My Maxx Build...

[RANOVRU]

I've been bustin' my butt the last couple of days and my Maxx crawler is 95% done.

Specs-

- Custom aluminum chasis

- Custom suspension

- EVX mod

- 55T Integy

- 72/9

- Solid axles

- Spools F/R

- Proline Velocities w/ Losi Claws

- WB 17 1/4"

- COG 6"

- Diff's 4"

- Weight ~8 lbs~


I'm still waiting on my CS80 that's supposed to be in today. I'll have to mount that, wire it up, and cut another link for the draglink, and it will be done. BTW if anyone who has/does run one of those cares to explain what they're doing for power situation that'd be great...

[rbl]

looks good, didnt take you long to cut it up

[toyofast]

You do know that your shocks will do you no good in that position. You want to get your shocks as vertical as you can. Also, what's with the lockout links being so freaking long?

[RANOVRU]

Thanks.


Well I've seen others run there shocks like that and so far it seems to work fine like that. I drove it around the living room (with no steering) just to make sure everything worked ok and the shocks looked like they were working fine. It articulates fine and sets right back down into position like they are??? I guess if it turns out to be a major problem down the road I could change them... Lol, I had some spare links laying around that I had bought a few weeks ago and just figured I'd make use of them. That was four links that I didn't have to make.

[Cloak]

Isn't the bottom of the tranny going to get hung up on stuff? I can't quite tell if that's what I'm seeing since those pics are so blurry and far away.

[Frkan]

Your going to have wicked torque twist with your shocks like that, listen to other people, they know what they're talking about.

[RANOVRU]

Thanks I'll take that into consideration.

I thought I was compensating for torque twist when I put the 8lb ea. springs in, we'll see...

[TwistedCreations]

yeah it's not they are not going to compress and go back to the way the sit. It's your going to have torque twist and other issues with them. It acts like you don't even have any shocks on there. specially where they are mounted onto your links.

Besides it sits way to tall.you may have 6" of tranny clearance, but that motor sits like 9" in the air. you need to put your batteries on your front axle also.

Plus you will probably have troubles with your lower links. When they are bent like that, it adds more strain on the rod ends and where the rod ends touch the actual link.

I highly suggest you make some type of brackets coming off the frame for your shocks. That way you can run them more up and down.

[RANOVRU]

Originally Posted by TwistedCreations

yeah it's not they are not going to compress and go back to the way the sit. It's your going to have torque twist and other issues with them. It acts like you don't even have any shocks on there. specially where they are mounted onto your links.

Besides it sits way to tall.you may have 6" of tranny clearance, but that motor sits like 9" in the air. you need to put your batteries on your front axle also.

Plus you will probably have troubles with your lower links. When they are bent like that, it adds more strain on the rod ends and where the rod ends touch the actual link.

I highly suggest you make some type of brackets coming off the frame for your shocks. That way you can run them more up and down.

Thanks for the constructive critisism. There's nothing saying at this point that a lot of things won't get changed. This is just the first configuration I've come up with. I'll be going for a test run this Sunday with another guy off here to see what needs work and how everything reacts.

I didn't plan on it being that tall. Initially I had it at about 5" COG clearance but my WB was over 19" Not only did I think that was way to much but I also had driveshaft issues at that point, aka, they don't stay together.

I may end up changing the shock location at some point, depending on how it does, but the COG is actually pretty good for the WB IMO. I can set it up on two wheels on it's side and it will stay balanced perfectly. It's actually very light, the chasis with electronics/tranny weights right around 2lbs. And the battery is going on the front axle, I just sat it in there while I was driving around the living room last night because I didn't have any extra wire yet to legnthen...

[RANOVRU]

I'm having serious issues trying to get this CS80 wired up with a "stand-alone" battery.


The Y harness came with the servo. On the back of the box it states- "For BEC recievers wire together using the Y harness provided. Follow the diagrahm-


RECIEVER

[ Batt ]
[ Ch1] ------------------------> Throttle control
[ Ch2] -----------------------------------------------------/-----------Batt
.................................................. .........................................\-----------Servo

Then it states- "For NON-BEC recievers plg battery directly into reciever, shown on diagrahm. Then plug servo directly into reciever.



I tried it for a BEC reciever first, because thats what you told me, and when I plugged the Y-harness into the reciever, with the batt on one end and the servo on the other, the LED on the ESC came on???? The servo worked fine, I played around with it for serval minutes making sure it worked ok. So I go ahead and mount the servo and make my draglink and get everything set up. When I go to test it I plug both the standard 7.2V into the ESC like normal and as soon as I plug in the Y-harness into the reciever everything starts acting goofy. Studdering going foward/reverse, and steering left/right??? I didn't know WTF was going on so I unplugged everthing imediately. I unplugged the batt. to the ESC and tried the servo by itself to make sure I didn't F anything up. Then I tried it for a NO-BEC reciever and the same exact thing happend. With just the servo and servo batt. pluged in the LED on the ESC came on again???

I tried just plugging in the servo directly to the reciever and just running off the 7.2V but it seemed to drain power extremely fast. I had a fully charged batt and with 2-3min of driving around the living room the streering was dramatically slowing down with a lack of power. Also, that just makes me nervous because the Hobbico recommends on the box that you don't run the servo directly into the reciever because it will draw too much current thought it. I don't think it has anything to do with the ESC, but more to do the with reciever??


Please help someone! This is driving me crazy.....

[TwistedCreations]

gotta yank the red wire( out of the connector) off the esc if your running an ext. battery pack.

[RANOVRU]

Originally Posted by TwistedCreations

gotta yank the red wire( out of the connector) off the esc if your running an ext. battery pack.

Lol, thanks I was just getting ready to post this-



Ok, I just got off the phone with Hobbico and talked to a tech. He said the diagrahm on the back of the box is for a MSC set-up, not ESC. He said that if you want to run a "stand-alone" batt for the servo, or if you're worried about pulling too much current throught the reciever, that the only way to run a stand-alone batt. for the servo for a ESC set up is to cut the power wire going from the ESC to the reciever. Then use the Y harness and hook it up just like in the diagrahm.

He said that with what I was tring to do I was sending 6V from the stand alone to the reciever along with the 7.2V from the ESC to the reciever and that would definately be what was causing all of the problems and could have damaged something had I not unplugged everything quick. I was under the inpression that the Y harness was supposed to stop power coming from the reciever and send the power from the stand alone directly to the servo, but apparently that's not the case.


Anyway, what he said makes sense and doesn't sound like that big of a deal to do, I just wanted to get a second oppinion. He said that cutting that power wire going from the ESC to the reciever won't hurt anything else at all, it will just stop sending power fromt he ESC to the reciever to power anything. At this point the only thing I'm running is a servo besides the lathe, so it sounds like it should be ok....



Any thoughts on doing this????





that was the second opinon I was looking for. Thanks Twisted!:-P

[TwistedCreations]

No Problem

[RANOVRU]

Well here's a few pics of the finished product. I will be moving the body down some more but I'll need to trim some more first.


Sorry for the crap quality pics, I'm working with a camera phone...



















One other thing to note, the single lathe and 72/9 doesn't have the power I was hoping it would so I bought another 55t today and am gonna try running two. A friend suggested maybe the batteries I'm using are to blame (cheapest 1200mah you can get) but I don't see how higher mah batts are gonna make "that" much of a difference.

What's the best way to run two lathes, series/parrallel?? Any thoughts?? I see a lot of guys run a single 55t and a 72/9 and have no problems???

[Cloak]

I'm interested too, I have the one running and it is nowhere near as powerful as I thought it would be.

I'm running some GP3300s in here too, 6 cells. I'm sure more cells would make it go faster, but it just doesn't have the grunt to push the tires over things like I thought it would.

[gregrocks90046]

i'm running 8 cell packs with a single 55 turn lathe motor. has plenty of power and wheelspin when i need it. you may want to run a 7 or 8 cell pack.

[RANOVRU]

I wouldn't think more cells/higher mah's would give more power, just longer run times???

I'll let you guys know how the two 55t's work out...I may look into running two lathes AND better batts if someone thinks different batts would make that much of a difference.


BTW, overall height is 12" right now, of course that'll change when I lower the body. Width is 16.5" from outside tire to outside tire.

[Cloak]

I'm sure more batteries will do it as that's getting your motor more volts. Figure 6 = 7.2V, so 8 would be 9.6V.

I might have to make some jumper pack or something to get some extra volts going on my battery sticks.

[Jeepjunky]

If it were me, I'd use a GD600 and regear the whole thing to work with the one motor. If you still want to use two motors, change the ring and pinion to the Robinson ones so they might have a chance. A customer/ friend of mine used two motors once, he blew out both stock diffs, but it would pull his Ranger if we could have come up with a way to tie the two together. Just a thought.

Randy

[RANOVRU]

I thought about using a GD600, my LHS ordered one for me but I held off on it. I want to have some wheelspeed too and I don't if the 600 will give me what I want.

What ring & pinion are you talking about JeepJunky? I was tolf no one makes a R&P for these trucks. Aside from that, you're saying that two lathes would definately give me more power??? Your friends worked ok???