Deans and Tamiya are both very popular so I guess your battery maker wanted to please everyone :D

I've been making slow progress with the sensors. For reasons that only god knows some of the documented telemetry sensors don't work as they should. So now I'm learning there is a way around it buy creating custom sensors. Now I have to joy of doing everything I spent the last week doing all again but differently!?! XD

It's so much work just so I can see some data on the screen of my transmitter and say to myself 'Cool!' and then never look at it again XD

Oh well, back to it I guess. I'm close though, just a few more steps...

>>39571 This almost started to sound like work. You could start a business.

>>39570 But it's just a female plug, right? The current batteries I have, have a dean male-to-female AND a freakin molex Tamiya female plug. Like, who does that?

Annoyingly I've not felt well enough to paint this car yet, I've been too tired lately when I've been wanting to do it. Instead I've been looking in to the sensors electronics I've been wanting to do.

I've successfully been able to use a micro-controller to talk with the receiver I use, and therefore send back telemetry. Although I'm still trying to add in some additional sensors. I've also managed to use the micro-controller to talk to the hobbywing ESC's I use and get data about temperatures, voltage, amps & RPM. I just need to get a few more things figured out and combine it all to make a sweet system I can use to monitor every part of the car and control other things like advanced lighting etc that would be hard to do from the transmitter without using lots of extra channels. Pretty much what your MFC is doing in your truck.

If you're wondering I'm using a ESP32-S2 Mini for this purpose, but I'm going to upgrade to a ESP32-S3 Mini for some extra features. It also requires a voltage regulator and logic level shifters to convert data between different voltages. I can then also add extra sensors to get more data or just use the data from the ESC and radio receiver. The data channel from the receiver provides access to all the channels data so I can react to anything that is happening.

The possibilities are endless... ...kinda XD

If you think the Tamiya plug is bulky you'll love the XT-90 connectors on my Inferno XD
Big power needs big connectors!

You can fit new connectors with a soldering iron, or a crimping tool for lower power connectors, but the big connectors need a powerful soldering iron to heat up the thick cable.

This is the connector board I bought.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0F5P6HN8Y?ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_fed_asin_title

They work albeit being bulky. The new batteries also have a dean to Tamiya plug which add extra bulk. But the MFC is Tamiya plug only.
I guess you can just re-pin(?) any plug to them, right? As long as you don't cross the streams..I mean wires.

My Nvidia 12+4 pin plug hasn't burned yet...let's hope never. :|

Do you happen to have a link to that fancy multi-connector board? >>39555

If there was a competition for the worst connector known to mankind I feel like the tamiya connector would have a good chance of winning. Although the connector for the Nvidia GPU's would also be a strong contender.

I'm seriously thinking of replacing them all with Deans (T) or XT-60 connectors on all my old 1/10th cars.

Mine is tiny but at least it came with the Tamiya molex plug

The D200neo charger only came with a main power lead, nothing for the batteries. The connector on the charger is an XT-60 which is reasonably common. My rock crawler has an XT-60 connector, but my Inferno uses bigger XT-90 connectors, however I can change the leads on those batteries if I need to. I also have some batteries with Tamiya or Deans connectors. So to cover all my bases I've ordered a couple of connector boards to adapt to most modern connectors, and I can use my existing Deans to XXX cables for everything else.

Oh, I was looking at that one too but it's out of stock :( so I went for the SkyRC eN20.

Does it come with cables to plug the batteries in or can you plug the battery in the charger?

Funny you should ask! I have been using a SkyRC B6 Mini but have just upgraded to a SkyRC D200neo+. The old B6 mini is a great little charger but it could charge one battery at a time and it couldn't handle as many amps.

Curious, what type of battery charger do you have?

I think it's nice little detail. It is a bit of shame to ruin more detailed scale body with body mounts and r-clips. I'm not sure who started it, but it seems quite common on rock crawlers.

I did test out the idea of doing magnetic body mounts on my Tamiya Hornet but they just aren't strong enough.

oh, that actually looks better.

It has a fancy hidden way of attaching the shell because reasons or something.

Btw, how is the body attached to frame?

Oh wow, they both look sweet! But the left has more soul and labour in it, so yeah. They kinda resemble the ones I have, just with more screws. :)

I couldn't wait so I fitted one to get a comparison! XD

I think they look pretty good.

You mean 'only' 36 screws per wheel? I hope you have spares ;)

There's no such thing as a cheap Tamiya truck! XD

The new wheels just arrived! Everything looks good, so definitely a bargain at £14. I'll put them together this evening. It'll take a while, only 144 screws! XD

>>39408 oh, that's relatively cheap. My Volvo was around €600 but than I bought the MFC at €375.. so yeah..

I like the white rims with a chrome hub cap the most, tbh.

So on mine they are chrome with a black rim. It looks okay. I think white or all black will look better.

The wheels? I might paint the centres to be the same as the car body, but I'm going to wait and see what they look like on the painted car and get a feel for what might complement the look. I could have bought all black ones, but I thought a bit of contrast looked better.

Painted black?

I found some metal beadlock wheels for this car on ebay that were super cheap, £14 rather than £30+, so I grabbed a set. They're coming from china so who knows how long it'll be or if the price is too good to be true!

Some metal wheels will help with the cog though so worth getting.

Well I finally ordered the paint on Friday and for some reason it turned up this morning, Sunday!

I ended up adding a couple of ball joint tools to get free postage, seeing as I found a minor issue on the inferno where the rear suspension is very slightly rubbing on the drive shafts to the wheels. I've also ordered longer rod-ends for the suspension which should help with clearance.

The shocks on the Inferno are actually for a Losi 8B, so it's not surprising they don't fit perfectly.

I managed to figure out model matching with the receivers today, so now all the cars have unique receiver ID's so I can't accidentally use the wrong settings on a car. There was a minor bug in the software that had me scratching my head for a while, but once I found it it all worked perfectly.

Buy a driver or a trailer or a truck! ;)

Very cool! Do let me know how the sensor & data logging goes.

I still haven't ordered the paint. I've been trying to, but if I spend just £3.68 more I'll get free delivery, but I can't decide what else to buy!!! XD

I'm so fucking useless sometimes!

I have made a theme for my controller, gold and carbon, to match the controller appearance.

I've also been working on a couple of scripted widgets for the display to show the settings for the transmission & drag brake (left) and the pitch and roll (right). I need to make a sensor for the pitch and roll data but I think I have a solution for that.

So have you started painting and/or masking yet?

This was one of my first cars I painted. The TT01 or 2 I don't remember.

Hitler was a reasonable artist, but he was also a massive cunt. So... Yeah... :D

>>39467 Dude! What the hell. Maybe JC's very talented.

Neither was Hitler..and I..um.. ;)

Thankfully this kit comes with precut window masks, so masking windows should be a little bit easier. I still have concerns over how it will turn out, I'm no artist!

I 'member painting pc-bodies, a pain-in-da-butt. Especially taping the windows and other stuff.

I found lots of good colours on old Toyota FJ's but sadly there's a limited number of colours available for polycarbonate bodies, especially in spray cans ready to go. One day it would be good to mix colours and airbrush them, but that's not an option currently.

I think it'll probably be yellow, with a white roof and gunmetal-grey interior, except the dash which will be yellow as well. Maybe...

Although the blue ones do look good too..

>>39459 >>39458 Plus I already have a red one, you should mos def go for custard

I've narrowed it down to 4 colours. I've found some old Toyota FJ colours that I like and looked for available paints that match closely. This car isn't a Toyota FJ but is very close in it's design. I think the Yellow could be good, but I can't quite decide. Any thoughts?

Found a sneaky little spot for for the button under the back of the cab. I always use velcro to fit the button rather than adhesive tape so I can easily remove/move it if I need to.

Looking for spots to put button. Thankfully the body is pre-cut so that's one less thing for me to fuck up XD

For what it is the radio I got is amazing value. The old school companies like Futaba would want £1000+ for something similar!

You'll need to get new receivers for any older vehicles you want to use this radio but the 3 channel receivers are only £15. The 8ch receiver is only £35! I've bought some extra receivers to go in my older cars.

You can get extra radio modules to plug in to the back of this radio, that can work will lots of different radio systems, but I don't think there is a module for the old 27Mhz receivers.

Oh noice, indeed. Put the power button near the spinny bits :D

>>39446 Oh, that's not even that pricey. So I pressume you can add any R/C to the radio? Cause the only one I have are ye-olden-crystal variants.

Made a nice little radio box for the receiver and excess wires to hide away in. I put the Vanquish logo on the top.

Now to figure out the best position for the power button!

I have a RadioMaster TX15. It's fully programmable, has 2 physical dials, numerous switches and buttons. You can configure channels to use any switch or dial combination you want. It's a very complex bit of kit, but once you get it figured out you can do anything.

The heart of this radio system is the EdgeTX firmware. It's open source and works with quite a few different radios from a few manufacturers. You can get EdgeTX radio systems for less than I paid for mine if you're happy with less switches etc.

This rock crawler has an 8 channel receiver and I currently have it using 6 channels, but I'll be adding lights later so I'll want at least one more channel. A super cool feature of this radio system is that you can add extra receivers to be used at the same time if you need more channels!

https://radiomasterrc.com/collections/radio-controller/products/tx15-max-radio-controller-elrs-m2

What transmitters you have? How many channels/dials and shit it has?
I'm looking at the new digital ones..<ooof_theregoesmyliver.gif>

Maybe add a camera too while you're at it?

That Tamiya truck is sweet as fucking fuck! I want one :D

I have the servos all sorted now on my rock crawler. A different servo horn fixed the steering problem. I've also set up a dial on the controller to adjust the drag brake strength in the ESC. It's a pretty cool feature on the motor/esc to be able to adjust that remotely. I have the battery telemetry working too, so I can see how much power the car has on the transmitter. Still working on the design of the radio box.

I'm also thinking about making a widget for the controller LCD so I can easily see at a glance what transmission settings I'm using. I think it would be cool too to try and add a sensor in the car for pitch and roll and send that back to the transmitter to display it. I need to look in to how I can do that.

>>39438 Troubleshooting is part of the game, right? A costly game, but fun none the less. At least for me.

>>39439 You could make it move. I know Tamiya, and therefor others, sell articulation kits.

I've decided to get this one. I hoping the superstructure can be replaced with whatever I can 3d-print. :D
https://www.tamiya.com/english/products/56357/index.html

I think this could be a cool truck and off-road rig. It's a damn shame you can only buy it as a ready made model though. Also I'm pretty sure the bed on the back doesn't work/move. On top of all that it's also fooking expensive! £750!

I'm planing to design and 3D print a radio box and maybe some cable management clips, for now I'm just using some cable ties to secure some cables.

I spent a fair bit of time yesterday figuring out how to use my transmitter to control the transmission servos by limiting the amount of movement they have etc. I've also set up a dial on the controller to work with a 3-way switch for the winch to control direction and speed.

I found a problem with the steering servo horn hitting and rubbing on the chassis so I've ordered a couple of different ones and hopefully one of those will work.

Still need to figure out the motor and ESC settings too. It's currently reversed and I'm not sure if I'm supposed to change that in the ESC or transmitter settings :D

Looking like pretty sweet ride already. You could 3-d print cable management points and hooks.

Seeing this build makes me want to build another one too. But not another car or tank, thinking about a truck [so bloody expensive though]

Bet you didn't see that coming. Wheels built and installed. The tyres are very soft and sticky, should be good for Grip. I would like some softer foam inserts though for sand etc.

Next I'll try to figure out the wiring. The manual is not very helpful regarding wiring or positioning of other electrical stuff, but there are plenty of opportunities to meet any need.

The fans, inside the round covers, can actually spin freely as well! They thought of everything!
XD

The car has a detailed interior to build out too but that will happen when I get to the body. Soon™

Wow, it has a radiator with fans ;)
The cable management will be another project on its own.

Battery tray, inner front fenders, servos, rock sliders etc.

Except for the body and cab interior it's almost done. I still haven't decided on paint colours so that'll happen whenever.

Wheels and electrical stuff next, and then we play.

Still feeling fairly shit, but slowly improving. Hopefully back to normal by the end of the week.

:(

Sadly my bitch of a cold is in fact the flu :S

Building will continue once this has passed...

Get well soon, ma dude!

Progress has slowed to a crawl because I woke up yesterday to a complete bitch of a cold! Thankfully I'm feeling slightly more human today so I've fitted the front front links and suspension.

I heard back from the supplier about the axle problem and they have now sent me the correct front short axle. Thankfully the new one fits perfectly.

These are fluid filled shocks with adjustable spring pre-load. I have the same kind of shocks on my Turbo Optima and Inferno. I don't know that it matters if the springs are on the shocks or not, but it is useful to be able to adjust the pre-load on the spring. You can also get different rated springs to make it softer or firmer, but the kit only comes with the standard springs.

>>39416 <Mild shock.gif>

Did you had to fill those shocks with fluid? Oh, and are there markings on the shocks so you know how tight the coil springs are set?
The coil spring on my rig are independent of the shocks..I wonder it that matters for bounciness and/or clearance.

I built the suspension. It was pretty simple except for those tiny bloody E-clips !?!?!

In some good news. I've heard back from the supplier about the front axle and they spoke to the manufacturer who agreed that the axle shaft I have is wrong. The supplier is now sending me the correct part.

Strictly speaking Pinzgauer and Unimog are extreme off-road vehicles rather than rock crawlers, but yes I do agree everything looks better with a Unimog cab XD

I haven't decided on the battery yet because I want to figure out the perfect mix of run time and COG XD

>>39409>>39410>>39411>>39412 wow, very hot, lol. BTW, we talk C-O-G but road/rock clearance is a must too, also the battery isn't exactly lightweight.

Also, isn't it kinda weird they didn't went with an upper Pinzgauer or Unimog shell? Cause those have portal drives irl.

Fun little fact: I went with Inora low profile servos, they are about half the height of normal servos. Hopefully it will help keep the COG lower and just look a bit nicer.

Gotta keep that COG low!

"I like the Traxxxxxxas too but they are so expensive"

*Cough* This kit plus the motor/esc & servos has set me back £650 :O

But yes the tracked Traxxas models are very expensive. AND I WANT ONE!!!! XD

This car does have an interior. I hope to be able to do a reasonable job with the paint at some point and have it look decent. Hopefully! :D

WOW! I remember building the Tamiya crawler and loving every bit of it. So very envious..

I like the Traxxxxxxas too but they are so expensive. This hobby is not cheap, even with a 3d printer ;)

I like the motor with built-in esc. It does save space and maybe is a little bit better for the centre of gravity, if that matters..

Does the build come with an interior? Lil' seats and shit? If not, you gonna add it?

The little motor I got for it is a HobbyWing Quicrun Fusion Pro Elite! It's specifically for rock crawlers and has the ESC built in to the motor housing. And the whole thing is no bigger than a standard 540 motor for a 1/10th car. Hopefully it'll be pretty sweet!

The rear axle has this little red aluminium oil filler cap. It really works and screws in place with a handy little tool included in the kit, but it isn't actually necessary because the differential has grease in it when you build it. Just a cool detail.

The tyres are pretty big. Here's a comparison of 1/10th Buggy, 1/8th Buggy and 1/10th Rock Crawler.

Yes the 1/8th wheel is a little dirty. Hitting a puddle of water at 40mph in a quarry will do that! XD

Once again I'm really liking the little details and how well everything fits tightly together.

I'm very impressed with the quality of the small metal parts and plastics in this kit. I can see why people recommend it so highly. I had been thinking I'd get a Traxxas TRX4 but so many people suggested that for a little more money the Vanquish VS4-10 was much better. I still want to get a TRX4 at some point. I think the TRX4 and TRX6 look like a great platform to make custom rock crawlers.

...Hmm something doesn't seen right!

It would seem the short drive shaft is about 4-5mm too long!?! It's either a manufacturing fault or maybe it's the short drive shaft for the straight axle version instead of the portal version? I've asked the supplier to figure it out and get me the correct drive shaft.

In the image you can see how when it's fitted the short drive shaft if about 3-4mm too far in to the differential, diff gears are removed to show problem, and it's pushing on the long drive shaft. You can also see in the inset image of a pair of drive shafts that the short one I got is different to the one that should be in the kit.

It's not the end of the world. It'll get sorted. And if the worst comes to the worst I'll just use my little milling machine to make it fit XD