Sawback upgrades and my opinion

[steamboatbob]

Well I got this little sawback for Christmas a present I got for myself that I gave to my wife to wrap and put under the tree ;-) only real way to get the stuff you want.

anyhow I am going to run it in the Aus Scale 1 class so I need to do a few things to get it right and also I have got a fair amount of the upgrades that Gmade put out for this rig and I shall give you my opinion on the ones I have got.

anyhow this is it on it's first trail run I am only running main spring and small spring up front small spring is on top to give the softness of only 1 spring but the strength at the clamp point on the axle.
the rear is the main spring and the small spring. I am running Gmade SR-03 wheels to give them a bit of weight rather than the plastic rims that gmade give you with the kit. the tyres are RC4wd Flashpoint military tyres and I find them to be very good on the rocks they rival my MT Baja Claws but look better and are very soft

also to comply in Aus Class 1 I run the CMS Kit from Gmade and I find it to work very well

 

[steamboatbob]

now to the nitty gritty of it

I was running
stock 27 turn axial motor
Sidewinder micro ESC
Hitec 5645MG servo

and as it ran here I was fairly good but the lack of drag brake was killing me I don't know if it was the cheap transmitter or the motor but it rolled forward or backward when the transmitter was at rest

now since that outing I have upgraded the electronics to the following
motor replaced with Holmes Hobbies 35 turn Pro Torque Master
TX/RX Sytem upgraded to DX3s

and after my next outing I shall let you know how it goes.

 

[steamboatbob]

Now onto the upgrades from Gmade I have put into this and how they changed it. I know there are fixes out there that use other suppliers parts but im going to focus on the ones from GMade


CVA Kit
Absolute must have over the stock ones, increases the amount of steering you get out of the kit.

CMS Kit (Chassis Mounted Servo)
Well I haven't had it without this upgrade so I don't know if it alters anything but it gets the servo onto the chassis in a nice clean way

Aluminium C Hubs
This is a good thing to increase your castor but it does cause other issues which ill explain later

Aluminium Knuckles
Not really A must have unless you have broken your plastic ones more of a bling thing.

Stainless Steel Hex Bolts and nuts kit
Very good quality stainless steel more than enough to do the kit there are so many spares left over I will have spares for the life of this kit and then some my only gripe was that the way in which it was packaged could have been done better. just meant I spent an hour sorting the bolts into sizes. and I found it easier to strip the whole kit down and rebuild it from the ground up. also on a side note, not one of the hex bolts stripped out.

Metal Spacers
This was a little interesting I only got this for the bling factor 8) but was really surprised to see that this is one of the must have upgrades for this kit you get 12 brass tubes which replace the plastic bushings in the axle I thought I had my plastic bushings fairly loose so they didn't bind but in comparison to the brass bushings in this kit it a whole different thing. This frees up the suspension A LOT and makes the leafs work so much better, I have a lot more flex in the suspension. in another words if I could only afford 2 upgrades I would get the CVds and these spacers first.

 

[steamboatbob]

Now the problems I encountered while putting this all together

first of all here it is with just the motor to wire into it

Now as you can see in the above pictures I have had to bend the steering arm to go under the leafs this problem occurred only after I installed the aluminium C hubs as it gave a bit more castor to the knuckles I could have mounted the steering arm in the underneath position on the knuckles but I found on my first trial run that this becomes a problem with rocks catching on it and putting it over the leafs interfered with the servo under modest compression. simple fix I just put it into a little hobby vice until it bent you could also do the same if you don't have a vice by taking off the ball ends and drilling a hole in a bit of wood so its a tight fit and then bending it


Other than that this is all I have atm but I shall be back to give you guys more updates to it

Cheers

 

[JatoTheRipper]

CVA Kit
I don't have this and I still have enough steering throw that my tires hit the leafs. More steering would be useless to me unless I went with smaller tires.

CMS Kit (Chassis Mounted Servo)
CMS may look better, but the performance is usually less. I'll keep my servo on the axle.

Aluminium C Hubs
You can increase your castor with the stock C-hubs. You just have to flip them. This also helps put the tierod above the leaf springs which gives you a better approach and less to get hung up on. I'm not sure why you bent yours down where it will catch on more things.

Overall, I think the Sawback is a great kit that's very underrated. Those of us that have them love them. The only weak link I've experienced is that the leafs bend fairly often. But I beat on my trucks. I like the Sawback so much that I'm currently building a second one.

 

[Dialed]

CVA Kit
I don't have this and I still have enough steering throw that my tires hit the leafs. More steering would be useless to me unless I went with smaller tires.

CMS Kit (Chassis Mounted Servo)
CMS may look better, but the performance is usually less. I'll keep my servo on the axle.

Aluminium C Hubs
You can increase your castor with the stock C-hubs. You just have to flip them. This also helps put the tierod above the leaf springs which gives you a better approach and less to get hung up on. I'm not sure why you bent yours down where it will catch on more things.

Overall, I think the Sawback is a great kit that's very underrated. Those of us that have them love them. The only weak link I've experienced is that the leafs bend fairly often. But I beat on my trucks. I like the Sawback so much that I'm currently building a second one.

I agree with Jato here, love my Sawback and have many hours with no issues on stock parts."thumbsup"

 

[steamboatbob]

CVA Kit
I don't have this and I still have enough steering throw that my tires hit the leafs. More steering would be useless to me unless I went with smaller tires.

CMS Kit (Chassis Mounted Servo)
CMS may look better, but the performance is usually less. I'll keep my servo on the axle.

Aluminium C Hubs
You can increase your castor with the stock C-hubs. You just have to flip them. This also helps put the tierod above the leaf springs which gives you a better approach and less to get hung up on. I'm not sure why you bent yours down where it will catch on more things.

Overall, I think the Sawback is a great kit that's very underrated. Those of us that have them love them. The only weak link I've experienced is that the leafs bend fairly often. But I beat on my trucks. I like the Sawback so much that I'm currently building a second one.

absolute I still love this kit but as I said it is still my opinion, and I have to conform to class rules i.e.
no servo on axle
max tyre size 4.19 on 1.9 wheels


with the cms i have to use it to run the sawback in the class i want to no servo on axles are allowed.

prior to installing i had my stock chubs flipped to give more castor but the aluminium ones give you a little more than the stock ones have to offer (not much but still a little bit more) and with the tie rod it hits the arm connecting it to the cms kit so you lose flex putting the tie rod above the springs i really wanted to do this but the contact with the servo arm made me put it under.

and with the cva kit i never had the problem with the wheels hitting the leafs