The Flex Tester: 1/10 Top Race Forklift content!

[Goro Majima]

Never thought I'd actually buy one but here we are (currently $119 via Amzn). It's priced right and comes with weight in the rear already. But a con of course is non proportional controls along with no tilt function. All of that will change, along with tons more rear weight to have the ability to not only lift a rig's corner from the wheel, but also lift a rig entirely and drive.





Because I'll add a lot of extra weight, with my RC crawler experience, this is what I have mentally gathered but any info or criticism welcome.

Front drive axle:
- Yeah Racing 540 brushed 80T motor
- AR44 or comparable rear axle swap shortened to 4.5-5"
- shortest metal driveshaft
- clone 3 gear transmission with 60T spur and 10T pinion
- HW 1080 G1 ESC
Rear steering:
- swap to 35kg blue servo and reposition
- linked steering with drag/tie rods

Any further info I'm missing I'll be sure to put them with the related photos.


Steering setup. There's absolutely unusable angle in it, so that'll change entirely. I don't mean 4wd conversion entirely, but least way more angle. Steering axle would make things interesting won't it... It's an idea at least. I want it looking stock, for now.




Gearbox, board and whole chassis shot.






Further inspecting the steering setup. Covers removed for accessing the knuckles.





They felt the need to keep the steering trim molded into the chassis lol.



Drive axle removed. Didn't want to pull the wheels off of the axles so I cut away the tops of the inner fenders to gain access for removal.




Faux tilt cylinders. May either replace these with micro linear actuators, or leave the bottom parts unmounted and nubs cut off so they can move freely when tilting happens. Actuators would be mounted inside the body, which I would bolt the lift onto it's own metal platform sitting above the drive axle. Front of the platform would be free to move, while the rear of the platform would be the hinge point. Leaning towards first choice.





An official mod done, seat position adjustment. I put a 7in figure in the seat and he has to sit forward to reach the controls. Few snips with the flush cutters and we have adjustment. Use one of the first photos for seat position comparison.







That's it for now.

[ferp420]

this sounds like alota fun
I love the crazy builds

[high plains drifter]

yeah.. this is gonna be good

[Goro Majima]

Weekend progress. Definitely not gonna be finished to be a cool prop to bring to Scale West Challenge #5 at Donner Ski Ranch as I modify things to fit.

First off, here's the plastic geared fork mechanism. It is staying uninstalled and I've got a Holmes Hobbies Tug Buddy servo winch on the way to replace it. The black gear might have to be repurposed to spin the pulley for the ropes, unless I go with a different pulley.




Here's the stock gearbox. Good to see metal gears, but motor and gears have to go. I reuse some of these parts later.




Steering servo mount unmodified.




Steering servo mount hacked for better placement and one wheel for steering is hacked for drift car angle. Such a huge difference and was lucky enough to save enough plastic meat to still be somewhat structural. Just gotta do the other side.




Replica AR44s and 3 gear transmission as well as the 2 micro linear actuators. Dig transmission is for another rig. The front fake AR44 is straight trash but I only need the rear anyway which is actually ok besides slightly binding. I backed off the diff cover bolts a tad and they were all good. Also open diff will help plenty with sharper steering.




Here's how the axle sits in place with the bearing carriers removed. Pretty much on par with stock, right? It would be ok if a wheel got mounted at that spot but it's not as easy just shortening axle shafts and making it work. So I brainstormed another method.




I chopped the stock gearbox to house the pumpkin.





Here you can see the square axle shaft which go in to those plastic cylinders (or hubs) that have a hex at the end, which the wheels connect to using just a Philips screw.





This square axle shaft is perfect to cut in half as it fits into the diff no problem.





Pumpkin cut out.




Gearbox housing completely hacked up to house the pumpkin. Had to turn the middle section into 2 pieces.





Fully assembled.





And fast forward a bit to an already hacked up floor and battery tray to make room for the transmission already mounted. It will sit up a bit higher once all the mods have been done and I can give the plastic chassis some structural integrity.

[701 Technique]

What a cool project, and great progress hacking it away so far. Pretty ideal how well that AR45 fit in there.

I know this forum is pretty slow these days, but please keep updates coming as I would love to see this thing lift a tire or a whole rig

[frizzen]

That's awesome! I can't wait to see where this one goes

Glad to see someone else is crazy enough to mod an rc forklift. I love the shopping cart angle you were able to get out of that steering!

[SpareParts]

Like the others already said, awesome build! It is surprising to see the metal gears in the stock transmission, looks like it was a pretty good toy to begin with. Amazing luck (or planning) that the stock axle fits the diff.

[smog]

Fun stuff Goro, I like your goal of lifting a crawler. Looking good so far!

[Gula]

Here, I thought you're going to swap the "steering " with a servo, an esc and call it good. Wow that's a pretty cool build. I have one of the 1/6 Golden bright wire remote ones, I intend to modify. Watching yours for ideas to steal, lol.

[mikro383]

Any updates on this?

Sent from my SM-S134DL using Tapatalk

[JatoTheRipper]

That's a serious mod. Hopefully you didn't give up on the build or RCC.

[Goro Majima]

Originally Posted by mikro383

Any updates on this?

Sent from my SM-S134DL using Tapatalk

Originally Posted by JatoTheRipper

That's a serious mod. Hopefully you didn't give up on the build or RCC.

Not to worry dudes! This is what happens when I take on multiple projects and also try to attend meets left and right, and still with work and holiday crap in the way. Just attended my last "scheduled" meet of the year so now I don't have to worry about builds getting touch ups and maintenance etc. Let it be known, I plan to take this to a Scale Challenge West event on January 13th. Cruise around the show and shine and lift rigs

I have been working on it here and there though. Can't wait to share the updates and pics. What's left for me to do (I'll include prior details on the actual update):

- Soldering
- Test controls
- Fix weights to crevices and tune

[JatoTheRipper]

Originally Posted by Goro Majima

Not to worry dudes! This is what happens when I take on multiple projects and also try to attend meets left and right, and still with work and holiday crap in the way. Just attended my last "scheduled" meet of the year so now I don't have to worry about builds getting touch ups and maintenance etc. Let it be known, I plan to take this to a Scale Challenge West event on January 16th. Cruise around the show and shine and lift rigs

I have been working on it here and there though. Can't wait to share the updates and pics. What's left for me to do (I'll include prior details on the actual update):

- Soldering
- Test controls
- Fix weights to crevices and tune

Great to hear!

[Goro Majima]

Let's get some content uploaded. This post might be all over the place so bare with me lol.

Here's the front half of the dash. Driver side stock (scored to cut), passenger side cut. This is to make way for the 2 actuators for the tilting feature. More on that later (no pics at the moment).




Steering servo in place. At this moment I was trying to think of a method to utilize the stock plastic tie rod. Ended up with the conventional link setup but had to reuse the stock plastic knuckles. There was too much slop with just the drag link and tie rod, so I also added another tie rod above. Noticeable difference and feel the plastic knuckles are now better braced. The top link does end up interfering with the servo horn under full lock but honestly doesn't hinder the angle much at all.






Early stages of the servo for the mast mock up. Direct drive seemed like the way to go for the limited space. I would prefer a much smaller pinion but this has to do for now. I honestly don't see the plastic pulley gear surviving long haha. Plan B is an internal spool winch but I'll have to configure the dual opposing winch lines in this setup.




And here's how the rest of the mounting and bracing for the mast went.




Made a mock mounting table first before sheet metal version. I had no brake or even hand held versions yet.







With the body on, here's the outline of the mast servo to trim off for clearance.




Braced the chassis. Badly needed after cutting so much off.





These next 2 pictures, you can see I moved the transmission further back for clearance of the motor. Black plastic piece is to space the transmission up. Thankfully it fits.





Just soldered last night and will tidy up the wiring tonight and take more pictures along with testing and tuning. Then add weight and more tuning! Supposed to take this thing out this coming Saturday.

[JimK]

Wow....this is quite the cool build. Not doubt a lot of fabrication and brainstorming to get things to work. Nice job!!

[JatoTheRipper]

That is looking great!

I saw this story today and it reminded me of this build.

https://www.motorbiscuit.com/cummins...y-are-bonkers/

[Goro Majima]

Originally Posted by JimK

Wow....this is quite the cool build. Not doubt a lot of fabrication and brainstorming to get things to work. Nice job!!

Appreciate ya Jim!

Originally Posted by JatoTheRipper

That is looking great!

I saw this story today and it reminded me of this build.

https://www.motorbiscuit.com/cummins...y-are-bonkers/

LOL. You know, this can easily be bonkers as well if I through in a faster motor later for fooling around. But under testing with this 80 turn (and forgot what pinion but smaller), the speed is spot on for a forklift. Also set rear motion to 50% on the speed controller. Hoping to wrap things up tonight.

[Goro Majima]

2 post update. Starting with mast tilt hacks. The actuators I used are Actuonix L12-10-210-6-P.

This is the base that the mast bolts onto on the sides. Surrounding the screw hole is a rectangular male piece that sits into a crevice of the mast. I trimmed off the corners so it can officially move back and forth while still having some resistance.

I wish it was as easy as doing that to unlock tilt but let's proceed.





Cut notches out of the lower inner side of the I beams on the mast, for clearance of the wall behind it when it's tilted back. You can see I also need to notch above it still to clear the pulley system mount.





You'll see a silver screw installed to keep that flat horizontal bar from falling out. And this picture is actually showing the bar above where the screw is, is actually bending under stress from a sub 6lb rig. So I'll have to strengthen that piece somehow.




Might not be the strongest mounting for these actuators, but the setup seems to hold up and best of all is it's all hidden from the dash.




Here's the front dash half being installed.




Front actuator mounts. Hard to tell but there's another screw for each mount on the inner sides as well.





...

[Goro Majima]

2nd part of the update continued. Cut a bigger hole underneath the seat to have access to battery connections and the power switch. Unfortunately I couldn't come up with a battery tray panel for ease of swap outs. But a simple pinch of the sides of the seat and it can be removed.




Dash fully installed.




Reinstalling the supplied steel rod counterweights, and installing 24oz's of wheel weights. Servo seems to handle the weight ok.





Completed pics.





Check out that rear camber




And gotta have the official driver, he just needs a hard hat. Since this is a tad larger than 1/10, 7" figure fits perfect.









I'll need to get some running footage for sure. Other than that, I plan to scale it out more. This is most similar to a Caterpillar P5000, so it'll get some stickers and some of the yellow painted black (seat platform). Other things will be:
- Power button extended to mount to dash for cleanliness.
- Paint wheels flat black.
- Functional lights and white lights up front.
- Propane tank with straps.
- Misc scale items.

[JatoTheRipper]

Now we have a guy in a suit driving a forklift...he definitely looks like Mafioso and he's probably about to run somebody over with a forklift for a messy "hit". Somebody is about to go missing...