Phase II (continued)

Other Modifications

The first pic shows one last significant mod - which was to reverse the whole centre gearbox. In stock trim, the batteries (which are the heaviest part of the truck) were positioned in the rear of the truck and the motors (the second heaviest items) balanced them in the front. With the batteries now on the sides, the truck was now front heavy because of the motors. This would affect performance especially on jumps, so I reversed the centre transmission to position the motors to the rear of the truck. The motor endbells were also rotated 180 degrees to reverse their rotation.

I also replaced the stock cantilever links with 6x30mm turnbuckles (second pic). This not only allows for easier adjustments, but the rods are shorter than stock so they lower the overall ride-height of the truck to further lower CG and improve handling. I decided to do this instead of putting spacers in the shocks because this way, full articulation is retained and I can just pop-off the rods and re-use the stock ones when more ground clearance is required.

After a lot of hard bashing, the stock universal shafts which link the 3 gearboxes were binding just a little bit at the telescoping part... so I decided to try a quick mod which I read about on some RCMT forums. I replaced the shafts with traxxas slider units meant for the Emaxx.

For the purpose of these pics... I also decided to go for a more racer-like body. The TXT-1 and Emaxx body mount positions are identical so I just took my Emaxx rally-truck body and mounted it low.

Performance!

With a pair of freshly charged batteries, I took my "racer" for a spin!

When I nailed the throttle, the truck lurched forward into a wheelie, but the wheelie was certainly less "dramatic" than in stock trim. The lower CG was clearly apparent as the TXT was very much more sure-footed. I was doing full speed turns on high-bite tarmac and although it did raise it's inner front wheel at times, it never came close to flipping on it's lid. Note that "full speed" isn't slow either - I'm running 14x2 mod motors with dual 8.4volts 2000mah cells with 16-teeth pinions.

I took the truck climbing and it was more stable than previously. After a while, I was getting more confident about launching the truck full throttle up some inclines that used to end up in back-flips if I wasn't careful... no flips today - hooray!

I was having a ton of fun on the climbs and even had a small crowd gathering when all of a sudden, I found I was only getting 2WD... a quick check showed that the rear traxxas universal had twisted badly and the yokes had come apart. Although the front pair still looks good, I decided to go back to the stock pair until I can find a better solution. At this point I also removed the blue booties because they actually made the joints very hard to access - I'll see how the joints hold up without the protection.

The truck is performing great and certainly handles better than before. It's still not the ideal racer though... some areas that still need looking into are:

I'm toying with the idea of an Emaxx tranny which would give me a slipper clutch and a 2-speed gearbox... but the tranny is loud and I don't really know if I need a 2-speed on this... well, maybe if a reasonably priced Emaxx tranny becomes available? :)

In summary, Phase 2 took a little thought but was easy to do... performance is far superior than stock with no negative results so far. It's also cool that my TXT is becoming more uniquely my own... most importantly, I'm having fun!

Before Pic

After Pic

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