More weight to keep Night Crawler SE planted
 

Hey guys,

I recently purchased a Night Crawler SE for my 11 year old to run at a local indoor crawler course. He's been having a great time using it and it does fairly well for a stock RTR.

However, on a few spots of the course where it's really steep going upwards and downwards the lack of weight down low in the chassis reared its ugly head. I zip-tied 2 ounces of wheel weights to the top of the steering servo to help him out (that's all that was available to us at the time). While it helped, it didn't solve any problems plus it interfered with the body during articulation.

I've got to confess I really don't know anything about this platform. I wasn't sure if knuckle weights or anything similar was still available for this type of crawler anymore like in the heyday of the LCC and original LNCs (I can't seem to find anything online). I also read about people using stick on wheel weight inside the wheels to help lower the center of gravity. However, I'm not sure this will work with the SE 1.9 wheels or not. Can anyone confirm if it will?

So what else can we do to keep this rig planted on the crawler course?

Thanks!

Re: More weight to keep Night Crawler SE planted
 

I make a few things that could help you guys out. "thumbsup"
http://www.rccrawler.com/forum/team-...od-design.html

Ernie

Re: More weight to keep Night Crawler SE planted
 

OK Ernie, I'll give that thread a read. At 15 pages though it's going to take me a little while to get all the way through it. :mrgreen:

BTW, the wheel weights I bought off you for my TRX-4 a couple of summers ago are still doing great!

Re: More weight to keep Night Crawler SE planted
 

You can also check this out, im pretty sure Erik will still make them. You could also use codyboys axle mod with the Dlux knuckles but would need to order the axial chub and shaft version.

Ther are only a few companies making aftermarket parts for the losi platform today.

CODYBOY
DLUX FAB
Myself
Krazed builds parts are still relatively new
Hot Racing.

I ran across a set of old knuckle weights on a Facebook page not to long ago.

Check on the losi scale crawler page and see if you can find any parts there.

For sure, in the future.. Id go with a Codyboy axle. weight down low right where it is needed. the stock axles are really really light.

Re: More weight to keep Night Crawler SE planted
 

You can buy automotive wheel weights the stick on kind , take the tire off the bead locks and stick them to the hub of the wheel there is a Chanel in the center you’ll see it when you get the tire and foam off. Once you cut the weights they fit right in that Chanel. I put 3.0 oz in each front and 1.5-2.0 oz in the rear. The down fall to this is that it very rapidly wears out the stock servo. But any other weight added will do the same . My recommendation is to do that and replace the servo at the same time , opt. Also think about a bec with the servo if it don’t have an internal

Re: More weight to keep Night Crawler SE planted
 

Another cheap way to help this is to underdrive the rear axle . Go to eBay and buy a 25:1 spool . It will help a little. By all means though do it however you like. I have codyboys designed axles under mine . I was just thinking on the cheap side of things is all.

Re: More weight to keep Night Crawler SE planted
 

Thanks for the great suggestions guys! I'm getting over a terrible cold where I just missed a week of work plus time to work on the car. Now I'm playing catch up.

I started taking the wheels apart last night because we had already decided to replace the stock RTR Super Swamper tires with Hyrax's. I did pick up some stick on lead weights like Rattzo showed in his pics. However, the channel on my son's wheel is much narrower than on Rattzo's wheels. Just eyeballing it looks like the weights will have to be narrowed by as much as 50% to fit inside the channel which means less weight can be added overall. I'll try to put up an image of the wheel this evening. Based on the wheel design it looks exactly the same as what was previously used on the Twin Hammers. So maybe y'all are familiar with the wheel I'm talking about.

Another item I recently saw while digging around at our LHS is an old set of Losi aluminum wheel weights (p/n LOSB1496) that were originally designed to bolt inside a set of Losi wheels (p/n LOSB1472). They're listed at 30 grams a set (roughly 1 ounce each) so I don't know if they're worth trying to make work inside our wheels or not.

Last, I still haven't managed to get thru all of the thread that CodyBoy referred me too. Hopefully I'll finish it soon! :mrgreen:

Re: More weight to keep Night Crawler SE planted
 

Tungsten putty will work better inside the wheels.

Sent from my LGMP260 using Tapatalk

Re: More weight to keep Night Crawler SE planted
 

Go to any store that carries fishing supplies and get a spool of lead fishing weight. Works great! "thumbsup" If that doesn't work you could always go the Codyboy axle upgrade way. ;-) https://r.search.yahoo.com/cbclk2/dW...es+lead+weight
Ernie

Re: More weight to keep Night Crawler SE planted
 

Ha! I can't believe I didn't think of this. I may even have some already. We just finished building my son's fifth Pinewood car a few weeks ago. Thanks for telling/reminding me about it!

The axle upgrade my just be the easy way to go at this point, haha. I just tried a local fishing supplies store during my lunch break but all they had was heavy-gauge nylon line. Heck, I even had to show them the pic of the lead fishing weight in the link you provided because they didn't know what I was talking about. I'll try another fishing store on the way home tonight and see if I get lucky. :ror:

Re: More weight to keep Night Crawler SE planted
 

Your welcome, and remember, you can flatten the larger Dia so that it may fit right into the slots in your wheels. "thumbsup"
Ernie

Re: More weight to keep Night Crawler SE planted
 

Well, I tried three more fishing stores on the way home with zero luck. So I hit up the not-so-local Amazon Prime and ordered up spools of 1/8" and 3/16" lead weight. Should have them Thursday. "thumbsup"

Ooh, that's such a great idea. That's why I love coming to this site because of all the great ideas and build tips! :)

Re: More weight to keep Night Crawler SE planted
 

Well, my order made it in yesterday. I got a spool each of 1/8" and 3/16" lead weight. Tonight was the first chance I had to work on the car. I didn't know how much to put in each front wheel so I guessed on 3 ounces (6 ounces total). For now, there's none in the rear wheels. I decided not to add weight to the rear only because the car has never tried to endo at the indoor course my son's been driving it at. We'll see how that goes now.

Here's how I did it. The wheels have a center channel in the middle. I simply wrapped the 3/16" lead around the circumference of each wheel until they weighed 3 ounces more, each. Running the lead strands side-by-side resulted in a very tight fit that shouldn't move. Plus, the foam inside the tire should help keep it in place.

Bare wheel with center channel:

:[IMG]https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7861/...270b1591_c.jpgLNC Wheel Weight Upgrade by RC Tom, on Flickr[/IMG]

After wrapped with lead weight:

https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7806/...e35b7056_c.jpgLNC Wheel Weight Upgrade by RC Tom, on Flickr

Each bare wheel weighed .6 ounces. After the lead was added the new weight was 3.7 ounces per wheel as seen here:

[IMG]https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7874/...18a5f1c9_c.jpgLNC Wheel Weight Upgrade by RC Tom, on Flickr[/IMG]

With the Hyrax tires and Losi foams, the total weight for each tire/wheel combo is 7.2 ounces.

[IMG]https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7923/...9ecf5267_c.jpgLNC Wheel Weight Upgrade by RC Tom, on Flickr[/IMG]

I'll let y'all know how it goes after we run tomorrow. The Hyrax tires are waayyyyy stickier than the Super Swampers Losi fitted to the car. Combined with the extra weight up front I'm expecting (hoping for!) a big performance increase. We'll see how long the stock servo can handle turning the heavier rolling stock, too.

Wish us luck! "thumbsup"

Re: More weight to keep Night Crawler SE planted
 

Now that you have the center filled you can use the stick on weight if needed to get better or more accurate weight pr. Wheel

Re: More weight to keep Night Crawler SE planted
 

Good thinking!

Re: More weight to keep Night Crawler SE planted
 

The car performed better at our weekly indoor crawl than it had in the past. Still, we have more work to do. I still think it needs a little more weight in the front (an ounce or two per wheel) and maybe 1-2 ounces of weight per rear wheel too. One of our competitors told me he used to comp an LNC and gave me some suggestions on foams to use too. I also still need to contact CodyBoy on the mods he offers.

A couple of new problems popped up though. The first was that the servo is showing it's lack of muscle in turning those heavier front wheels, which was expected. I have an idea of a replacement servo already.

The second issue I didn't see coming--the motor overheated. There was a very steep section that he just couldn't get up. After about two minutes of trying with various amounts of throttle inputs the motor overheated. After a 20 minute cool down, he was allowed to attempt that section again and this time the motor overheated in just one minute with light throttle. Heck, even the axles were a little warm. Once again, the organizers gave us a second--and final--20 minute cool down period. This time to prevent getting a DNF, we had to intentionally roll it over so we could take a penalty and skip ahead to the next section.

So what do y'all suggest to eliminate the overheating? Could it be a pinion/spur gear ratio issue? For the record, we've been running a 2S/2000 mah battery to power it.

Re: More weight to keep Night Crawler SE planted
 

Grease those worm gears! They have a lot of friction and do a great job of squeezing grease out, so drill a small hole (I believe I used a 7/64" drill bit) below the pinion and use a small syringe to inject the grease in there while slowly rotating the driveshaft (I just set the throttle trim really low while greasing) then get a 3mm set screw and it should "self tap" its way in the hole when you're done.

Re: More weight to keep Night Crawler SE planted
 

I think I'll have to give that a try, LetterJ. Couldn't believe how fast it overheated the second time. Plus, I was thinking of using a 3S battery to get some of the 'punch' back we lost by adding weight to the wheels.

Speaking of wheels, a former local crawler offered me a sweet deal on an old set of Axial Rockster 2.2 wheels with Rock Lizard tires that were barely used. My boy loves the green beadlock rings because he think it'll match his green SE body. Is there any disadvantage of using the wheels and tires on his LNC, like will we need to regear or anything because of the big tire height difference?

Re: More weight to keep Night Crawler SE planted
 

Read the sticky at the binging of the forum , the reducing friction one I think is what your going to be needing it’s long thread but well worth it!!!

Re: More weight to keep Night Crawler SE planted
 

Hey Rattzo, I just finished reading the sticky. I tried to buy some DFL at my LHS today but they didn't have anything close. What do you guys think of Trak Power Krytech lube? It says it's a dry wax. Also, it's in a pour bottle and isn't a spray lube like recommended in the sticky. Is that a problem?

Link: https://www.gravesrc.com/trakpower-k...t-4-fl-oz.html

The plus for me is I have a bottle of this on my shelf already. Unless someone can recommend a good DFL that's hopefully easy to find I don't know what else to do.

RCTom

Re: More weight to keep Night Crawler SE planted
 

I've never had an issue using marine grease or the TLR grey grease that came with my racing kits. Still using the stock brushed motor?

Re: More weight to keep Night Crawler SE planted
 

I did find some DFL at an out of the way auto parts store. I was looking for that because it was recommended in the sticky in the friction sticky on the first page.

Yes, still the stock brushed motor.

Re: More weight to keep Night Crawler SE planted
 

Stock motor is probably your issue. Ive used one once. Brushed motors in these are never reliable. If you want a good setup.. I recomend the castle mamba micro x crawler sensored esc paired with a trinity 13.5 (of any flavor). The punisher might be the cheapest new. You can also look for used 13.5's from your local racing group if you have one.

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Re: More weight to keep Night Crawler SE planted
 

What grease you use in the diffs is not that critical. I use a common synthetic chassis lube found in the small tubes at the auto parts store. I am still using the same worms after 7-years. I would disagree that brushed motors are never reliable. I have been using the same Holmes brushed motor for about 4-years running on 3S. The others guys I crawl with also continue to use brushed motors. My son switched to a brushless sensored motor in his LNC and feels that he had better low speed throttle control with the brushed motor.

Re: More weight to keep Night Crawler SE planted
 

Thanks for the recommendation. Upgrading the motor is on the to-do list. I'm hoping for now we can keep the stock electronics while we work to improve traction and climbing. But we'll see. If the stock motor quits than we'll be making updates sooner. :)

Per the sticky's recommendations, the DFL is for reducing friction in areas like the driveshafts. I plan to use a high quality synthetic gear grease on the worms when I take the axles apart.

One mod I keep seeing is about drilling a hole in the axles to be able to keep applying grease to worms as needed. What I'm not seeing is what size hole to drill and then what size grub screw to plug it with. Any of you guys know what I'll need to perform this mod?

Re: More weight to keep Night Crawler SE planted
 

I used 4-40 set screws about 1/8-in long. A 3/32" drill bit should work fine. I also drilled both sides of the diffs and pump the grease in until clean grease is coming out the other hole. When I was crawling regularly I greased the diffs about every two months. Takes about 15-minutes.

Re: More weight to keep Night Crawler SE planted
 

Whatever size you have a small set screw in I used a 3 mm set cause that’s what I had. I hit it with a couple pumps every once in a while . I have no set schedule for it basically the more you use the rig the more grease you’ll need to apply. And the grease I just use the cheap stuff I had laying around. Brad-pen bearing grease non synthetic and I use an air tool grease gun to pump it in but a syringe would work too I just don’t have anything like that laying around. Just make sure you put the screw on the top half , if you put it on the bottom it will get all banged up and you’ll never get it out.

Re: More weight to keep Night Crawler SE planted
 

Great info on wheel weights on this page .Thanks

Re: More weight to keep Night Crawler SE planted
 

Wrapped my rims with solder wire today . Going to test it out.

Re: More weight to keep Night Crawler SE planted
 

Solder works good too . It’s about double the cost of fishing weight lead, but if you can’t find it solder is fine

Re: More weight to keep Night Crawler SE planted
 

For optimal climbing and stability add a lot of weight to your wheels and lower the CG. Each of my front tires weighs 18 oz. and my rears are 10 oz. each. Where's your battery located? Hopefully not in the tray above the motor. A small battery located on the front lower arms lowers the CG a lot. Ditch the top tray and mount the ESC on top of the rear axle to further lower the CG.

Re: More weight to keep Night Crawler SE planted
 

How did those Hyrax ended up working for you?

I’m resurrecting my Comp and Night Crawlers and both will need some fresh, sticky rubber.