Zeee..... Row..... Deeeee.

[phllint]

The br minis work great just get hot with any drag brake over about 80%. What happened with the castles and why not consider fxr's? I have the same 2 in my pro rig for 5 years and all I've done is smash them after about 3 years. They work great and with those motors will have a sh#t load of drag brake.

[Trubble]

Originally Posted by phllint

What happened with the castles and why not consider fxr's?

To be quite honest, really the only reason I haven't tried Tekin's newer stuff yet is simply because I already have the CastleLink, I don't have the HotWire. That's pretty much it.
I ran some Tekins back in the late 80's and was happy with them (still have one floatin' 'round here somewhere), but when I started messin' with these crawlers, I went Castle (based) and have just stayed in that camp. Guess I haven't been unhappy enough to want to look into anything else.


The issue with the Sidewinder Micros was entirely my fault. I wanted to do some re-arranging of the wires, get them really lookin' sharp. But I improperly removed the shrink wrap, and knocked a component off the board, rendering it dead. At that point, it was either continue buying replacements and keep trying, or just scream Uncle. It was kinda gettin' expensive, and I hadn't learned my lesson, so I'm thinking at this point, I should probably just let that dream go.

On the upside, I found some NIP, BR Mini's in the classifieds section. Those things are TINY!!! They're not bad for soldering on, though. Just need to put in some time at the ol' TC950, and then figure out a hold-down.

The finish line's just about in sight, just gotta remember to take it one step at a time and think things through.

[SINister]

Large shrink tubing would work great to hold down your electronics. I found some on Ebay that I use to hold my electronics to the rowdy mount on my XR.

[Trubble]

Originally Posted by SINister

Large shrink tubing would work great to hold down your electronics. I found some on Ebay that I use to hold my electronics to the rowdy mount on my XR.

Righteous idea!
I have some 2.5" shrinkwrap from back in my NiXx pack building days. I wasn't sure if it would shrink up enough to wrap a BR Mini, so I cut up some cardboard about the size of an ESC, and tested it. I think it'll be okay.
After I get those wrapped, I could take that plate off and cut a couple notches in there and use a small strip to hold the ESCs down.
That may happen, thanks for the idea.

While I'm at it, might as well throw up some more photos and another update.



Took a while, but I stumbled on a pair of these in the classifieds, N.I.P.!
I'm sure we've all seen pictures of these things around, but I never really had much of a reference for just how small they really are. Got a thumb?

Then here's your reference......


If you've never seen one in person, that's how big they are. Shouldn't be tough to find room for those.

I think I'm going to lay 'em out this way,


I'm thinking if I pull that plate off and stick some saw cuts next to the ESCs, I could go with the above idea of shrink tube hold-downs. We'll see.

I'm also kicking around the idea of designing some posts for soldering my big, fat 12 ga Ultra-Wires to. Problem is, that'd require some time, an' I'm gettin' impatient. I wanna see this thing run! So then the question becomes, do I just twist and solder big, fat wires onto these little pads? If I do the wiring the way I want, I'll need to double-up on two of the ten connections. There is no option of doubling at the Traxxas connector, I know that much. So it's either double-up on two of the pads, or run singles on all pads and go for a couple of 3-ways hidden up under the plate. Got the potential for bein' kinda ugly no matter which way I go, I suppose.


And..... in other news.....

I got my new Holmes brushless servo!



Kinda almost painted myself into a corner when I designed those steering arms. I wanted to get them nice and long so I could give the servo plenty of leverage. Problem is, I didn't stop and think that that would also require a ton of linear movement on the part of the servo. I wound up having to use a fairly long servo arm, and even at that still had to bump my EPAs out to 115%. Considering the 4PL stops at 120%, I really didn't leave myself any wiggle room. Plus, having to use such a long servo arm has (I suspect) pretty well killed off any mechanical advantage the steering knuckle arms were designed to give. Meh, whatever, it works.


The placement of the rods seemed kinda wonky, but stuff went where it had to go to fit. I tried putting the tie rod on top of the knuckle arms, but even at only 3mm the straight rod was dangerously close to the servo. By the time I would have gotten a 1/4" rod in there (aka 6.35 mm) the tie rod would have been sawing away at the bottom of the servo. Then I tried to move both ends below the arms, but then the tie rod was just a lot lower than I really felt comfortable with.
I wasn't really amped up on having the servo arm up in the air like it is, but the (fuzzy, sorry) pic below shows why I couldn't have it pointed down. The tie rod moves from behind the servo arm at full lock to in front of it when centered. I'm sure all it would take is simple offsets at both ends of the tie rod to fix both of those issues, but I just don't feel like doing the math. Perhaps I'll revisit the issue after I get this thing running.




So it's getting closer. One step at a time.

[Trubble]

Didn't take any pics, but late Sunday night I got the body posts all set and mounted the body. Of course, in true impatient fashion, I installed all the body posts pretty much straight up vertically. Unfortunately, it wasn't until everything was drilled (including the body), that I found out that the roofline in the rear has quite the grade to it. I should have held off with the body reamer until I laid the rear mounts back and met the body at more of a 90° angle. C'est la vie.

************************************************** *******

[big knobs]

Super cool. I'm fackin jealous right now

[Trubble]

Thanks!
Jus' tryin' ta go for the 'clean and lean' look on this one.
IMO, chassis really sets that thing off.




------------------------------------------------------------
Mini-update:

Kinda unrelated, and again, got no pics yet, but...

I've been snaggin' scrap boards from work, and I have what I think will be enough for 5 tables' worth of legs, just need to get them cut down to 36". This week I've been able to use the chop saw at work to get some more hacked down to 39", to serve as the rims (borders, skirts, not sure what the proper carpentry term is), for around the tables. Construction should turn out fairly similar to this.....\/



Then just need to get some heavy duty casters, some plywood decking for the tops and shelves, and then start designing the plywood bucks to create a 'course' on top of the tables. Then, if I can get that done decently, some chicken wire or aluminum window screen and some plaster or concrete work, and I should have something relatively close to what we ran on out in Oshkosh.

But the timetable (no pun intended) for this is set rather generously. Plans have been simmering for a couple years now. Wouldn't be surprised if it took another one to actually happen.

[Trubble]

Okay, had some time to do some fartin' around downstairs,

And this time I brought the camera with me. Enjoy.

I made the decision to do a triple joint in the power wires and not have to double up 12 ga wires on the ESCs. Started taking shape and looked like this....



Not too shabby. I'm sure there's others who can do better, but this'll work for what I need it to do.

I got to this point and had to stop........



The largest heat-shrink tubing I had was 1/4", and that was barely enough to get over two wires (with a fair amount of difficulty), no way it would have worked on three wires. So, had to make a quick run to Radio Shack for some tubing.
That got me to this point.....



I went ahead and popped open the receiver case and coiled up the antenna inside, then went to do some functional checks. I think the green LEDs on the rear ESC is burnt out. At least that's what I was hoping, anyway. Got these things installed in the receiver where I thought they should go, and went ahead and got them all calibrated, and ready to roll. Because I really didn't want to get any farther into this if my ESC was dead, I hooked up a spare motor I had lying around and checked it out. Beeps as expected on startup, throttle works as expected, just no green light on the rear ESC. Whatever.

Since I was this close and the clothes in the washer weren't done yet anyway, I went ahead and kept pluggin' along.
Now, this next pic is the stuff of nightmares. Just remember, people, functional checks..... this is not the final install.



The transmitter and I are still not getting along real well, but everything else snapped to life, first try. I wasn't able to get much done, as I had wires draped everywhere (including dragging on the ground), and most of the screws for the links didn't even have nuts on them. So I couldn't get into anything hot and heavy, but, just 'cause I love you people and want you to be happy, I shot some video so you could (if you choose), experience this wonderous creation's first steps.
Just a short video, won't take long, I promise.



Thanks for stoppin' by, and have yourself a wonderful day!




.

[SINister]

its alive!!!

[big knobs]

Super cool bud! Keep on keeping on!

[Trubble]

Thanks!
And, will do.

All I got done this past weekend was get the shrink tube around the ESCs, and reconfigure the steering.

The shrink wrap I used is some 2.5" wrap I had from back in my NiMh pack building days. It did shrink up admirably, but still isn't clean and tight looking. C'est la vie.

For the steering links, I just fell back on my old pan-car days and went with two separate rods from the servo to each knuckle. I was, however, able to get the servo horn pointed back down towards the ground, so it looks a little less goofy, and I got everything on there situated to where I can get both knuckles to full lock within the EPA limits of my radio.

Negotiations with the throttle sector were not even attempted, so still no dig function yet. I'll take another run at figuring that out when I get the motors re-connected.




And......................
In true builder fashion.......

Generis recently gave away a pretty neat looking set of stands. Congratulation to gottorque on that win.
Anywho, I was at the at the website looking up these stands when I happened upon something called the Skeleton chassis. Started watching the assembly video, an...... Ooooooooooh, ooh,ohohohohoh! And this is on top of seeing what EddieO put on Facebook late last week! Holy frick!

(sigh) Nope, gotta get my head back in the game and stay the course.

[Savagethrash]

Man that is a beautiful creation. Those ESCs are so tiny. WOW!

Great work. Keep up updated

[Trubble]

Originally Posted by Savagethrash

Man that is a beautiful creation.

Yeah, that Ringer v2.0 chassis really sets it off.

Those ESCs are so tiny. WOW!

Like I said, you see pictures all the time, but without a reference the pics really don't do them justice.

Great work. Keep up updated

Okay, mini-update.

Sadly, not much has been getting done on this machine.

The last couple weekends have been encroached by social events. The wife's union has had honor dinners for 25 and 40 year members, and she's on the board, so I went along and played the part of the 'Trophy Hubby'.

And I got a bunch of lumber into the basement, so the tables are in the works.

But I did get one small thing done. For the ESCs I was mulling over a hold-down. I had thought about either just tying them down with either fishing line or (more likely) the little stainless wires from the tags at work. Also mulled over using shrink tube as a hold-down. But in the end, I just took a piece of flat stock, painted it up so it wouldn't rust, put some heat-shrink around that (mainly for looks), and stuck some foam to the bottom of that bar. I ran a screw through said bar, and through the mounting plate. The bar rests atop the BEC, and the foam underneath just gently holds the ESCs in place.
Actually, truth be told, the power wires are doing the lion's share of the holding them in position.

And with the help of Harley's video, I was able to get the throttle sorted out, so now it looks like I should finally have a working dig function. Might have to reconnect the motor wires and give it another test run, just to make sure.

I think I'm down to just a battery mount, some better links, final routing/mounting of all the wires, and then I have to figure out what to do about paint, and it should be done.

[Trubble]

Okay, a month down the road and made no progress at all.

But I did start another project, haven't made a thread yet, but I'll give you a sneak peek......



Got my tables made, now got to get to work on making a rock course on top of them like we had in Oshkosh. Got ideas for 3 of the 5 tables.

[Trubble]

Well,

Got my first taste of driving an MOA this weekend. Wanted to make a short video showing my YouTube subscribers (up to three now!) some shots of the tables I've built. Since I despise the sound of my own voice, and dual ESCs squeal like a ************, I'm going to have to re-learn editing again, and get that soundtrack out of there.

Then I took ZeeeRowDeeee on my lame exercise equipment 'course', because that's where I was accustomed to running the Poison Dart, and I wanted to see the differences on familiar ground. Although I got pretty good at leaving 'dig doughnuts' in the carpet, I still have a way to go, and a lot to learn. Don't know if my problems were inexperience at driving an MOA, or un-tuned suspension issues. But, I ran 2-3 packs through it, and nothing broke, so I'm happy with that much.

Gotta blow it apart once more (hopefully only once more), to get some better links made. Still need to fashion a battery box of some sort. And still absolutely no idea where to go with paint.

Hope you guys managed to have decent weekends as well.
Season's Greetings!





.

[Trubble]

Originally Posted by Maxitaly

beautiful model! congratulations !!!

Thank you.

[Curcal]

Br minis have a silent mode

[Trubble]

Originally Posted by Curcal

Br minis have a silent mode

That just turns off the chirping at startup, doesn't it? The squealing I was getting was that part-throttle whine. Didn't think silent mode would fix that.



Hey, good news! Got an update comin' your way........ right now, as a matter of fact!

Bad news,....... again with the no pictures.

Good news,........ VIDEOS!

Bad news, might want to drop your volume a li'l bit. And they're not 'pro-quality' but they won't waste much of your life, either.

Gimme a minute to embed, and enjoy.

and FYI, these are available in 1080p HD, I just don't yet know how to get that to be the default when they're played.

[Curcal]

Silent mode should fix the electronic squeal. If you have any after that its mechanical.

[Trubble]

Mnnnnnn okay.
I will, at some point, look into that, thank you.



Edit:

Wow, fixed that straight away! Thank you.