s LiPos don't fit, it won't be the end of the world, I'll run it on 2s, once I find some nice small ones!

[altd896]

Depending on the light controller they may not go off, a lot of the controllers are simple voltage regulators to drop batt volts down to 5v for the leds.
If the Axial simple controller it def doesn't turn on/off from remote.

The slipping is likely to be the "locker" inside the axles, stock is a cast/pot metal piece inside a plastic case & has a couple of tabs that lock it place in the case.


These can break off & then the locker can turn inside the case.


Permanent fix is to change to an aftermarket spool, theres a few different brands now, Incision/ Holmes/ SuperShafty/ Locked-Up/ Hot Racing they all work basically the same.
Cheap simple fix till you can get a spool is to epoxy the locker into the case, down under here we use Araldite, in the US they use JB weld but any 2 part epoxy glue should do.


Just watch out to leave a small void in the epoxy for the 2 locator pins on the ring gear, or you can just dremel those pins off, the HD gear sets don't have the pins anyway.

[Oh How Original]

Thanks a lot for the tips... I think it might have actually just been a cogging issue, out in the field today when it happened I just gave it some throttle and it just went up anything I pointed it out, so I'm pretty ure that's all it was, I couldn't run with a sensor wire because I've now moved the ESC to under the bonnet/hood and the sensor wire provied isn't long enough so I'm going to order a longer one
I think I will also get some better lockers, will have a look for the brands you mentioned.
It went tumbling down a 50ish foot banking we climb up and snapped both the servo mounts, thankfully the servo lived which is all I'm bothered about.
Rather annoyingly, the LiPos I bought don't fit comfortably, it's not worth risking piercing one, so I'll have to sell them and buy something smaller.
It ran great until the accident, took a good few hits and nothing else broke, very happy I now seem to have a reliable Wraith, electrically speaking.

[Oh How Original]

Few little updates with this, I wasn't happy with how all the electrics where, I also wanted to add some lights that could be controlled off the tx, I also decided as I never want to run a winch and had a 4ch receiver, I'd have some 'low beam' lights and also spotlights, all controlled separately... If I ever wish to run a winch or anything else, I can just plug them all in together.
These are some lights made for me by Lee with the most powerful MCD LEDs we could find between us, so they're definitely bright, of course, me being smart, was looking right at the spot lights when I turned the ESC on!
I definitely won't ever lose it in the dark anyway.

As you can probably see from the overspray, I've also added a little bit of colour, I sprayed the outside as I can't find a replacement body for the Wraith... Matching blue to my SCX10... Even though these pictures don't show it, I'll take some next time out to get an idea of it

[Oh How Original]

Had this out today for a spin, motor gave out completely now, I could deal with the cogging when I knew the cause was the sensor wire not being plugged in but I had it running sensored today and it still cogged, the gearing is changed and so are some of the ESC settings for a bit more punch.
A few times it just lost all power, it wouldn't go forwards, backwards or brake and came hurtling down whatever I'd climbed up.
I bought it second hand so I've messaged the seller in hopes of sorting something.
In the mean time does anyone have a working motor I could just borrow for testing?
Or a cheap 1/10 brushless motor I can buy just purely for testing to make sure it is actually the motor and not the ESC?
I'm in the UK though so I know it's a very long shot lol!
I'm 99% confident it's the motor because everything on the ESC seems happy, lights are doing the right things, it's not hot etc...

[Oh How Original]

I decided out of boredom and feeling experimental to give this a run today on a set up I haven't used before.

To my amazement, it ran great for over an hour and the only reason we stopped was we needed the shop on the way back before it closed... Anyway, I had the electrics sat here so decided to give it a try.

I'm running a HobbyWing Quicrun 1060, Axial 27t motor, 2s LiPo (typically ran 3s, which ate motors after minutes) with 87/20 gearing, I may move to an 80t spur just for a little added wheelspeed, it's lacking slightly in reverse, which isn't a big deal but a spur is cheap and should fix it.

But I definitely have some options with regards to gearing as the motor wasn't even warm, I didn't fully test it to it's limit, that will be done at Williamson Park which is a lot harder on the motors than where we went today, but for the moment, it's staying put!

Here's a few pictures, sorry some are a bit bright, they're just taken on my phone.

[sub-zero123]

I'm building a wraith right now and have a couple questions..are you using a LED light controller for your lights, if so what kind? Do you have any weights on the rims inside the tire, if so how much? thanks