Re: Jato the Trail King
 

Last night I went out with a friend and got home later so I didn't have much build time.

I did receive more goodies related to the wheels and tars. Scale acorn nuts/lug nuts and tool from LockedUp RC and grubs from Rusty Bolts.

http://i.imgur.com/tKlMRLNh.jpg


Proline dual stage foams for the TSL XL's.

http://i.imgur.com/Vs1MZIbh.jpg


The one drawback, albeit minor, of these Boom Racing wheels is that there are 8 mounting screws rather than 5 or 6. This is just a few compared to the 20 or so that we used to have to install and remove on old school beadlock wheels back in the "old days" of scale RC. We're spoiled.

http://i.imgur.com/e01S0ddh.jpg


Some people complain that Proline wheels are difficult to mount. These wheels made it a freaking cinch! They even easily mounted one of my extremely stubborn VXT tires from my Vanquish Origin build. I installed one of those just as a test.

Once mounted we have some old school goodness. Super Swampers on 8-hole wheels. Sexy if I do say so myself! "thumbsup"

http://i.imgur.com/YhuuYTYh.jpg


And the scale hardware really finishes it off nicely.

http://i.imgur.com/ZnKQxY6h.jpg

Re: Jato the Trail King
 

Them wheels with the scale acorn nuts look sweet!

Glad to hear they were a breeze to mount!

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Re: Jato the Trail King
 

Gotta say, from the outside, those wheels rock.

~ More peace, love, laughter & kindness would make the world a MUCH better place

Re: Jato the Trail King
 

That last photo should be used as an ad for those wheels. Nicely done and looking good.

Re: Jato the Trail King
 

Saw those after buying some cheap old fashioned Centerline styled wheels. Those are really nice.

Re: Jato the Trail King
 

I just started building my trail king. I noticed that my axle tubes had those little specs of plastic in them after threading in the bolts that hold the tubes to the center section. Makes me want to put the wheelbearing retainers on and cut those threads and recheck for plastic specs inside tubes. It's like the fitment of the bolts is so tight that you cut a minuscule amount of plastic off when forming the threads. Not necessarily bad, unless you don't notice them and they interfere with the shaft to locker fitment.

Living in rust prone Vermont, I appreciate the coating of oil on the metal parts. Your correct about cleaning both the hardware and parts if you expect loctite to function. I'm kinda OCD, so I clean the threads on every single bolt before installing. I also noticed the hardware is mostly marked grade 10.9 and fit snugly on my Allen drivers. Quality hardware is a huge plus for me. I literally couldn't even bring myself to use any of the hardware that came with my TF2 kit.

You seem to be a stickler for quality, as am I. Looking forward to your impressions on the rest of the kit. Thinking I'm going to go slow with my build and keep a step behind you so you can figure out any nuances or tolerance issues. Thus far I am impressed with the fitment and finish.

When you get a chance could you measure the total width with those wheels installed? I'm digging the look, but concerned they'll be too wide for my body choice.

Re: Jato the Trail King
 

Thank you!


Thank you!


Yes, I am a stickler for quality and sometimes I get ragged on for being too harsh on products.

I'll be your guinea pig - no problem! :lmao:

It'll probably be a while, but I sure can measure the track width. I do think it's going to be wide.

Re: Jato the Trail King
 

Nice score on parts Tim, and good job on your build thread! I usually don't do a detailed build, my mastery of words is a little lacking. 8)
Ernie

Re: Jato the Trail King
 

Welcome back to the JTK build after the Christmas hangover. I hope Santa was good to each of you and filled your lives with more RC merchandise! I did not get any more RC stuff, which is fine, but I did get to work on the TK.

The next step is building the transmission which happens to be pretty scale and really cool. I was excited for this step. The only other scale transmission I've built is the one in the RC4WD TF2 which, I believe, was also designed by Mr. SSD himself.

As my girlfriend astutely stated, this should say D Bag. :ror:

http://i.imgur.com/BK1pT8Fh.jpg


I chose the Reedy Radon 16T 5-slot motor for this build. I first tried this motor in my Capra and I'm very happy with it. It has plenty of speed and plenty of torque and it's a bargain at around $25 shipped.

http://i.imgur.com/CyVrZeIh.jpg


I chose to use the stock pinion. I really like how SSD clearly labels the tooth count on their gears. This was true of every loose gear in the kit not just the pinion. So you had no trouble finding the correct gear.

How do you set and check the gear mesh? Good luck! I set my motor screws all the way to the sides of the slots. Is that correct? I'm not sure. I'm definitely going to have to keep an eye on the motor temperatures.

In this photo the mesh looks loose, but that's because the lower gear shaft is hanging under its own weight. When you support this gear shaft the mesh looked good to me.

http://i.imgur.com/u3lTqG4h.jpg


Here's the small block V8 bolted up to the bell housing. :mrgreen:

The motor plate is a very nice, thick piece of aluminum. All motor plates should be metal, kids.

http://i.imgur.com/6E9qN9Qh.jpg


The design is a unique, layered or stacked setup. Each "layer" of the transmission adds more gears, shafts and/or bearings and another part of the plastic housing.

Let's schlop some schmutz on the gears of the first layer before we move on. This transmission contains all metal gears so it should be very durable, but you want to lube it up to prevent wear. If not, this sum bitch is gonna git hawt after running a short time.

http://i.imgur.com/90OUpz4h.jpg


Here's the second layer. I have no idea why I took this photo of the upside down transmission. Do you see why I sometimes confuse myself?! :lmao:

http://i.imgur.com/UBwfUbBh.jpg


The third layer.

http://i.imgur.com/V9jJpLEh.jpg


And then the fourth layer to cap off and finish the transmission.

http://i.imgur.com/FLBmYhIh.jpg


Next up, you bolt the front half of the transfer case to the transmission housing.

You also install the transmission mounts, looking like outriggers in this photo, to the motor plate.

http://i.imgur.com/NxKROTgh.jpg


Not the best photo, but you can see this gear is also clearly labeled with 24T. This really makes assembly of the transfer case easy since it is comprised of two 24T gears and one 22T gear.

http://i.imgur.com/mbm6kYDh.jpg


Here's the transfer case with all of the guts installed and just before I attach the rear half of the housing.

http://i.imgur.com/1PkaBuXh.jpg


And, finally, here is the completed motor/transmission/transfer case assembly. This was really fun and satisfying to build! "thumbsup"

It's as smooth as can be too!

http://i.imgur.com/5AUljMph.jpg


There are lots of leftovers with this build. Leftovers are tasty so I'm all about it. These will come in handy in the future I'm sure. Thanks for the extra hardware, SSD.

I read on another thread that he goes with the thinking that it's much easier and much cheaper to include extra hardware rather than try to get the count exactly right and then have to ship out a screw when you are shorted. I agree with this thinking and it's the way I'd do things if I had a company of my own. It makes absolutely no sense to have to pay $5 to ship out a $0.10 screw after the fact when you could have just included an extra one to begin with.

http://i.imgur.com/iuBFWYxh.jpg

Re: Jato the Trail King
 

In complete agreement with the "extra screws" (and bearings) thing. Being shortchanged a 2.5x12mm screw in my Capra kit caused a LOT of dig-related problems. As for the TK, the whole kit went together as smooth as could be. The only 'problem' I had was one I caused, myself, which had to do with the upgrade aluminum shock hoops...now I'm just awaiting the replacement part from Chris.

~ More peace, love, laughter & kindness would make the world a MUCH better place

Re: Jato the Trail King
 

Nice detailed tranny layout!"thumbsup" I do like how the gears have the sizes on them.

I've been wondering what this trans looked like on the inside. Now I have a better understanding of the gear layout. And yes, always good to have some extras in the kits.

Glad to hear you survived the Christmas hangover!:)

Re: Jato the Trail King
 

Looking good!
In a moment of madness (or genius) I ordered myself a Trail King kit. Hopefully it'll be in my hands for New Year although I'm not holding my breath.
These build threads are really useful as I mentally prepare myself for my first proper full kit build. Gives me a good idea of how stuff goes together and it's nice to hear what the guys who know what they're doing are doing ;)

Glad to hear about spare hardware, even gladder to hear that the gears have the tooth counts on them. I always lose count!

Re: Jato the Trail King
 

Good to hear. So far it's mostly been a very smooth build for me as well. Very cool kit.


Thank you!


Thank you!

Congrats! It's an awesome kit.

This manual isn't the best especially for a newbie, but you should be able to work through it. The biggest issues are some discrepancies in the hardware length in the book versus the hardware you are provided. Pay special attention to hardware length in the axles since there are different screws that only vary in length by 1 or 2mm.

Post up your own thread when you get the kit. Any of us will be happy to answer your questions. I'm also just a PM away.

Re: Jato the Trail King
 

Next up are the links. The included links are titanium according to the manual! Very cool. "thumbsup"

I can't say that I've ever used titanium links before so this will be a first for me.

http://i.imgur.com/FKlV6PVh.jpg


The links are of the grub screw variety. Some people like this and some people hate it. I guess I'm indifferent about this. If I was forced to choose I'd probably take the links with the machined, male threads over this grub screw variety, but it's not a big deal to me.

http://i.imgur.com/y6QJejRh.jpg


The only issue I had while building the links was that a couple of the hollow balls had burrs on them that would prevent my driver from going through. I use the hex driver to hold the rod end while using another driver to screw in the grub.

http://i.imgur.com/ns0wo9hh.jpg


Here is the completed set of links. Very high quality. The straight A students among you may notice that I have the drag link built incorrectly which I found out later.

http://i.imgur.com/MIJorRrh.jpg


After assembling the links you assemble some of them to the front axle assembly...

The knuckles are double shear which is now pretty standard, but what is somewhat unusual is that both ears are threaded. Usually one is a thru hole and the other is threaded. It takes some precision to thread both of these and still have the screw thread in without any issues. SSD has done it well. The extra threads are good for a couple of reasons. Nice touch.

http://i.imgur.com/B0neLUvh.jpg


It was at this point that I realized I had incorrectly installed the rod ends on my drag link. After fixing the orientation of the rod ends I installed the drag link and tie road on the front axle.

http://i.imgur.com/ndVbr6Nh.jpg

Re: Jato the Trail King
 

After the links we move onto the chassis. You start by attaching the components to the driver's side frame rail.

http://i.imgur.com/fM5hI7hh.jpg


The frame rails are individually wrapped which is really nice. No nicks, scratches or missing paint on these bad boys. The SSD logos on the frame rails are very nicely done and they look great.

http://i.imgur.com/p9ZV2X4h.jpg


Another aluminum bit included in the kit is the Panhard mount. Here it is next to the shock tower which is plastic. They are made of nice, thick plastic though so they are solid. No flimsy, rubbery, garbage grade plastic here.
And there's a better shot of the SSD logo.

http://i.imgur.com/q7OmSkJh.jpg


The screws that hold on the shock mount screw into the aluminum Panhard mount. The fit of everything is great.

http://i.imgur.com/yXp4rAth.jpg


Next up you connect the floorboards and skid plate to the left side frame rail.

At first glance this looks very similar to the SCX10 II floorboard. I wasn't a fan of that because the bottom isn't smooth. There are a lot of features that could get hung up on rocks and other debris from nature. Thankfully, SSD does one better than Axial which we will see later.

http://i.imgur.com/g0Hfjohh.jpg


The frame has more head scratchers in terms of very similar yet different sized hardware.

M2.5 x 6mm vs M3 x 8mm screws to attach the servo mount.

http://i.imgur.com/fSELIiKh.jpg


M3 x 6mm vs M3 x 8mm to attach the battery tray mount.

http://i.imgur.com/TJL4jAdh.jpg


When I first saw these battery tray mounts my first thought was "Ugh, they look like something Axial would design" which means they are going to flex like John Sena. That wasn't the case, thankfully. These are also made from very rigid plastics and they are solid mounts. Nice!

http://i.imgur.com/0axe3nAh.jpg


Next we install the motor/transmission/transfer case assembly onto the skid plate. The motor mounts also get attached to the frame and I had a helluva time getting these lined up. Thankfully, I had the forethought to leave them loose, but it still took a bit to get the screw to thread into this mount. And, as I now see from the photo, it looks like it may be skewed a bit.

http://i.imgur.com/vQ5Q9Qth.jpg


Sorry, OSRC. It's still fall on my tablecloth. :mrgreen:

Here are most of the components attached to the driver's side frame rail. I like to leave these screws loose by about a turn or two. When the other frame rail is attached I then go back and tighten all of the screws. This just makes the frame easier to assemble and, in the end, I believe you have a straighter, and more cohesive assembly rather than having forces of various screws fighting each other.

http://i.imgur.com/GtEwSmth.jpg


The front bumper mount is aluminum.

http://i.imgur.com/iCPuhT6h.jpg


So are the rear frame extensions and rear bumper mount.

http://i.imgur.com/H18rGKUh.jpg


M2.5 x 6mm and M3 x 6mm to attach the rear frame extension and bumper mount.

http://i.imgur.com/nmAVqbCh.jpg


The chassis and power plant. Look at how low that motor sits! "thumbsup"

http://i.imgur.com/fwevD10h.jpg

Re: Jato the Trail King
 

Dang that sweet! I think this will be my next rig.

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Re: Jato the Trail King
 

It is very cool. Wait until you see me put the Chevy small block in it! "thumbsup"

Re: Jato the Trail King
 

Next up we start connecting parts to the chassis. This is when it starts feeling like a truck to me.

The driveshafts are as oily as the axles. Again, not a complaint - it' just an observation as this is not a bad thing. They are very scale looking, all metal and pretty cool.

http://i.imgur.com/HypH50oh.jpg


The manual has a big mistake here - probably the biggest that I noticed. The axle offset is completely reversed in the manual. The Panhard mount and short side of the axle are on the opposite side in reality. Very odd that this one slipped through the cracks.

http://i.imgur.com/xKLWepmh.jpg


Because an Atari 2600 has more memory than me, I forgot all about the addendum until it was too late.

http://i.imgur.com/ZffufvDh.jpg


The lower links were attached to the skid plate with the M3 x 20mm set screws instead of the M3 x 16mm set screws. I didn't notice any issues so I left them in place. I'd be curious to know why this change was made and if the 20mm screws cause any issues. I didn't notice any.

But the I did change the screws that attached the lower links to the axles. As you can see in this first photo, the screw is barely into the second mounting tab which isn't ideal for strength.

http://i.imgur.com/8CZo8Nbh.jpg


Here's how it looks after the longer screws were installed. They are maybe 1mm too long, but they shouldn't get hung up on anything.

http://i.imgur.com/YgbQIxPh.jpg


After the axles are attached to the chassis, it's time to build the shocks. I went with the same flavors as in the shocks on my Origin - 35wt in the front and 70wt in the rear They are beautiful shocks. I love the anodized blue caps myself. And it's a great contrast to the raw aluminum bodies. iPhone color recreation sucks so the blue is actually lighter in person.

http://i.imgur.com/WLTGJzjh.jpg


Overall, these are great looking shocks. The finish on the shocks wasn't perfect, but the defects were either minor or hidden. It looks like the anodizing had been rubbed off here, but you can't see on the outside it so it's not a big deal. You can also see the lip in there which stops the hollow ball from pushing through.

http://i.imgur.com/GefWLsph.jpg


The spring perches are made from aluminum which is cool. Personally, I'd rather have a plastic spring perch that's captured with a screw in place of an aluminum perch without a capturing screw. These are a tight fit onto the lower shock mounts though so hopefully they stay put.

http://i.imgur.com/dIV3eUPh.jpg


The shock caps have an o-ring seal which is a nice touch. There are no bladders inside of these shocks.

http://i.imgur.com/XFels8Rh.jpg


Oddly, the preload adjuster doesn't have an o-ring inside of it or anything else to prevent it from walking. This is much less of an issues on scalers when compared to racing RCs, but it still would have been nice to see an o-ring in here. You can see more missing anodizing inside of this adjuster, but, again, it looked great on the outside.

http://i.imgur.com/k2x8i5Gh.jpg


Another thing that is odd to me is that the hollow balls that go in the shock cap seem to be metal, but I couldn't tell for sure. I'm not a fan of metal balls on aluminum shocks.

This ball wouldn't go into the shock and I thought the cap wasn't machined correctly. Thankfully, it was the ball that was bad so I replaced it with one of the spares that was provided and the shock fit fine.

Here's the shock with the bad ball.

http://i.imgur.com/d1JoX0Zh.jpg


After the truck was sprung I noticed that the rear axle had a lot of side to side movement. It turns out there is slop between the slots in the skid plate and the hollow balls. I don't think there's enough slop to get one of my shims in there though.

http://i.imgur.com/plAGthfh.jpg


For steering power I chose the Hitec 7954. SSD only makes a 25T horn (like all servos should be), but Hitec uses a 24T spline so I had to go with a Vanquish 20mm servo horn.

http://i.imgur.com/Mos94A3h.jpg



When I went to install the servo horn I noticed the drag link was far too long. In the photo below the wheels are straight, but you can see how far the drag link extends past the servo splines. I would have had to point the servo horn way towards the driver's side in order to have the axle centered.

I think this is a design flaw. The servo horn and axle should be able to be centered together.

http://i.imgur.com/naEHBbzh.jpg


My first thought was to exchange the long rod end on the drag link to a short end. After talking to OSRC, he also made this switch, but noticed that he gained some bump steer. I decided to give it a try because I like the servo horn to be as centered as possible.

Below you can see the stock, long rod end on the left and the replacement, short end on the right.

http://i.imgur.com/56zxJLsh.jpg


This fix seemed to work for me. As you can see in the photo below, the servo horn still isn't centered, but it's much closer than it would have been with the long rod end.

I really don't notice any bump steer and I get full steering so I'm happy with this fix.

http://i.imgur.com/jYsiGVeh.jpg

Re: Jato the Trail King
 

The front left of my truck wasn't sagging like the rest of the shocks as you can see in this video. It turns out I got one spring that is slightly longer than the rest. I think I only noticed it because I had zero preload on all of the shocks. I fully compressed that spring a few times and all seems close enough now.

http://i.imgur.com/LiogVLxh.mp4


There's nothing I hate more than doing something over. If I've done it once that is enough for me. That's why I'm so bad at maintaining things, especially RC's. But I decided to suck it up, stop being lazy, and install the upgrades that I forgot to use the first time around during the build.

http://i.imgur.com/kTXa8Bjh.jpg


First up, I am installing SSD's 27T/8T overdrive ring and pinion gears in the front axle.

http://i.imgur.com/gGjMGYeh.jpg


The worst part about this simple swap is removing all the screws for the diff cover and dealing with the grease. I started using rubber gloves when dealing with grease, when I remember, just so I don't get the grease everywhere. It's not that I'm afraid of getting my hands dirty.

I see that it looks like the center, top diff cover screw doesn't even thread into the housing. Interesting. I can probably leave that one in permanently if I remember. I probably won't.

It's always interesting to me to see how much grease gets pushed out by the gears and flung around.

http://i.imgur.com/47yyXKFh.jpg


The OD ring gear bolted up to the locker and sitting next to the new pinion gear.

http://i.imgur.com/8GP0rHYh.jpg


And the new gears installed and lubed up. Never put it in dry. :mrgreen:

http://i.imgur.com/JuiKKHth.jpg


And then I moved onto reassembling the axle and using SSD's uber sexy, shiny, black chrome, brass knuckles. It's hard to photo these and do their looks justice.

Like they often do, SSD includes extra hardware with their upgrades which is a really nice touch.

http://i.imgur.com/cW2jGMbh.jpg


Here are the stock knuckles next to the brass version. I forgot to weigh them and get the increase in heft.

http://i.imgur.com/byNRIbqh.jpg


The brass knuckles, like the stock version, are tapped on both ears which is nice.

I did have a tough time threading these screws in. They are tough to turn so I ran them in once and removed them before installing the links. This isn't uncommon for coating to get on the threads and tighten things up.

http://i.imgur.com/c9V63oOh.jpg


I also had to press hard as hell to get the bearings seated, especially in the knuckle pictured. I ended up using an RC cross wrench to press the bearing into place. It took a lot of force. Again, the bearing seat is too small because of the coating.

You can see the machined in weld running along the top though. Very cool.

http://i.imgur.com/iXZBBPVh.jpg


And here they are installed. They are very tight to turn. Once the brass inserts wear the steering will get easier. The stock knuckles certainly weren't this tight.

These have to be one of my favorite looking aftermarket parts. I love the "black chrome" finish! "thumbsup"

http://i.imgur.com/1jgrJwGh.jpg

Re: Jato the Trail King
 

Here's a photo showing the rear driveshaft installed. That's a beefy and good looking driveshaft. Everything clears fine. There isn't a single interference issue on this truck that I can remember.

http://i.imgur.com/us7zTxVh.jpg


It's difficult to tell from this photo, but there is a lot of clearance up front. The suspension stops when the shocks bottom out now when the axle contacts a hard part. Nice design up here outside of the drag link not allowing the servo to be centered.

Speaking of servo, I ****ing hate this Hitec 7954. I wanted to get away from Savox because they make really noisy stuff, but the Hitec is louder and the buzzing is constant. It's obnoxious and annoying. Is this normal for a Hitec? I swore this brand off once before and I'm about to do it again.

The servo also got up to about 102°F after a few minutes of running in the house which was concerning to me.

http://i.imgur.com/YW8Nylgh.jpg


And here's a close up of an installed shock. There's definitely a lot of side to side movement on the shocks. It's too much for my liking so I may do something about it to fix it.

http://i.imgur.com/AcjoA2zh.jpg