ECX 1/24 barrage ghetto fab

[Toyotarc]

Well so let's start with the god awful battery life in this little guy. Drive like 5-10min and it's battery is toast and has to use a USB charger for it lol.

I picked up a 1200mah 5cell 6.0v Traxxas battery to hopefully give it more power and much longer battery life. Now the battery fit on top of the servo and resting a little on the transmission which is fine with me, but the problem is the body posts were to short and I couldn't fit it.

I was digging through my parts bin when I found my old 1/12 barrage body posts which I ended up deciding these were the only ones that might work. I skipped a lot of pictures of the process because my phone was dead. What I ended up doing was chopping the posts just over half the height they were originally and drilling a small hole in the bottom of them that i think 2mm drill bit I used. Then i had some extra hex head screws laying around that would thread perfect in the bottom of the post. Here hopefully is a picture to help show the final product.

[Toyotarc]

Well took a few edits to finally get pictures to show up but I got it now.

Heres with the battery installed now.



Heres the height of it now with the body lift



The front is weighed down from the battery so I might look into some how making them more stiff. Battery life is sweet now, problem is its got still no torque!

Spur of the moment I ordered a new RC4WD Gelande 1/18 v2 transmission which apparently has more reduction so hopefully produce some torque! From what I read the output shafts are the same as the barrage so should be a fairly easy swap just fab up some motor mount on the new one. I will post again when I get it.

[Brake Weight]

That is ghetto AF. LOL. Let us know how that tranny works out as I don't think anyone has put one in yet. I'm running an HBX (Sumo) tranny and it's very slow. I like it slow though, but a little more speed would be welcome.

[1tuffmj]

The v2 is a very popular swap.but the shafts are not the same.stock is D shaped and v2 is completely round.thats an easy fix with a dremel.but then the out out of the trans is too long.but it is an awesome swap when done

[Toyotarc]

Still waiting on my package(hoping by Friday). I figured out today wpl driveshafts from a c24 are 3mm shaft round, and being metal would be a nice upgrade but the problem is the axle requires a D shape shaft. Not sure if it would be worth trying to make a driveshaft with one half ecx and other of the metal wpl for the tranny.

Edit: well I think I'm going to use the whole wpl metal driveshaft and make a tiny flat spot on the axle output where it's round. Then I can avoid trying to adapt the ecx driveshaft to half of the wpl. Sounds like the best idea so far. Won't touch anything till I get the tranny first though.

[Toyotarc]

Finally got this tranny and the mini rc4wd 30 motor it comes with...

heres a comparison of the barrage to the rc4wd



Another view, the rc4wd is much smaller and shorter which is perfect to gain some room!



First things first is to cut down the output shaft as its too long. I cut it as close as I could to the hole for the driveshaft screw.



After that I took a flat file and made a flat spot on the output shaft so the ECX driveshaft fits without modifications. Decided to not use the wpl metal shafts as it would of been more work and not sure if it would be worth it.



do the same for the other side of the output shaft and BAM! you got driveshafts mounted!

[Toyotarc]

Now the motor mounts on the RC4WD tranny is on the sides so I had to fab up some brackets for them. Now it might be hard to visualize right now how its going to look but these brackets will go on the outside of the frame and bolt through the frame to the center skid plate.

Heres a nice shot of drill them holes...



Now the two side holes will be the holes that go through the frame to the skid and the middle holes will be the motor mounts. The motor only requires two screws but I made a few extra holes for the hell of it in case I want to raise it or something.



Did a quick fit up of the brackets, were a good fit. Try not to look how some of the holes are not straight



Did a quick paintjob on them with the only black paint I have which is glossy but oh well



Heres this puppy bolted up to oneside. The left side I need some longer screws to make the motor mount bracket work but it its 99% finished!



So far this seems like a very good swap because now the motor/tranny is much lower than before which leaves some real estate for my battery so its not ghetto LOL.



Heres the battery mounted now. Looks soo much better now that the battery sits flat instead of at an angle.



Did a quick test run and HOLY! The torque and crawl control is WAYYYYY BETTER! The only downside is the speed has decreased, but I thought it was way to fast stock so it doesn't bother me. OH did I mention this thing doesn't stall now when trying to crawl up obstacles?! what a difference.

[Toyotarc]

Also I forgot to mention that I had to chop each of the driveshafts around 1/4" as they were fully compressed and binding up the drivetrain.

[Brake Weight]

Thanks. Now I’ll need one of those, too.

[Toyotarc]

I'm tossing around the idea of fabbing up some boat slides to hide the view of the underside a little better. With the body lift I did at the start it definitely exposes more of the underside unfortunately.

Hardest part will be some how trying to fasten the boat sides to the frame. 1/24 scale defiantly doesn't leave a lot of spare room. What I might do is drill some extra holes in the center skid and JB weld a nut on the top so it would be quick to remove these if needed. Later tonight I'll see if I have time to drill some holes and JB weld a nut and let it cure overnight, hopefully Tom start messing around with the welder

[Toyotarc]

So I haven't got to the boatsides yet, but I did fix the approach angle for the front bumper.

So heres a shot of the bumper hanging a mile out from the body. I intend to bring it in a little



Here is the drill bits I'll be using, the 1/16 first and go over it with the 5/64 drill bit.



Kinda a crappy picture I got but I went a 1/4" over from the first hole to hopefully move the hole bumper back 1/4"



Heres the final shot, finished and moved 1/4" back. Looks like a proper bumper now. Defiantly looks like it made a good difference.



Later I might go grab some thing guage steel to do the boatsides as I don't have any left at my house.

[Toyotarc]

Well slight problem, now I got tire rub on the bumper. New plan will be bring the bumper out enough so the back of it has clearance for the body. Probably makes no sense right now reading this junk but I will make some brackets to raise the bumper up enough so the top of the bumper is flush with the headlight level. That will fix the tire rub and gain more clearance.

Heres the brackets I drilled, little 3/4"by 3/4" piece



Bent up some offsets in them so the stock bumper spacing works. Looks pretty ghetto but that's the stuff I do



Here is the brackets installed and new bumper height( did a quick black paintjob on them) Lots of clearance now!



Heres another shot from when I was talking about getting bumper flush with headlight



I'd say it was worth it. Gained lots of approach angle which will help climbing the furniture and stuff

[Toyotarc]

Well finally started up these sides, marked out a 2x6" piece I measured out on 22 gauge steel. Used tin snips to cut it out as noted in the picture.



Here is the now cut 2x6" steel piece and now marked out to trim for the center skid which it will be attached on.



Rough cut out of it



Bent up 90's as required, will be doing a offset later



Another rough picture of how it will look



Attempting to make the offsets out to the body



Here's it done with the offset I wanted. Still have to file it down and throw some paint on it.



Painted and a more closer to finishing picture.



So a shot mounted, not to sure how I feel about it. I think it looks better than staring at the motor mounts atleast. Thinking of maybe extending the metal along the frame to the front bumper to cover more of the "under hood" junk. Oh also I managed to burn the body on the other side than shown in the picture below being a retard yesterday so the body is kinda shriveled up so I'm not going to post a picture of that side yet



Also like to share as you guys already know, I like posting tons of pictures, sometimes more than necessary lol. Better than posting just the final product I guess.

[Natedog]

Originally Posted by Toyotarc

Well slight problem, now I got tire rub on the bumper. New plan will be bring the bumper out enough so the back of it has clearance for the body. Probably makes no sense right now reading this junk but I will make some brackets to raise the bumper up enough so the top of the bumper is flush with the headlight level. That will fix the tire rub and gain more clearance.

Bent up some offsets in them so the stock bumper spacing works.

I'd say it was worth it. Gained lots of approach angle which will help climbing the furniture and stuff

Nice job, could also cut off lower front part of body, trim backside of bumper to clear tires.

[Brake Weight]

Originally Posted by Natedog

Nice job, could also cut off lower front part of body, trim backside of bumper to clear tires.

I trimmed some of my body. Not much, but clear the RC4WD Swampers and I have my body down real low.

[Toyotarc]

Originally Posted by Brake Weight

I trimmed some of my body. Not much, but clear the RC4WD Swampers and I have my body down real low.

I did buy some rc4wd white beadlocks and the rc4wd MTRS but the 5mm socket doesn'f fit in there to tighten down the wheel to axle, even a 4mm socket barely fits so I don't know how I'm going to use these. maybe ill just use them on another one of my micro vehicles...

[Toyotarc]

Ok finally I destroyed a driveshaft on this thing. I was in a rock garden and was all bound up and BAM! That tiny driveshaft finally gave away. Hopefully theres a metal driveshaft I can buy. In the meantime I guess i can run 2wd lol.

[Brake Weight]

The aluminum WPL shafts should fit. They’ll need cutting down some as they’re too long.

[Toyotarc]

Originally Posted by Brake Weight

The aluminum WPL shafts should fit. They’ll need cutting down some as they’re too long.

I have a set of metal WPL shafts, not possible to cut them down enough to fit. My set has a really long yoke on it, like double the length of the ECX so thats why I cant cut them down enough.

[Toyotarc]

Heres a picture of what I mean