Hello from FL new to crawlers got a drag brake question

[Bpw]

Ok so I'm a newbie to crawling but not to RC. My first crawler is a losi night crawler. I put a brushless hobbywing 120a esc in I had laying around and a brushless sensored novak 13.5t I run 2s on it and it's a freaking beast. To me at least, I'm very impressed with this thing.

My question is, since it has the worm gears do I need to apply the drag brake? Esc is fully programmable so I can enable it if it'll be benificial?

Second, what other upgrades are gonna give me a significant difference? I just crawl around on some rocks and logs I have in my back yard. I make a "course" and rearrange it every so often. I do like to keep it challenging.

I'm thinking about 4 wheel steering, I'm never gonna comp it so i don't care about classes. I care about performance.

And finally, I got a losi micro crawler (1/24) the other day. Sweet little rig again very impressed with what this thing can handle. Any other micro owners out there?

-Brian

[micro racer]

First question: not really. The worm gears usually hold well enough on their own, but if they don't, you certainly won't hurt anything by adding on some drag brake through the ESC.

Second question: Different tires will make the biggest difference in performance over RTR. I would check out either Ottsix Voodoo tires or really anything from Proline.

If you want to install the parts for 4ws, I would go for it. The only downside is more parts to break, but that isn't really a concern since you aren't comp-ing (CoG would take a slight hit, but again that won't matter while backyarding).

Tuning your ride height, weight bias, and CoG will yield that best performance. From what I understand, the Losi rigs were pretty nice out of the box, and simply needed some suspension tuning rather than aftermarket parts.

Beyond that, the best place for more info on the Losi would probably be the LCC/LNC subforum...


PS: I've got a few micro racers (duh, it's in my username) like the micro SCT, but unfortunately no micro crawlers. I'm considering getting one though, for when I get bored of running an SCX10 over my rock pile...

[clm]

Drag brake is not required on worm drive axles as the wheels are not capable of spinning back through the driveshafts to the motor, the worm gear mechanism does not work that way. You basically have 100% dragbrake all the time mechanically. I would recommend turning off the drag brake in the esc just to save you battery power.

Just try rolling the Night Crawler back and forth, if the motor is not turning the wheels should not be turning aside from maybe a bit of slack from the upper gear moving back and forth.

I do have a Micro Trail Trekker as well half way converted into a leaf sprung 1/24 high lift Chevy K10, fun truck, stock speed control has no brakes and they are not needed ;)

[Bpw]

Cool thanks, that's what I figured but wanted to ask. I'll look into some tires. Hadn't thought much about tires as the stickers seem to be pretty good but I may just not be aware that they suck lol.

The micro crawler is a blast. If you can find one get it. I have several 1/36 losi trucks I kinda went bananas on. 2 T's 1 DT and 1 high roller. The micro higroller is probably my favorite. I've got mg motors in two the high roller is stock aside from micro raminator wheels and tires really ads to the monster truck theme, the T's are all aluminum one silver one blue. While it looks super cool i will say once you consider with aluminum it kinda sucks. The wheels have tons of slop in the them it come from where the hubs and the arms meet. And screws back out all the time, don't wanna loc tite these little buggers. So their basically shelf queens now. Sucks. My DT is waiting on me to put a BL system I have on it, it was useless on the T. Couldn't control it lol. All have lips. And the T's have metal diff gears... told ya I went a little bananas lol.

You gotta link or a pic of that leaf spring rig? Love to see that?