Project best X frame saved thanks to cman_1500w

[TXTFUN]

I dont have a fancy CAD program so I whipped this up in paint. I meant the 1st reduction gear goes directly onto the shaft with no uni in between.

[NeoSlayer888]

I love your picture especially the sun

I like your idea but just like my design, I don’t think it will work. If you look at my picture, you can see how little space there is between the output shaft and spur gear. I have another idea though. The only thing I need to know is on your (TXTFUN) truck how long is your skid plate the one under your batteries and motors?

[cman_1500w]

awwwww, what a cute picture!

TXTFUN, I don't think with your idea the reducers would clear the spur gear on a emaxx tranny. They would have to mount further out on the tranny like Neo's design. Have you made any progress on your rig so far? I'm curious for some pics.

Neo: I think you idea will/can work! If there's a will there's a way! Here's another thought too. With Kong tires you can make up for any loss in ground clearance you may get with this type of design. On my truck I get over 6" of clearance with the Kongs which is a bit too much. Lowering the tranny closer to the ground to have only 3" clearance with say bft tires will still net 4" clearance with Kongs......give or take. Then again the wheelbase would have to be longer to get any use outta the kongs so the decreased clearance would make it more likely to get hung up in the middle......hmmmmm :?

[NeoSlayer888]

I could have sworn that I posted this picture, guess not so here it is:

The first red thing is a reducer and the second is a motor.

I like your Kong idea but it won’t work for me. I don’t have enough $$ for the Kong’s so I will be running my $36 LST’s. When you say 6+” of clearance is too much is that because it is to top heavy? The only realistic way of lowering the clearance is to move the 4-links back to their stock position below the axle. But like you said that would increase the chance of getting hung up.

[cman_1500w]

Yea thats what i mean....sorta. Right now I have the tranny mounted upright like everyone else so with +6" ground clearance it puts the motor too high. What you said about moving the links to below the axle is not what i meant all together. I meant to lower the whole tranny. This middle section could be lowered 1-2" and not adversely affect the clearance.....IF you ran Kongs. The loss in tranny clearnace would be made up by the height from the Kongs. IF, the tranny was lowered an additional 1-2" your 'driveshaft angle' would improve. This ~2" loss in clearance would be made up by the tires. Of course the links would have to be changed also b/c the geometry of the 4link would be altered. Hope this is making sense....


I don't think I've seen that pic so far. I see a problem however. On the side where the spur gear is, what is holding the driveashaft up where the short slider meets the long one? There should be a support there otherwise the sliders would flop around.


Also, about that pic. For some reason I was thinking with your idea you were going to get gear reduction out of what you called the 'reducers.' That way you wouldn't have to run a gd-600 or other type of gear reduction at the motor and have more space for battery placement.

[NeoSlayer888]

Yea, sorry for my stupid post I had been up for 19+ hours when I typed it.

I think I got you now but not quite. Would the tranny just be mounted lower in the frame? Or would the links be mounted high up in the frame? I kinda followed you until you mentioned the 4-link geometry changing. Also, this is just an opinion but isn’t the extra clearance offered by Kong’s the whole point of them. I mean if the clearance is too much why not just run smaller tires?

As for the picture, I did post the wrong one. It should have had a brace between the two U-joints. Like you said my original plan was to use “reducers” that ran of the tranny and not the motors. The problem with that was the added bulk could not justify the reduction and better driveshaft angle.

So the new R&D direction is motor mounted gear reduction. The first problem I tackled was the drive shafts on each side would not be equal. That is why there is the bar that connects the tranny to the drive shafts on the opposite side of the spur gear. Now for the batteries the current plan is to run them on the side of the frame in a saddle pack configuration or to mount them above the motors bellow the drive shafts.

[cman_1500w]

heh heh! I do the same thing staying up long hours and then trying to post! lol!

Sorry, guess I could have been clearer in explaining that. Went back and read it and realized it could have been misconstrued. Pictures are worth a thousand words!.........here's pic

#1. Here we have 4" tranny clearance. Notice the steep driveshaft angles however.

#2: Here the tranny section is dropped lower for only 3" tranny clearance. Gives better driveshaft angles. Notice the difference in link geometry compared to pic 1 (like what i said in previous post...) May or may not change depending on your final design....I just wanted to illustrate the possibility that the link geometry MIGHT change.

#3: With Kongs. Using the idea from pic 2 with Kong tires. Here the height is made up for with the Kongs. Takes advantage of the better driveshaft angles from pic 2 and no loss in clearnace compared to pic 1.




Note: ALL pics use inverted tranny with motor(s) & battery at the bottom.

I know the pic is rough and not totally to scale, but I hope it illustrates what i'm trying to get across.

I realize there are probably million other variables to consider but I just wanted to illusttrate the fact that ground clearnace with this design does not have to be an issue really.....if you run Kongs. Heck, TXTFUN was able to achieve 4" ground clearance with his TXT based crawler. With the width and strength of our X-axles I think Kongs are a MUST for the perfect X-factor frame! With the idea from pic 3 above you could have an X-F crawler with MAXIMUM Tire clearance, SUPER low COG, decent driveshaft angles, and decent tranny clearnace at ~4". What more could you ask for?

[TXTFUN]

I didn't realise that tranny has an external spur gear, that does make it a little more difficult.

I got my mods done but wasn't happy with the servo mounts. Being behind the axle actually gets hung up on more snags that in front so I gotta do them again. I've had a few things on lately but finishing the mods and getting that vid done are definately still on the cards.

Neoslayer my skidplate is 20cm long about 8" I think.

I trimmed the chassis down to only what is needed and used some smaller rails, made new links to suit with bends in them to clear the driveshafts and servos.

Upper shocks are mounted differently now which made them firmer so I had to use 1 softer spring on the front right to keep it flexing even but I now an adjust the ride height from 3-5" by switching their mounting holes.

I started to make a new skid pan from fibreglass and got half way through and realised it wasn't going to be much lighter but not as strong as the aluminium one so I just painted the bottom of the old one with fibreglass resin so I still had the slippery skid area which makes a fair bit of difference believe it or not.

Here's some pics for now anyways.

[cman_1500w]

Ohhhh, Man!!!! That looks sweet! Chassis looks great! I like how you simplified it too!

Sux about the steering setup you made. I know what it's like to put all this work into something and have it not meet expectations. I've heard that setup works great with the x-axles tho. Seems to me if you mounted the bottom link on the top of the knuckle and put the servo link on top of that it might give better clearance. Might have to move the servo a bit. It's just an idea I had from looking at the pics, so I don't know if it would actually work. I'll find a pic of this setup I saw on an x axle. Right now I'm at school so I'll post it up later tonight.

Here's another idea I had, do you think flipping the chassis around will make the cog better. That way the batterie would be up front for better weight distribution. Or do the motors weigh more than the batt?

I can't wait to get started on mine! Gonna be a while tho b/c school is kicking my butt!

Keep up the GREAT work!!!!

I can't wait for the vid!

[cman_1500w]

ok, the steering i had in mind is in fact, really similar to your setup. Guess I remembered wrong

[TXTFUN]

Thanks cman, I was going to make some bent steering links so I could put them above th knuckles and not hit anything but found that the servo itself gets caught just as much. It's pretty much raised up as far as it goes if you look at the stretching pic you can see I had to bend the upper link as it was for clearance. If the lower links were still on the bottom of the axles they could be used as slides for it all but with them on the top it's all too exposed. I'll probably get the grinder out on the weekend and fab up something to stick it back out front.

The battery weighs a little more than the motors but to reverse it I would need to run the motors backwards which doesn't work all the best. I also seem to think heaps of weight at the front isn't always the best thing because when your climbing steep steps the truck becomes top heavy and the front tends to slide sideways causing a rollover where as if its down the back it keeps it more stable so you can use a bit more momentum if needed. Just my 2 cents and I know a lot of people would disagree but I recon it's best to have fairly neutral weight distribution.

[NeoSlayer888]

Wow TXTFUN looken good. I also like the simplified frame. Very inspiritional, but

Gonna be a while tho b/c school is kicking my butt!

I have the same feeling. Junior year at high school has the workload of 5x softmore years. No time of AutoCAD outside of school.

[cman_1500w]

Originally Posted by TXTFUN

The battery weighs a little more than the motors but to reverse it I would need to run the motors backwards which doesn't work all the best. I also seem to think heaps of weight at the front isn't always the best thing because when your climbing steep steps the truck becomes top heavy and the front tends to slide sideways causing a rollover where as if its down the back it keeps it more stable so you can use a bit more momentum if needed. Just my 2 cents and I know a lot of people would disagree but I recon it's best to have fairly neutral weight distribution.

Ya know I have noticed this same thing about the front sliding around climbing steep obstacles. My rig is setup similar to a txt with the battery up front over the links. It's like when it starts to slide sideways going uphill, the weight of the front mounted battery seems to make it uncontrollable. It's like the front end has a harder time fighting gravity as when it leans over.....with the batt up front.

I've thought about this subject alot and I think lower is better. Your setup with the battery down on the skid is the best setup I've seen. Man I can't wait to do mine up like that!

Thanks for all the tips so far! You'll be remembered as one of the forefathers in the revolution of the shaftie!!!!

[NeoSlayer888]

Yea, free time thank you three day weekend.



The red rectangles represent the motors and inline reducers that RCAlloys makes adapters for. If someone knows the name of the reducers I am talking about please tell me. The batteries are based on 3300mAh cells which have a diameter of .91”. The yellow rectangle is a Super Rooster. The two big circles are tires. The inner one is a LST and the outer one is a Kong. FYI everything is to scale. The biggest problem I see is once again the driveshaft angle. Please post opinions and possible problems.

Also a question for TXTFUN. Do you think an adjustable battery position would be an advantage? I am thinking along the line of having space for 8 cells but only running 6. They use the same concept in touring cars so you can have the weight upfront, center, or towards the back.

[NeoSlayer888]

Just added the two extra cell positions but am to lazy to upload the picture. The measurement for the battery skid with 8 cells is 7.7142” instead of 7.53” for the 6 cells. To imagine the size look at the lowest point of the red joint in the outer U-joints. The 8 cell skid is just .184” longer than the mentioned point.

[NeoSlayer888]

Like the new thread title says. This is the finial concept for component placements. I could keep tweaking and coming up with new concepts but then the frame would never be built. Next I will draw some axles to figure out the 4-link and other suspension things. I want to be building an actual frame by Christmas.

[cman_1500w]

That looks really great man! Can't wait to see the final setup! Keep up the good R&D! It should really speed things up for when it comes time to start building.

Hopefully by Christmas I can have my chassis designed and built as well.

I like the moveable battery positions, it should make it more versatile and help in adjustability.

All those dimensions look really good. The tranny clearance is good imo too. I like the battery placement where it's under the tranny. Simplifies things. I thought about this too. I'll try it out when I'm designing mine. I was thinking if you put a hinge on it it would make it easy to swap batteries. Secure it with a body clip but put the post for the clip on the inside of the chassis so it doesn't get hit on the rocks and the battery flops out.

Will you be running Kongs with this design?

[NeoSlayer888]

Double Post

[NeoSlayer888]

I was thinking the same thing about the battery hinging. I have a few idea floting around in my head about how to impliment the hinge. As for the Kongs I plan on running them eventially. Like you said they are needed for the ultimanite X-factor. Could be a while tho, just the gear reducers I plan on running cost +$60 for the pair plus the cost of RCALLOYS adaptors. Also looks like I could get a adjustable wheelbase from 16" - 19".

FYI this thread has 1400+ views :P :P

[TXTFUN]

The only downside I've found about my design (not trying to beat my own drum too much) is that I can't use a standard pack so have to solder them to the shape that fits, so having them under is a plus in that respect but I think you'll find you'll want around 4 1/2 - 5" of centre clearance which you should be able to get cause while in the drawings those uni's look maxed out, they should be able to run at a higher angle than that.

Moving the battery probably wont make much difference if it's only by an inch or so and I think you'll find the best place for it and end up leaving it there.

The drawing look good so time to get to the cuttin and lets go crush some clods