Mechanically Functional!

Hey everyone. Before I continue with the drift project, I want to wish everyone a Happy Chinese New Year and wish you a very prosperous Year of the Boar! And now back to our previously scheduled stream of consciousness...

As I mentioned in a previous post, I wanted to use my existing transmitter from my Team Losi Mini-LST, because a) it's paid for, b) it's FM and not AM, and c) it has synthesized frequencies. I initially ordered a Duratrax 3-channel 27MHz receiver and crystal, but then I thought the Team Losi receiver would be a little more flexible. I'll probably hold onto the Duratrax receiver and maybe throw that into my E-Maxx if I ever upgrade its radio system to FM.

To handle steering duties, I decided to go ahead and start with an upgraded servo, since every standard servo I've used in the past was either too weak or self-destructed, albeit with a little assistance from me. I went with the Futaba S3010 because it has 90 oz-in of torque at 6.0V and a speed of .16 sec/60 degrees at 6.0V. Compared to the S3001 at 57 oz-in and .19 sec, it appears to be a much better performer. I decided not to go all the way to the S3305 with metal gears, because the only action this car is going to see is on flat surfaces. It is a drifter after all.

Finally, I'm using the included Tamiya TEU-101BK electronic speed controller (ESC) with reverse. It's probably not the best ESC out there, but it is matched with the motor, and at this point, the weakest link in the drifting chain is yours truly. This is the ESC that Tamiya includes in its Expert Built (XB) series of RTR cars based on the TT-01 chassis, so it can't be complete trash. If I find that it is limiting me at some point in the future, I'll look into replacing it when I realize why I'm doing it.


I hooked up everything and then plugged in a battery to make sure everything was working. I had to trim the tabs off of the servo and throttle plugs in order to plug them into the receiver, but other than that, everything went together just fine.

Having satisfied myself that everything was in order with the electrics, I went back to the assembly manual and started in on the steering linkage. I started putting the pieces together when I was struck by an interesting sight. The Tamiya servo saver isn't a spring-loaded unit like the Kimbrough servo saver. It was two keyed pieces that were facing each other, and the "give" is provided by a plastic clip holding them together. It's tough to describe so I included a picture of it (only one of the keyed pieces is shown). The reason why this struck me as significant is because this is the exact servo saver setup that I had to replace on my Radio Shack RC car! So to all the Radio Shack RC naysayers out there, I've got proof that some of their "toys" aren't so far removed from hobby-grade DNA.

Once I got the servo mounted and the steering linkage hooked up, it was a simple matter of using the provided servo-tape to tape down the ESC and receiver. I got the ESC taped down to the bottom of the chassis between the servo and motor, then moved on to the receiver. When I uncoiled the antenna wire, I realized that if I mounted the receiver on top of the servo where the instructions indicated, then the antenna wire would only be about four inches tall by the time I routed it through the antenna tube. If I simply stretched it straight to the antenna tube hole, I'd get about six inches of vertical length. Another option that I considered was attaching it to the rear of the battery strap, which would pretty much give me the full length of the antenna wire, but that would risk pulling the antenna wire out of the receiver at every battery change. My current thinking is that I'll temporarily mount the receiver on the servo, use the antenna tube to route it straight to the antenna tube hole, cut the tube at that point and use the rest as the mast. If it doesn't cause any problems with reception, then I'll just leave it that way. I'm thinking it won't be that great of an issue, because I left my antenna internal to the body on my E-Maxx, and it didn't seem to adversely affect its range, at least in my use. It might be an issue if I raced, but that's not in the plans.

So with that out of the way, the last thing I had to do was put the wheels on. This was kinda tricky, because the drive pins kept wanting to come out since it was a fairly loose fit. I ended up just tilting the car up on its side, used the drive hex to keep the pins in place, and then tightened down the wheel. I think I may look at some aftermarket aluminum drive hexes that can be tightened in place so it's a non-issue in the future. I did notice that Tamiya had a set of drive hexes that added probably another three to four millimeters of offset. After I get the body painted and trimmed, I may throw those on to see how they affect the look of the car.

With all the wheels on, there was just one more thing for me to do. That's right -- TEST DRIVE! I didn't do anything too crazy since there was still more work to do, but I set it down on an area in my living room where the bare floor is exposed by the area rug and gave the throttle trigger a quick blip while turning the wheel, and the car immediately started sliding sideways! I was totally amazed by how easy it was to slide this car around. I am definitely looking forward to getting everything completed so I can take it somewhere with wider-open spaces.


Now that everything checked out, I wanted to go ahead and tidy up the wires. One of the things that I did was to replace the stock bullet connectors and the Tamiya battery connector with Anderson PowerPoles. This gave me a chance to shorten the wires as well as to replace low-current connectors with high-current connectors. Most people prefer the Deans connectors, but I like the PowerPoles, because I haven't really mastered the art of soldering. These connectors are rated for 45A and often used in brushless setups, so I'm confident they'll handle anything I put through this system. The other advantage is that I've already modified my batteries to PowerPoles when I upgraded my E-Maxx's connectors in preparation of going brushless some day. Now the only thing I really need to do for the chassis is to tweak the camber and toe-in. After a brief visual inspection, it appears that the toe in is okay, but the camber on the front is definitely out of whack.

Just for yucks and giggles, I threw the body shell on top of the chassis to see how it looks, and all I could think was "Wonder Woman's car if she drifted".