Jato Got a Bronco

[durok]

Jato - clear your PM's!

(so, I'm posting here - as it is TRX-4 Bronco-related)

So,

My friend picked up a TRX-4 Sunset Bronco today...

Looks like I will finally have a local crawling buddy!

He got a Hitec charger and a 3S Venom 5000mAh soft pack, just because he wanted to get rollin' right away...

He will definitely be getting batteries from another source in the future!

Anyways - he's super-stoked.

His kids got a LaTrax vehicle each, one got the little Teton, the other (a girl) got the "Hawaiian" paintjob Prerunner...

I met them there and we had fun spending his money!

[JatoTheRipper]

It's been a while since I touched this Bronco because of my SCX10 II build and the continuation of my TF2 build, but I had a chance to get it out this weekend...finally!

We have been absolutely bombarded with rain in the Northeast this spring and summer so I haven't been able to get out on the trails nearly as much as I've wanted.

After we made plans to go trailing I made a late night decision to install the rear Underdrive gears that I've had laying around for months now. It's so nice how Traxxas has the name "Underdrive" and gearing stamped right into the gears. No having to count teeth!






Because of the complexity of the TRX-4 axles with the portals I almost decided against doing this upgrade late at night. But I decided to forge ahead and I'm glad I did because it was extremely simple - much simpler than it first appeared.

For step 1 I removed the links and the driveshaft from the rear axle so that it was only attached by the remote locking diff cable. I didn't want to have to struggle to get to the diff cover screws which are screwed in from the back. Then you have to remove the portals and axles so the diff pulls out. Each portal is held on by 2 screws...2 screws! So simple to remove them. More great engineering by Traxxas. It literally takes more time to get into the portals than it does to remove them.

So after the axle was free I removed the diff cover. You can see the diff assembly as well as the plastic, remote diff locker. Would you look at that complicated mess?! Or is it...




Here is the diff removed from the axle housing. It isn't too bad when you look at it by itself and breaking it down by part. We just aren't used to seeing much more than a spool in scalers. From left to right you have the bearing, ring gear, diff cup that contains the spider gears and the engagement dogs for the locking diff, another bearing, the locking slider, and another bearing. Simple and efficient really.




I separated the diff from the assembly so I could replace the ring gear. Notice the 4 "tabs" on the stock ring gear. These go into the recesses on the plastic diff cup to hold the spider gear shafts into place. Keep that in mind.




Here is the underdrive ring gear next to the stock gear. It doesn't have the 4 tabs. I was surprised to see this. And there aren't any extra parts included to keep the spider gear shafts located in the diff cup. I was really surprised by this. Usually there is something on the diff gear or elsewhere that keeps the spider gear shafts in place.




Here is the underdrive pinion gear compared to the stock pinion gear. Notice it has the gearing and the word "Underdrive" stamped right on it as well. Awesome touch!




After this I buttoned it all back together and did a bench test. Everything worked fine. I should have taken more photos, but I didn't.

This whole process took only 20 minutes or so and some of that time was spend researching if there was anything supposed to be included with the Underdrive gear set to hold the spider gears in place. I didn't see anything and everything worked like it was supposed to during my bench test and the trail run the next day.

[JatoTheRipper]

So the next morning it was dreary and the forecast wasn't looking good, but OSRC and I were both anxious to get out so we rolled the dice and went trailing at our favorite spot. Thankfully, the weather was fine other than a few stray drops making their way all the way through the trees to get us. The storm held off until we left and then it poured on my way home. Sometimes Mother Nature does cooperate.

We had a long trail run. We were on the trail for at least 3 hours and the underdrive gears worked fine. No issues with the new gear not having those tabs I mentioned. It's still very odd to me, but it works so be it I guess. The underdrive certainly helped crawling performance. I'm not sure I'm going to add overdrive to the front. I think that would make straight line, second gear performance suffer too much. To be determined I guess.

I know what this truck needs next - an LED light kit.

Oh and the quality of these less than ideal light photos remind me I need a new phone.

This is about as "real or RC" as I get.




My Bronco next to OSRC's Defender. I can't say I've ever seen a D110 in person, but I have seen a D90 and an old Bronco. We were discussing the scaleness of the size of the trucks and Traxxas seems to have gotten it pretty close. The Defender body is noticeably narrower, but it also has the longer wheelbase.






More random shots:

[JatoTheRipper]

Oh and here are random oddities/coolness from the trail.

This is my favorite tree. From this angle it looks like a levitating tree. In reality it's a "Z-shaped" tree. It grows vertically out of the ground, then does a hard, nearly 90° right for a few feet, and then continues to grow vertically. It's a really cool freak of nature.




And this boat trailer looking thing we found in the water. I'm thinking it might be remnants of when this was a mine or quarry, but I'm not sure. When I showed my dad the photo he thought it might be a "derrick" of which I'm not familiar with.

[jokersinsanity]

Gotta get a full pic of this tree lol

Originally Posted by JatoTheRipper

Oh and here are random oddities/coolness from the trail.

This is my favorite tree. From this angle it looks like a levitating tree. In reality it's a "Z-shaped" tree. It grows vertically out of the ground, then does a hard, nearly 90° right for a few feet, and then continues to grow vertically. It's a really cool freak of nature.




And this boat trailer looking thing we found in the water. I'm thinking it might be remnants of when this was a mine or quarry, but I'm not sure. When I showed my dad the photo he thought it might be a "derrick" of which I'm not familiar with.

Sent from my LG-M703 using Tapatalk

[2mtech]

Glad you got some trail time and the gears worked for you. 100+ heat index here all weekend with intermittent wicked NC storms so it was a stay inside and build weekend. Trailing in the summer here is a non-event for a Northwesterner.

[AnimalHippie]

Originally Posted by 2mtech

Glad you got some trail time and the gears worked for you. 100+ heat index here all weekend with intermittent wicked NC storms so it was a stay inside and build weekend. Trailing in the summer here is a non-event for a Northwesterner.

Good thing you're not in Florida bro! From May till November heat index over 100° almost every day. 91° with 90% humidity & feels like temp 102° today. To trail in Florida bring a bunch of water & something to keep the mosquitoes away Ran last weekend at the in-laws house had to wear pants & long sleeves. Still got carried away by the mosquitoes. If I had to wait for good weather I'd hardly ever get to run. Keep up the great work Jato! Love seeing all the different places people get to run & the creative minds that we get to share on the forums. Have a great day!

[JatoTheRipper]

It's still been doing more raining than anything. It's a miserable summer. Our crawling days have been cut by 75% or more up to this point. I hope the summer dries out. I also hope we also get this much precipitation in the winter in the form of blizzards. That won't happen.

Anyway, we were finally able to get out Sunday to our local scale crawling mecca. I took my TRX-4. It was a little wet with spots of mud. The rocks were particularly wet and slimy. My Bronco failed to make it up one of our favorite "test rocks" this time out. It normally crawls right up when it's dry. The only truck that made it up was my dad's SCX10 II and that was wearing Duratrax Showdown tires. My KLRs were stumped. Overall, I'd say the KLRs were one of the worst if not the absolute worst performing tire on Sunday especially on damp or mossy rocks. I was really disappointed. Looks of the tires are deceiving in this case. Proline TSLs (G8 compound I believe), Duratrax Showdowns and even Redcat Iroks schooled the KLRs in these conditions.

I still think this truck needs more weight up front. As a trail truck it does fine, but when I want to crawl steep inclines it likes to fall over backwards.

Not many updates, but I have some photos from Sunday. Every time I take photos in shady conditions I'm reminded I need a new phone. I can't wait for the next batch of flagships to be released so I can finally upgrade.

Oh I also decided I want new tires. Something better performing and better looking than the KLRs. I want something around 4.5". I wish Proline go with the program and started making mid size tires.


My Bronco next to two Land Rovers. Our resident Land Rover nut. He drove both rigs on Sunday.

[Topher Builds]

I think I remember reading you had underdrive gears, have you installed them yet?

I had problems on inclines too. The HR brass diff cover helped a good bit, as did running a lighter weight shock oil up front.

[JatoTheRipper]

Originally Posted by Pant Danza

I think I remember reading you had underdrive gears, have you installed them yet?

I had problems on inclines too. The HR brass diff cover helped a good bit, as did running a lighter weight shock oil up front.

Good memory! Yes, I have underdrive gears in the rear. I actually kinda forgot that... They are installed and I did notice a performance improvement. Up front I have SSD knuckle weights.

[Itali83]

Have you installed your battery tray yet? Be interested to see it. I just ordered a bronco myself in the sunset flavor. Can’t wait to get it on Tuesday. My friend got one in the red like yours and we are going to box stock crawl them before doing any mods. I’m glad to hear that very little is needed for them to be fun to crawl with.

Probably will get a 1080 for it and a receiver so I can just use my dx4c radio but going to give the stock stuff a shot.

Ben

[JatoTheRipper]

Originally Posted by Itali83

Have you installed your battery tray yet? Be interested to see it. I just ordered a bronco myself in the sunset flavor. Can’t wait to get it on Tuesday. My friend got one in the red like yours and we are going to box stock crawl them before doing any mods. I’m glad to hear that very little is needed for them to be fun to crawl with.

Probably will get a 1080 for it and a receiver so I can just use my dx4c radio but going to give the stock stuff a shot.

Ben

Actually I haven't even gotten around to finishing the design or printing one. It's something on my to-do list for sure.

Good idea. The TRX will surprise you out of the box on a trail run. Run it open diffs and watch it astound you. And that Bronco body is so awesome! Congrats on getting your own!

[JatoTheRipper]

I've been installing LED lights in the Bronco body for quite a while now. It started sometime last year and then I moved onto other things. I decided to resume that last night. I am using a Tamiya TLU-01 LED unit that was included with the Jeep Wrangler CC-01 kit that I bought and sold long ago. I bought the LEDs in bulk from eBay.

I installed 10 of the 12 LEDs in the Bronco body (not illuminating the reverse lights) when I discovered the Tamiya unit only had 8 plugs. So I got out the soldering iron and spliced together the front turn signal and side marker lights on either side.

I also bought some aluminum light buckets on eBay. They are a great design and I like the fact that the light buckets are shiny and reflect light. The problem is that they were way too thick and you can't install the body. You can cut the inner finders, but I'm not willing to do that. Instead, I fired up SolidWorks and my 3D printer and made my own. The Chinese version is 10mm thick. I made mine 6mm thick.

Chinese versus mynese:




Here you can see the substantial difference in the thickness. If I had a mill I'd shave down the Chinese versions because I really like them. No such luck.




And here's the completed set. I installed one and fitted the body and they seem to be thin enough to clear without any issues. I'll find out more when I resume the light install which is hopefully tonight.

[Topher Builds]

Originally Posted by JatoTheRipper

Chinese versus mynese:

[mikemcE]

Jato screw them down to a 2x4 and use a belt sander to take them down, finish sand to get smooth, chineseium is soft usually


Hang up and Drive

[JatoTheRipper]

Originally Posted by mikemcE

Jato screw them down to a 2x4 and use a belt sander to take them down, finish sand to get smooth, chineseium is soft usually

Hang up and Drive

Good point. I don't have a belt sander. I'd have to do that over at my dad's house. Maybe it's something I can try when the weather gets warmer and I'm over there.

[mikemcE]

Lil John Butera started fabbing his parts with a jigsaw, drill and belt sander. He created the billet stuff before any cnc was thought about


Hang up and Drive

[Shape_Shifter]

Originally Posted by mikemcE

Lil John Butera started fabbing his parts with a jigsaw, drill and belt sander. He created the billet stuff before any cnc was thought about

So did I. Just sayin.

[JatoTheRipper]

I had some more time to work on the Bronco last night.

Here is one of the light bucket housings installed. All of the layers of the 3D printed part are hidden by the textured, translucent lenses.




Here's the backside of the bucket. Not nearly as exciting as JLo's backside, but this isn't that kind of forum. My buckets still may be a little too thick. You can see the severe bends in the LED wires that are needed to clear the inner fenders. I wish I wish you could buy only the Traxxas LEDs for the headlights. Their PCB lights seem to be ideal for the space between the body and the inner fender.




This is the best I could manage to un-rat's nest this rat's nest of wires. #1 reason why I hate LED lights.




Here's the bad boy illuminated. I think the Tamiya, old school LEDs look great for the headlights. Can't wait to run this baby again.

[Topher Builds]

Headlight color is perfect. Looking good Jato