Crazykev's mega basher Yeti

[Crazykev]

I still have more that I would like to do to the rig, but wanted to share what I've done so far. I have built quite a few R/C vehicles and must say this one has been my favorite. My last one was a Twin Hammers and flat out hated it and sold it within' months of owning it for a big loss too. It did look cool, but was too small, narrow and easy to break. The Yeti looks almost as good and is a much better truck for bashing. Another thing I like about the Yeti is that I always mod my trucks and is part of what I love about this hobby. Well with the Yeti I feel like each upgrade just makes the truck that much better and not just for looks. I have this geared to do 42-43mph and it is quick! I don't plan on pushing it quicker until I upgrade to the Holmes Puller pro XL motor which is what I plan on doing soon. The current motor doesn't even get close to overheating, so I'm hoping the Puller Pro will give me another 5mph and run at the same temps.




CC BEC mounted in the fuel cell powering the Savox SV-1270TG High Voltage Monster Torque Titanium Gear Digital Servo @ 8V pushing around 500 oz. and .10 speed


Running the stock motor with a 19t pinion and 56t Gen3 spur currently


Transmission gears are HR reversed with the 28t on top. HR tranfercase gears and full Acer ceramic bearings.


Modified Vanquish front shock mount with Icon shocks, Vanquish links, hubs, knuckles Ti-Ni pins and VVD V1-HD axles. I modified the Vanquish shock mount to give me the most suspension travel that I could possibly get with the truck. As it sits, you would have to grind the hubs or suspension arms to get anymore droop and it bottoms out the shocks about 3-4mm before bottoming out the chassis and will after compressing the tires that little bit. I have fully maxed out the front travel.


Rear suspension setup with custom Ti subframe struts




Hub retainer rings I made for the rear wheels. If I rip a wheel off the hub in the front, then I will do the same, but so far have only had that problem in the rear because the servo saver allows it to flex.



UCFab swaybar with Associated blue Ti links. KBess limiting straps


More to come as I keep building

Forgot one of my favorite mods. Open rear diff with GCM case, 2,000,000wt fluid, HD 38/13 gears and Boca ceramic 5x14x5 oversized bearing in the Vanquish V2 axle and the rest of the bearings are Acer ceramic along with the two additional ones in the Axial Full Width Lockouts. I really hated the handling of this truck with the locker, but I never do any sort of crawling and have the truck geared to do 42mph as it sits right now.


It usually isn't this clean, but I had a few days to wait for the new bottom shaft to show up and cleaned it up after I tore it down. Sheared the shaft right where the pin goes through. The Hot Racing gears survived perfectly! I know some people dog their products, but so far I have zero complaints.


Made a Carbon Fiber 1/8" thick skid plate for the front that also overlaps the T-Bone Racing skidplate so it stops snagging everything ya run over. You can also see the 5mm Hot Racing hub spacers I'm running front and rear and the STRC hinge pin bulkhead. I'm running 70mm blue springs with 45wt fluid on the front shocks.


Painted the skull helmets and you can see the antenna that runs up through also.

 

[Ahod39]

Beautiful build, looks like a seriously tough truck! I have seen some people running the dual shock set up in the back and am curious. Is the second shock without a spring just there to add damping? What kind of weights are you running in the two shocks vs. running thicker oil in a solo shock?

Bet that thing drives like a dream!

 

[Crazykev]

Thanks bro! I did the dual shock setup because I love the look. I'm running 10wt Associated oil in both of them and drilled out the piston holes on the 137mm, longer shocks. I drilled the two piston holes out to 1/16" will a drill bit by hand. They are so close to the edge of the piston that I didn't want to chance hogging them out. The dual springs are both 54mm with the blue one on top and red on the bottom. I know some would say I have them upside down, but I don't want that collar running up and down the shock body. In all honest, if I did it over again I would run the Proline shocks all the way around. I like my setup finally, but it took a lot of playing around with setups to make it work and I hear the Prolines are bad ass right out the package. I still love the look of dual shocks :

A couple other things I did:

STRC bellcranks with an 1/8" thick spacer I made out of ABS to put even more preload on the servo saver spring. Work perfectly! It's tough to make it give, but it eventually will and I jump and bash this truck WAY too much to run without a servo saver. Also run the Vanquish rack.


To keep the motor cool with the crazy high gearing I am running, I installed the LRP Extreme motor heatsink with the highest flowing 40mm fan that I could find. The LRP one is rated at 6cfm at 6V and I am running a fan rated at 11cfm with the 7V I am running from the MMP. I run a CC BEC at 8V wired straight to the steering servo. The BEC is in the fuel cell. Rx is in the factory location. On top of that I am running the Hot Racing motor plate with the built in heatsinks and the HR motormount. The motor stays extremely cool! Just barely hot and I would guess 110 deg. or so?


The Mamba Max pro ESC gets hotter than the motor!

 

[SJones]

Way cool yeti! I have the trophy truck your giving me some great ideas, I'm interested in the 5mm wheel spacers will she handle higher speeds thru the corners better? I'm sure it will im kinda top heavy with the tt!

 

[Crazykev]

The only parts I have broke or actually wore out has been the MIP drive shaft and the rear ring and pinion, even the Axial HD 38/13 set. I haven't went through another R&P because I used the Boca yellow ceramic bearings and shimmed the diff and pinion perfectly. One thing I think that people forget to shim is on the outside of the case pinion shaft between the bearing and driveshaft yoke. My pinion won't move either direction at all and the reason you shim the outside is so that when you compress the suspension, the drive shaft has to collapse and it pushes on the pinion before it will collapse, pushing it right into the ring gear. I am amazed with how far my truck rolls when you let off the throttle. Probably 150ft or so. I'll post a vid so you guys can see that setting the gears correctly and running ceramic bearings makes a huge difference! I noticed that everything runs cooler also. I know $100 for bearings is steep, but we drop that much just on a rear axle setup. I also ordered a boot for the MIP driveshaft so I can really grease up the splines and not worry about contamination. I'll post pics once they get here.

 

[silver5]

Great build! Do you have any plans to change the tires?

 

[CamaroTom]

Nicely built Yeti, did you swap out the plastic balls in the joints for Axial's metal version? It made a big difference on tightening mine up. Where did you get the carbon decals for the rear wings?

 

[maxPOWAAA]

are the transmission gears different ratios from stock? i run a similar set up with a 19p/56t, open rear diff 38/13, 3000kv hobbywing and 120a esc, 90c 3s lipo, and only get about 32-35 mph out of it but want more. also, any issues with the rear diff fluid leaking out? i am using mack's silicone ear plugs and still spin some of that stuff out.

 

[Crazykev]

Thanks guys! Yeah, I plan on getting the VOODOO U4s once the silver compounds are back in stock. My gearing is changed by flipping the position of the two gears in the transmission which made a big difference. Make sure you are programming your ESC to the radio also, so it knows when it's hitting 100% otherwise your ESC might not be pushing every bit of RPM it can. The stock gearing is an underdrive in the trans and I changed mine to an overdrive by having the 28t gear drive the 26t gear. A couple other things worth mentioning is to not crambone the trans and transfer case screws super tight when assembling them or you will put everything in a bind. I've done evrything I can possibly think of to make the drivetrain as smooth and efficient as possible. Don't bother trying the 36/14t setup as they don't last very long unless you set the slipper clutch very loose.

Nicely built Yeti, did you swap out the plastic balls in the joints for Axial's metal version? It made a big difference on tightening mine up. Where did you get the carbon decals for the rear wings?

Those are real carbon fiber plates I made, double sided taped and bolted to the body. Cut from 1/16" CF plate

Been wanting to try this for a while. RC4WD shock boot for the driveshft splines so that I can grease it.

First I put on a tube of heatshrink to make the diameter a little larger.


Then greased it and slid on the boot. They come in a pack of 10, so I figured I would see if I could make a CV boot too. Plus While I was at it, I swapped out the Acer bearing for a Boca ceramic yellow seal one. The Acers are great if you aren't exposing them to the elements, like in the transmission, transfer case, rear diff and the inner bearings on the Axial full width axle kit. The seals on the Boca bearings are just much better suited to dirt being that they are contact seals. Honestly if I had to do it again, I would have gone with the Boca ceramic kit in the first place. You can also see the shims I use on the outside of the pinion gear shaft.


Installed pics




My Vanquish shock tower showed up today also.


Swapped out the Acer for Boca ceramics in the front.





After spinning it up, I found that it will work best collapsed like this otherwise it tends to wobble around. Most of it is pushed up onto the female part of the MIP driveshaft.


These showed up too. Nothing special, but I did get them for $9.99 shipped and they are new. I had to supply the SS screws. I know everyone runs the aluminum fancy pants wheels, but they would just get ruined on my truck way too quickly. This is already the 2nd rollcage and body that I've gone through. I'll be mounting up a set of VOODOO U4s to these soon.


I came up with a little better design I think?

 

[Crazykev]

Rainy night and extremely bored, so I painted up the lettering on my spare.






Tried to get better shots of the truck, but I suck at taking pictures.

 

[Crazykev]

Painted up the new Method wheels. Think they turned out pretty sweet. I will get pics of them on the truck after a couple days. I want to let the paint completely cure before mounting them to hubs.






From a distance, I would bet they are tough to tell if they are aluminum or plastic. I love the look of the Vanquish billet wheels, but there is no way that I'll be able to enjoy beating on this truck if it were running on a $200 set of wheels. I think these look almost as good, cost me $16 including the paint, are lighter and more forgiving on those wadded up landings from an 8' jump.

 

[letthebombsfall]

Looks great man!

One question, how did the HR pivot balls fit the Vanquish steering links for you? I tried the same setup and they were so tight, the suspension was binding like crazy

 

[maxPOWAAA]

how were you able to paint the wheels so cleanly? isnt the face of the wheel and the lip the same piece? seems like a very tedious masking job

 

[Crazykev]

Big time tedious, LOL! I meant to take a picture of them taped off

Yeah, the balls are way tight with the Revo links! I took a heat gun too them and squeezed the link with smooth pliers. Again, really tedious, but it worked and I like the look. If you look closely at some of the pics of the links, you can see where I heated them a little too much and they kinda bubbled a tiny bit on the surface. Didn't hurt them structurally though.

I love the way the wheels turned out and what a difference a little time and paint makes. I went ahead and mounted them up:mrgreen:

 

[Crazykev]

I had six wheels all together and one of them didn't turn out perfect. Oh well, it's a spare. It just takes time to mask them, but I think the effort was well worth it! They probably won't look this well for very long though:ror: I was just sick of the all black wheels and I know I have some cash wrapped up in the truck, but not much of it is bling and is focused on making this thing a little beast. No way could I run it like I do with $220 in wheels getting trashed. I was gonna wait until I get the VOODOO U4s to mount them up, so I didn't glue the tires this time. I glue tires even if using beadlock wheels and will glue the VOODOOs for sure.

My masking must have pulled away and I didn't catch it. That was the worst of all the wheels and the others turned out just about perfect.






Next time I paint a set, I'll be sure to take a picture of the masked wheels. Might be doing a set for my brother here soon.

 

[Crazykev]

I was off work today and it was 6 degrees out, so I was bored and made something that I've wanted to do for a while. The fan on my motor right now isn't the highest CFM rated 40mm x 10mm fan I could find. I had a little beast of a fan on it, but the housing cracked because it isn't as thick as what we use on RC cars and I wanted to put it back on. This thing is built like a tank now, LOL. I epoxied 1mm thick carbon fiber plates all the way around it, made a grill/brace out of 1mm CF and made a brace out of 1/8" carbon / kevlar that I had left over from something I built for my Sti. It started out as the LRP Radical Heatsink and now has a fan that flows at least twice as much. It's a loud little fan, but I think it sounds cool. It's a double bearing (vapo bearing) fan that should last a really long time.

 

[Luke_burrell]

This is probably one of the sexiest yeti builds i have seen "thumbsup"

 

[Crazykev]

Thanks bro! I extended the ESC wires and upgraded them to Dean's 12G. Wanted to get them out from above the fan. Also drilled a hole in the bottom of the antenna mount to run the antenna directly into the Rx box.




Tried to take some better pictures too.

 

[Crazykev]

Made a Carbon Fiber cover plate for the "fuel cell" box. The stock plate is super flexable and I think it looks kinda cheesy. This looks a little more business and is lighter.

 

[Dixon11]

Big time tedious, LOL! I meant to take a picture of them taped off

Yeah, the balls are way tight with the Revo links! I took a heat gun too them and squeezed the link with smooth pliers. Again, really tedious, but it worked and I like the look. If you look closely at some of the pics of the links, you can see where I heated them a little too much and they kinda bubbled a tiny bit on the surface. Didn't hurt them structurally though.

I love the way the wheels turned out and what a difference a little time and paint makes. I went ahead and mounted them up:mrgreen:

What kind of paint did u us?

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