Agent00111's Ridgeback

[agent00111]

I've decided to take a break from working on the Axial Wraith, far too much money spent on upgrading, breaking and fixing that thing. I'm liking the lower cost of working on a Micro!!

I've had the MTT now for a couple of months, and for stock + lipo battery, it's actually pretty fun. But this last week was a good time to add some upgrades, so here's what I've done this week:

RC4WD Beadlocks
Rok Lox tires (Miclaws are in, waiting to do Danally mod)
Added bb's to wheels, 40 in fronts, 20 in rears
Blade Ridgeback chassis
Danally Predator 100T motor
HS-65MG servo (stock servo moved to back for upcoming 4WS)

All I gotta say, is that the ridgeback chassis and 100T predator motor have really transformed this in a buttery smooth crawler. So buttery I think my cholesterol level just increased.





Ridgeback was really not difficult at all to put together. Which is funny because you basically get a bag 'o parts with no instructions. Fortunately, there's some good threads in this forum on building the ridgeback chassis.

For me, biggest help was starting with Dockman's link measurements as a starting reference, since the Ridgeback really needs some length and his measurements have good geometry. I build reference links (just ends and threaded rod, no aluminum sleeves or bends) to start off, then adjusted from there.

Dockmans link measurements:
T-buck's RidgeBack Topless

For the most part, I stuck with these lengths, but stretched out the rear (55mm upper, 58mm lower) after added servo to rear for 4WS. Otherwise, the rear chassis would hit rear servo on compression.


Articulation is really smooth with no binding. Never thought I'd say this, but I think I have too much articulation now that I've taken her out to the rocks.



Predator 100T motor? HOLY COW! Best $30 I've spent on this thing! Excellent low end, so smooth and great torque. This plus the Ridgeback is magical.


Okay, so onto some fancy pants stuff. I made my own side panels out of 0.6mm lexan panels. This stuff was a bit on the thick side, if I made them again I'd use much thinner lexan. I'm still noodling on how to bend lexan for the top and to make custom hood, but when finished, I want my micro to look a little like my wraith:



Adding the side panels really provides some solid reinforcement for the delrin chassis.

Next, I cut out some aluminum tubing to cover the nylon posts used for the Ridgeback chassis. Just cause.



Also, I added extra posts in the nose and tail in between the ball post screws for the upper shocks. This adds a little more rigidity and covers up the exposed threads on the inside:



For the links, after I was happy with the geometry and length, I used 1/8" aluminum tubing over the althread and then bent my links. I didn't remeasure my links, since I was bending all 8 links so any difference in length was not material. For lower links, I used 30deg bends, for uppers, I did a slight bow-out to clear the shock springs on twist. (I've gotta re think this, since I'm getting a little tire bind on these).






Happy to say that this is off the bench on the rocks. Still have a few more items to work on this week:

1) Install Sidewinder Micro ESC (tight fit!) and de-cased SR300 3ch rx for switchable 4WS
2) add miclaws to stock wheels, danally mod to widen these out.
3) finish lexan hood and roof. Honestly, without a hood, I'm really having a hard time figgerin' out front from back now that I've got the rear servo on.

[DANALLY]

You do nice work. Super clean. It's gunna be a performer with the Miclaws on there!

You may need a trailer behind it to hold all the electronics and battery!

[Black Rock]

Looking good. What's your wheel base?

[agent00111]

Originally Posted by Black Rock

Looking good. What's your wheel base?

Wheelbase is 5.5", nut to nut. Using Dockman's link sizes, I was 5.36", but I stretched out the rear links to clear the rear servo.

[agent00111]

After strong consideration of making a new chassis out of derlin, or carbon fiber, my 4 year old and I agreed that for cost savings, we'd work with play-dooh for our new chassis.

While we both liked the colors, we found that the frame had too much flex, and the articulation was very poor. Well stick with the crawlerx ridgeback for now, but may venture out to expore new options in lego at some point.

[rapttor]

Do you sell that chasis ? Its just so COOL !

[Slambaam]

hmmmm playdou may make a great course to crawl in? what do u guys think?

[rapttor]

Nah,it's WAYYYY too soft.You will probably have all the playdoh stich to your tires...but there's someting in my mind,playdoh for tires ?

[agent00111]

CrawlerX ridgeback + Danally 100T motor + Miclaw tires. Why don't I just wrap my micro in bacon while I'm at it?? Finished with the miclaws last night, not enough time to take them out to the rocks, but the tires really got me over some indoor obstacles I've never been able to clear.



Man, my fingers hurt after doing that Danally cut and flip mod! Stock wheels were looking a bit ratty after that, so I etched them up and sprayed them with shake can of Pactra black paint. The black wheels and oversized tires remind me of my 2.2 VP SSZ stars with pitbull rockbeast tires.

I'm expecting some chipping on the paint, but the inside wheel wheel is pretty protected by the fakey beadlock ring, so we'll see how long that lasts.

With the miclaws and Danally mod, my width (outside lug to outside lug) is now 4.5", which is a pretty beefy stance. I'm having some issues with the big tires binding on the upper front links. I could trim EPA's, but with the long wheelbase, I already have a big turning radius (and 4WS is waiting on Sidewinder Micro to come in this week). For now what I did was create some test upper links (allthread only, no tubes) with a high 70deg bend to give some more clearance for the miclaws. For the most part, that's works just fine. There's a little more lateral slop when I do this, not sure if that's because the new uppers are not rigid enough with the high bend.




ETC:

1. Added HR aluminum tranny case and cover, and aluminum spur gear. That absolutely fixed this nasty wobble I had in my drive shafts.
2. I'm now using dual-lock velcro to stick the battery to the rear servo. The dual lock stuff is nice: low profile, clean, and very stable. 'Furry' velcro just felt sloppy.
3. I had made my front lower links with a 30deg bend. While having bent lowers for the rear very much helped from getting hung up on the link before the rear tire could connect, bending the front links for clearance not only didn't help, it made thinks worse since once the front tires clear a rock, without the links to slide on I was getting hung up on the lower front chassis corner. So what I did was remove that 30deg bend, and added two lateral bends so that my links are flat from the side, but the two bends help the rod ends connect to ball ends at right angles.

[agent00111]

The longer wheelbase really suffers on turning radius, but nothing that 4WS can't fix. I really wanted dynamic 4WS (not always-on 4WS) since I want to switch back and forth between front wheel steer and 4WS. Crab is cool for about 10 seconds: Looks neat, but I couldn't see it being as practical as front weel steer and 4WS.

Since I want to control steering mix from the transmitter, the stock ESC/RX combo had to be replaced. I'm using a Spektrum DX3C so my RX had to be Spektrum. They have a really small micro, but I had an extra full size SR300 rx which when decased and trimmed (cutting out some non-used PCB), it's pretty comperable to the decased stock ESC/RX. The challenge here was that I wanted this as flat as possible and with the connectors perpendicular to the PCB, I had to desolder the pins off of the PCB so I could solder some connector pigtails. I ended up using 3pin Deans Micro connectors for the front and rear servo, and a longer JR servo pigtail for the throttle:



After adding LiquidTape all over the rx, I immediately regret not pre-soldering leads for batt/bind. Hope I don't need a BEC or change radios anytime soon.

For the ESC, I went with the Castle Sidewinder Micro. The Tekin B1R would have been much smaller, but I like the idea of using the Castle field programmer card for changing configuration without a laptop.

Sidewinder Micro is basically a de-cased Mamba Micro without a heatsink. So while I don't have to de-case this, it's a wiring nightmare out of the box. Here's what it looks like nex to decased stock ESC and with the SR300 rx (pre-solder) taped to it:



So clearly the wiring needs to be cleaned up for use in my micro. Before I mucked around with soldering, first think I did was tack on some temp connectors and test all the electronics for 4WS. Looks great, huh?



Okay, now that I know that it works fine out of box, let's toss that warranty out the window. I removed the existing bullet-terminated motor leads, and used a smaller pigtail with the micro connector for the motor. Then I routed all the cables out one ends instead of both ends, so it's easier to route in the ridgeback cage:




To get both the rx and esc to fit, I first put the rx between the middle and rear 'rib' of the ridgeback. It then sits lower enough (and the two capacitors fit nicely facing downward and next to the motor) that the esc can slide over on top of it. Here's what it looks like 'stacked' before I assemble in the chassis:



The micro deans connectors are glued to the PCB so it's easy to connect the servos.

All cleaned up, here's what it looks like:

[agent00111]

Just a few changes over the weekend:

I painted the top curved delrin rods to match my wraith (scuffed the delrin with sandpaper and used pactra paint). Also I resoldered the battery lead on the Sidewinder Micro for parallel batteries. with 2x240mah 2S lipos, that's alotta battery life! BWD wheel washers added. Big hole rings inside all four, and 2x solid washers front, 1x small hole washer rear. The socket head screws can definitely snag on rocks. What I did was for the 2nd ring, drill the holes wider so they sit around the screw heads and I CA glue the 2nd ring to the first ring. That way the screw heads are flushed with 2nd ring, no snaggies. I did this for rears also, but in pics below I took them off temporarily; I think I've got too much weight in the rear now.




Whooa...waaay too much articulation. Crawls like a sloppy joe, and I'm falling into too many gaps in rocks. Tune that down, charlie brown!


With Wraith:

[Sh0rtBus]

Looks like that TT's come a long way, man! Good stuff. I'm sure they're great on a comp-style crawler, but I'm wondering if the Miclaws would work right (read look right) on a scaler.

Also think I'm about to pull the trigger on a Predator for more torque, too. Question is 90T or 100T. Either way of course will be in the stock chassis.

[agent00111]

I really like the 100T predator motor. I'm running miclaws with BB's and BWD washers, and have plenty of torque. Yeah, do don't think the miclaws would be a great scale look IMHO. I like RC4WD rok lox for better scale look. I'd like to post a video sometime soon of my micro on the rocks, but as for now I have no talent whatsoever in holding radio and iphone camera at same time.

I'd say if you're going scale, 90T is plenty. 100T is dandy for miclaws and more comp-crawler feel.

Here are rok lox on RC4WD beadlocks:

[Sh0rtBus]

Interested in selling that wheel & tire set-up?

[agent00111]

Originally Posted by Sh0rtBus

Interested in selling that wheel & tire set-up?

Nah, I'm keeping that for my next micro build (scale JKU to match my 1:1). I didn't see many other good beadlocks out there. I've seen some BWD beadlocks folks have but I don't see those on the BWD website anymore.

[Sh0rtBus]

Have you found a micro sized JKU body yet? Also, pics of your JKU?

Are you on JKOwners, Jeep Asylum, etc.?

[agent00111]

Originally Posted by Sh0rtBus

Have you found a micro sized JKU body yet? Also, pics of your JKU?

Are you on JKOwners, Jeep Asylum, etc.?

I'm on JK-forum only, but rarely there, moarly on rcc.

Here's my rubicon:



Welly makes a good looking 1:24 JK, but looks like that's dicast, not sure if the body is metal or just the bottom. Yeah, still looking for JKU though. I think I'd have to use crawlerX chassis below to size length correctly.

BLADE SMC 4.5 EX [SMC4.5] - $42.89 : Crawler X, Rock Crawler Parts

[Sh0rtBus]

I was on JK-Forum for a while.....until I got banned for arguing with Bondsy (mod) over the mere mention of sPod.

Here's my 1:1 Rubi ShortBus

[agent00111]

Youtube vide-yo!

Crawlerx Ridgeback Micro - YouTube

Testing out some links on the rocks.

[Sh0rtBus]

That thing's just sick! Looks like it wasn't having any trouble at all.