Redcat Gen7 Sport project

[Jim85IROC]

Based on a quick once-over and a short drive around the house, I already have a good idea of how I'm going to approach the upgrades. The vehicle has a number of shortcomings that I'm going to need to address. Some will be easier than others, but most look like they'll be inexpensive (or free). Before I make any changes, I'll drive it like it is to establish a baseline. So far, the issues that I see are that there isn't a lot of articulation, the rear driveshaft bottoms before the suspension does, the bumpers stick out too far, but moving the front one back will cause tire interference, the servo seems somewhat torquey but is SLOW, but I'm hoping at least part of it is the voltage sag from an uncharged nimh battery. But overall, the biggest issue is the lousy steering throw. This thing needs a LOT of room to turn. Other notables are the plastic lockers, plastic trans gears, and the lack of a slipper. I could almost overlook the plastic locker & trans gears if there was a slipper to protect it. It may sound like a lot of issues, but I think that for $200, this is a pretty good truck overall, and should make a great budget rig. There are a lot of plusses too. Good overall build quality, surprisingly good wheels/tires/foams, metal links, and solid electronics. I think that once I address the majority of the shortcomings that this is going to be a great truck for a somewhat small investment.

[Jim85IROC]

Near term upgrade plans are to start with the steering. I need to trim the steering stops, and move the tie rod away from the diff housing. I have CVAs on the way, but I want to see how much turning I can get with the dogbones before I replace them. I have a Turnigy MG959 v2 servo for it, but I want to see how the stock one does with a lipo battery and the other steering mods. I've got some cheap BECs that I want to try out too. I need to pull the bumpers in and trim them, trim the rear drive shaft, and countersink the trans bolts in the skid plate. Beyond that, a better pinion will go in, I'll upgrade to metal lockers, install the CVAs, install a slipper clutch, and deal with any breakages or other weak points. Long term, I want to improve articulation by improving the suspension geometry and finding shocks with more throw.

[EZCompany]

Nice rig. Thinking about picking one up myself.
A member in facebook group I'm in did some mods to his steering using scx10 knuckles and chubs. Says he got quite a bit more throw. He moved the servo foward on its mount and flipped the tie rod and drag link so the tie rod is above the drag link and behind the servo horn. Wish I could show some of his pics.

[Jim85IROC]

Originally Posted by EZCompany

Nice rig. Thinking about picking one up myself.
A member in facebook group I'm in did some mods to his steering using scx10 knuckles and chubs. Says he got quite a bit more throw. He moved the servo foward on its mount and flipped the tie rod and drag link so the tie rod is above the drag link and behind the servo horn. Wish I could show some of his pics.

I saw that. It looks like he had to do a number on those chubs to get them to fit. He also totally relocated the tie rod. I'm going to be taking a much more low-budget approach, at least at first. I'm going to see how much room I can get between the tie rod and diff by switching to angled rod ends. Between that and trimming the steering stops away I'm hoping to get a much better steering angle. Until I switch to CVAs, I'm not sure how much more angle I'll be able to use anyway.

My goal, at least initially, is to see how good I can make this truck for under $300 all-in.

[Shinchu]

nice thread. very interested to see how capable this rig is, on a realistic and appropriate budget.

[Jim85IROC]

Last night I put up my review/project kickoff video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cnCIb__0g64

[Natedog]

I checked em out at RPP Jamboree and watched them running the course with me, I'm pleasantly surprised that they did pretty well right out of the box. Saw them take some serious tumbles and nothing broken either, seems like good budget 1.9 rig.

[Jim85IROC]

I have all of my upgrades done and videod. I got the first video edited and up on Youtube today. This is the "free-ish" upgrade video where I address mostly random items that can be improved at little or no cost.

https://youtu.be/Lir_rGpr0b0

[Jim85IROC]

The video won't be up for a while, but I also did some cosmetic upgrades with the same vinyl wrap I used on my Bomber.

[Jim85IROC]

My first two videos of the upgrade series are posted.

Video one is the "Free-ish" upgrades. This video includes repositioning the shocks, trimming the driveshaft, moving and trimming the bumpers and countersinking the transmission screws. Total investment for this video: $2 (If you don't already have some countersunk screws hanging around), which brings the total vehicle cost to $202.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lir_rGpr0b0&t=113s

The 2nd video is the "Durability" video. In this video I replaced the stock plastic lockers with the HSP 180009 metal lockers, which cost $17/pair. While I was in the front axle, I also replaced the dogbones with the 188015 Redcat CVDs at $15. That brings this video's investment to $32. That brings the total vehicle cost so far to $234.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lir_rGpr0b0&t=113s

[mulchman]

Could you list the height and width of the tires. I've looked everywhere and can't find any info on the tires.
Thanks for any info.

Wayne

[daver18qc]

Originally Posted by mulchman

Could you list the height and width of the tires. I've looked everywhere and can't find any info on the tires.

Measured on mine :
Height : 116-118mm
Width : 44-45mm
Thread depth : middle 3mm, sides 5mm

[Jim85IROC]

A couple quick pics of the truck from out in the wild:

[Eli.]

Originally Posted by Jim85IROC

I saw that. It looks like he had to do a number on those chubs to get them to fit. He also totally relocated the tie rod. I'm going to be taking a much more low-budget approach, at least at first. I'm going to see how much room I can get between the tie rod and diff by switching to angled rod ends. Between that and trimming the steering stops away I'm hoping to get a much better steering angle. Until I switch to CVAs, I'm not sure how much more angle I'll be able to use anyway.



My goal, at least initially, is to see how good I can make this truck for under $300 all-in.

Harley design has a video posted showing how to make vanquish C’s if the gen 7. Looks like a decent amount of dremel work.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Jim85IROC]

Originally Posted by Eli.

Harley design has a video posted showing how to make vanquish C’s if the gen 7. Looks like a decent amount of dremel work.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

His video dismissed the installation because it's not a true "bolt on". It looks like trimming the screw pads down and slotting the holes a little bit is about all it takes, but still not a bolt on for sure. Considering how much the Vanquish parts cost, I honestly don't see a lot of people going that route on a budget crawler like the Gen7 anyway. I know that's not the route I'll be taking. If I upgrade the chubs & knuckles, it'll almost certainly be to the aluminum HSP parts. They are a direct bolt-on, and they're super cheap.

[Jim85IROC]

I finally was able to finish editing my steering video last night to post. I filmed most of this a few weeks ago (back when some of the stuff I was doing was "new"), but with deer season here, I haven't had time to finish the editing and to take the couple more pieces of video I needed until now.

Overall this steering upgrade is similar to what others are doing, but I did it all one step at a time to see what effect each change made, I started with trimming the stops off of the knuckles and showing how this resulted in the tie rod contacting the diff housing. Next I used offset links to raise the tie rod up. This gave more clearance around the diff housing. Next I countersunk the chub screws to allow the knuckles to turn even more, but found out that the dogbones limited any additional travel. Once the CV axles were installed, there was more turning in one direction, but in the other direction the servo arm reached full extension before the knuckles contacted the chub screws. I lengthened the servo arm by using a longer end link (and adjusting the steering trim to compensate), which helped, but the next hurdle was that even with the steering dual rate maxxed out on the controller, there wasn't enough degrees of turning from the servo. To fix that issue, I installed a longer steering arm. With all of those changes, I had enough steering that the CVAs were starting to get notchy at full lock, which indicates that I was able to get absolutely as much steering as possible out of this vehicle without major changes. For a total investment of $11, I'd say it was a huge success!

Here's the video below. I think that this video will be very helpful for anybody with a Gen7 that wants better steering, which I would assume would be just about everybody.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/OOMPsHpXpbg

Edited to provide a direct link, because once again, the embedded videos aren't working. :-/

[Jim85IROC]

This past weekend I finally replaced the stock servo with the Turnigy MG959v2 that I bought back before I even got the truck. To be honest, I was satisfied with the stock servo's performance, but I wanted to try out this new servo so I threw it in.

It's about the same speed or slightly faster than the stock servo, and has about 2x the torque. So far I haven't experienced any brown-outs so I haven't installed a BEC. So far it seems like a real nice servo for the money.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/DoCbOVu6DZU

Edited because embed doesn't work today.

[jlwatchman]

Doesn't the Pro version come stock with metal lockers and CVDs?

[Jim85IROC]

Originally Posted by jlwatchman

Doesn't the Pro version come stock with metal lockers and CVDs?

Yes it does.

[jlwatchman]

Originally Posted by Jim85IROC

Yes it does.

How come you didn't go with that instead of getting the Sport and upgrading those parts? Just curious.