WLToys Clone Hammers Budget Build

[nedmo]

Thats a super clean mount solution!!!!!

[gtxracer]

Nice work! Thanks for sharing that, I'll be sure to d/l and print one for mine.

[Jim85IROC]

For my final upgrade, this week I tackled the vehicle electronics. This consisted of a new ESC, new rx/tx, new steering servo, and new shift servo. Details are below.

For the ESC, I chose the Hobbyking X-Car 45a brushed ESC. I chose this for 2 reasons: One, it's stupid cheap (the cheapest esc with a drag brake that I'm aware of), and second, I already had one in my parts bin, so I didn't have to spend actual cash on it. Compared to the factory all-in-one ESC, the low speed startup is much better, with a much lower initial speed, and smoother at the startup speed. It works well.


For the rx/tx setup, I needed a 3 channel controller that had adjustable end points for that 3rd channel. This limited my options, especially considering the dirt cheap price point I was trying to maintain. This essentially meant there was only one candidate: Flysky GT3B.


At the time I was buying, this was available for as little as $30 on eBay. The cheapest I can currently find it is about $33. the added benefit of this radio is that with the hack, you can control many more channels, which is a benefit because I want to be able to control the OEM lights, as well as an external LED light bar that I've designed for the truck. That said, I did end up cheating a little bit here. I decided to pony up the extra cash for the GT3C so that I could have the rechargeable battery option. I have that in the GT2B that's currently controlling my son's Circuit, and for me the convenience was worth the extra $15 that it cost me. I bought the GT3C for $45, but unfortunately the cheapest I can find it for now is about $56. I also ordered a 6 channel receiver that I'll be swapping in when I do the LED light installation.


On to the steering servo. For that I went with the JX PDI-6221MG servo. This is a pretty slow servo at .16sec at 6V, but is relatively powerful at 20kg at 6V. The BEC on the X-Car ESC is 5.6v, so this servo will be slower yet, and a bit less powerful, but I'm happy with its performance so far. You can definitely tell that the servo is slow, and this is NOT a servo that I'd want to use on a higher speed vehicle, but the speed isn't really a big drawback here. In terms of the torque, I feel it's more than enough. Prior to setting the endpoints correctly, I was able to tweak the whole chassis when I reached the mechanical limits of the steering. In a situation where my steering is bound up, I'm confident that I'll either brake my printed bell cranks or tweak the chassis long before the servo gets upset.


As for the shift servo, this one was more of a challenge. The servo that comes with the truck isn't a standard sized servo, and it's not a micro servo. It's somewhere inbetween, and there aren't many options available. The most common option for TH owners seems to be the stock TH servo, or the Hitec mighty mini. Neither of these really fit my target budget, so I had to get creative. What I decided to do was go with a cheap full size servo, and then figure out how to mount it. I chose the MG996R, which cost me a whopping $4 on Ebay. I had assumed that I would have to fab up some sort of mounting plate for it, but while I was searching for the servo on Ebay, I stumbled across a nifty aluminum servo mount for under $2, so I grabbed it.

Two of the mounting holes happened to line up perfectly with the original servo mount holes, so all I had to do was grind a little bit off of the side of the mount to get it to fit where I needed. All of the factory linkage was able to be swapped over to the new servo, and everything works great. This servo has more than enough torque to do nasty things to the shift linkage, so as long as the end points are set correctly (which turned out to be about 5% on the controller!), it shifts perfectly.


Overall, I'm quite happy with what a $60 investment in new electronics provided. The new hardware works great, and combined with the prior upgrades I made, the overall capabilities of the truck are drastically improved. I had a chance to take it out for a quick ride on Friday, and I was having an absolute blast right up until I got the truck bound up and managed to strip the transmission gears. I guess the slipper was a little too tight.

Here's the video:

[willygee]

Originally Posted by Jake

Looking forward to seeing what all you do! My build is also a sort of budget build so I may adapt some of your ideas to mine if that's okay.

Here is my 10428...has the 2 speed..esc let go so using a HW1080.
Powered with permanent mount Lifepo4 4200 pack.

[Twinhamme knock off]

Originally Posted by Jim85IROC

I'm 2 weeks late, but I finally have my next update!
This week's update adds a custom designed 3D printed front bulkhead that provides vertical shock mounting, bell crank steering and an adjustable front mount battery tray! This represents a major upgrade for the 10428 series of Twin Hammers style vehicles.

This new design replaces the laydown shocks with nearly vertical 90mm shocks for smoother suspension action, it replaces the sliding steering rack with a more conventional bell crank system that works smoother and provides more steering angle, and it moves the battery forward (and lower) for better weight bias & CoG when crawling.

The only parts you need in addition to the 3D printed bulkhead & accessories is a set of rear SCX10 shock hoops, a new servo horn, and some miscellaneous mounting hardware, so this upgrade will only set you back about $22.

The new design replaces the laydown shocks, the rocker arms, the shock links that connect the a-arms and the rockers, the bulkhead under the laydown shocks, and the steering rack underneath the bulkhead. In it's place, you mount the new bulkhead with the bellcranks mounted beneath. One of the shock links is reused to connect the bellcranks, and the other gives up its ball studs to replace the lower ball studs in the new shocks. A new servo arm is required because of spacing as well as a need for more throw out of the servo.

Here are a couple 3D renderings of the bulkhead:
10428 Battery Tray2 by jim85iroc, on Flickr

10428 Battery Tray by jim85iroc, on Flickr

Here's a view of the underside:
10428 Battery Tray5 by jim85iroc, on Flickr

And here's a view of the part with all of the accessories:
10428 Battery Tray everything by jim85iroc, on Flickr
The piece in front is the battery stop plate that mounts to the bulkhead in one of 3 different positions depending on your battery length. The pieces in the lower right corner are the bulkheads. The long piece on the far side of the bulkhead is the shock tower support bar, and the two pieces in the upper corner are the shock spacers.

Here are some pics of it installed:
Battery tray by jim85iroc, on Flickr

Battery tray by jim85iroc, on Flickr

Battery tray by jim85iroc, on Flickr

Battery tray by jim85iroc, on Flickr

Battery tray by jim85iroc, on Flickr

Battery tray by jim85iroc, on Flickr

Battery tray by jim85iroc, on Flickr

I'm really stoked at how this came out, and I can't wait for our snow to melt so I can get out there and run it!

This week we started with a balance of $45.
The total spent this week is $22, which leaves a balance of $43 from this week that can be carried over.

The Thingiverse files for the printed parts can be found here:
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2839924

Additional parts used:
90mm shocks: $9 https://www.ebay.com/itm/Aluminum-Sh...72.m2749.l2649
Aluminum servo arm: $2 https://www.ebay.com/itm/25T-CNC-Alu...EAAOSwBoxaj3oJ
SCX10 AX80025 Rear Shock Hoops: $11.25 https://www.ebay.com/itm/Axial-Racin...72.m2749.l2649
Miscellaneous 3mm & 2.5mm screws

Here's the video for it:


Make sure to check out the whole upgrade series:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...eEyjOK3WH96uJr

How much would this front bulkhead cost and would you be willing to ship one to me ? ,

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[Jim85IROC]

You can download the files for free from the Thingiverse link, and maybe you can find a buddy with a printer to print it. I could put it on Shapeways, but it would probably end up costing $70 or more from there.

[Neal3000]

Do these have lcking diffs?

[Twinhamme knock off]

Rear yes , front no , you can get a peice to lock it but most use some sort of silly putty

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[Twinhamme knock off]

Originally Posted by Jim85IROC

Week 2 was another fairly cheap week so that I can bankroll some of the cash that I'm going to need for some of the later updates, but this week I was able to make two very noticeable improvements to the truck:

I lowered the gear ratio to give more low speed resolution, and I reworked the shocks to give this vehicle some much needed damping.

First the gearing. This turned into an adventure. My plan was to just replace the stock pinion with something smaller. My plans took a detour when I couldn't get the set screw out of the pinion, and ended up stripping it. In order to get the pinion off I had to remove the motor from the mount, and subsequently stripped the screw that holds the motor in place too. Yay cheap hardware!

Eventually I got that all sorted out and got to focus on the pinion. In the process I discovered that the WLToys truck uses Mod .6 gears instead of the 48p that the rest of the developed world uses. Fortunately I had an 87 tooth ECX spur gear hanging around waiting for a job, so I was able to use that along with my normal 48p pinions. I settled on a 24 tooth pinion for now, which gives me a ratio of about 3.6:1, which is a lot lower than the 2.8:1 that the original gearing had.

With that all put together, I focused on the shocks. The front and rear had so much stiction that the suspension didn't even want to compress. Once it got past the stiction, the lack of damping made it extremely bouncy. I opened up all 4 shocks and found that they had a very small amount of very thick, sticky oil in them. I cleaned them all out, lubed everything with green snot, and filled them with 40 weight. I tried it out and the front was horribly under damped, and the rear seemed to be very over damped. I ended up needing to go all the way up to 3,000wt diff oil in the front shocks to get them to work decently. In the back I went down to 30wt (the lightest I had around) and they were still way too stiff. I took them apart, and enlarged the holes in the pistons. Still too stiff. Enlarged them some more, and now they're working reasonably well. I think they could still be enlarged a bit more, but they're at least working pretty well now. I still have some minor stiction in the shocks, but it's nowhere near as bad as they were.

Since last week was a $2 week, I brought a balance of $18 over into this week. This week I spent $5 on the pinion, $4 on the spur, and figure $1 for the shock oil, bringing this week to $10. That means that I'm going to carry a $28 balance over to next week. My total investment in the truck so far is $142.

Hi Jim can you please tell me what's the original spur gear and pinion count ?

Thanks

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[Jim85IROC]

Originally Posted by Twinhamme knock off

Hi Jim can you please tell me what's the original spur gear and pinion count ?

Thanks

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If I can find them, I'll count them. I'm fairly sure I know where the pinion is, but I'm not really sure where the spur ended up.

[Twinhamme knock off]

Originally Posted by Jim85IROC

If I can find them, I'll count them. I'm fairly sure I know where the pinion is, but I'm not really sure where the spur ended up.

Cool I am trying to go the same way you have . I have a spare 87t arrma spur and a 18t pinion don't know if they will fit but I am trying to figure out total gearing

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[Twinhamme knock off]

Well I took it apart and it is a 68 spur / 24 pinion

Thanks again.

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[Neal3000]

Anyone know if the rear swaybar kit will work on the clone? I’m lifting a front tire on turns at speed

[Jim85IROC]

Originally Posted by Neal3000

Anyone know if the rear swaybar kit will work on the clone? I’m lifting a front tire on turns at speed

Yeah, it's a direct fit.

[Twinhamme knock off]

Originally Posted by Jim85IROC

If I can find them, I'll count them. I'm fairly sure I know where the pinion is, but I'm not really sure where the spur ended up.

Did you find tha after the gear change and with the new tires that the motor started getting hot ?

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[Jim85IROC]

no, not at all. I geared down so there should be less strain on the motor. The only exception is that if you gear it down and then find yourself at full speed all the time, the motor could heat up, but since I'm just trailing & crawling, I'm at low speed most of the time, so the lower gearing just took strain off the motor.

[Twinhamme knock off]

Originally Posted by Jim85IROC

no, not at all. I geared down so there should be less strain on the motor. The only exception is that if you gear it down and then find yourself at full speed all the time, the motor could heat up, but since I'm just trailing & crawling, I'm at low speed most of the time, so the lower gearing just took strain off the motor.

Mine was getting hot because I did some nonsense "mods". But i sorted it out . Thanks.

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[Jim85IROC]

Just a quick update. Last week I started to take the truck apart to assess the stripped transmission gears, and discovered that I had stripped the spur, not the transmission gears. That's a good thing! For now I'm dropping another 48p spur in and will loosen the slipper a bit. Down the road I'm going to need to come up with a 32p pinion/spur combo.

[Twinhamme knock off]

What's the difference between 48p and 32 is it stronger ?

Also how are you dealing with torque twist ?

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[Jim85IROC]

32p gears have much larger teeth than 48p gears, so they tend to be significantly stronger. The clone-hammers comes with some Mod .6 gearset which uses slightly larger teeth than 48P, but has crap for replacement parts available. When I decided to swap to a smaller pinion, it required that I switch to a more common gear size. Since I had an ECX spur laying around that would work, that's what I went with. I've converted some of my ECX vehicles from that very 48p setup to a Team Associated (I think) 32P setup, so I expect that I should be able to do the same on this vehicle when I get around to it.