Manda’s (Amachan) RC Adventures

Earlier this year I was planning a little upgrade to my RC truck and I carved this bit of foam out of the foam packaging that the Desert Lizards came in. I wasn’t able to do it back then due to a lot going on in my life. Over the last days, on good moments, I have finally been able to put it together.

I glued this foam onto the brace that goes in between the shock mounts on the chassis using 2 part epoxy glue.

I then glued a strip of hook-and-loop fasteners on top of that and a strip in the body of the truck. This will certainly help keeping the body on when I roll the truck, the magnet that comes on by default is just not enough.

We finally had some snow last week so here are some of the pictures that I made while running my RC truck through the snow and puddles.

There might not be much content for my RC hobby for a bit, just being busy with the renovations in my apartment and it is easier to focus on the miniature painting hobby at the moment.

I went for a bit of a rock crawl and failed…. So, I then just went to play in the sand, without much success either… Have I been to ambitious?

Just a run through the local park, it was very windy out and didn’t feel like finding another interesting place to crawl. But on the plus side I finally made it up that hill that I keep trying to climb. Also, you might notice that one of the tires is coming off of the beadlocks again… I really need to get some new wheels, don’t worry they are on the list as soon as I have some money for them. For now I think I am just going to put the spare from the back on there, that will do for a little while.

I went for a bit of a trail run this time, but I came across some rock and couldn’t resist trying to climb them. Sadly, my new front suspension modification is a bit too stiff for rock crawling, so I will have to look at that. I will probably just undo the modification for now.

Here is an unorthodox mod for my RC truck. I used one of the springs from the Desert Lizards inside the springs of the original front shocks in order to stiffen them up a bit.

Sand is always a great challenge to drive through, so I decided to go up a horse riding trail onto the dunes until I hit the walking paths and then try to follow the sandy bits on the side to try and get up the dunes. I didn’t really get on top all the way as I was limited on time and I was lollygagging on a small sandy mound for a while….

I got some new lizards, these are not for Warhammer, they are for my RC truck. These are 90mm Yeah Racing Desert Lizards with an internal spring rather than an external spring that coil-over shocks that came with the truck have. For 90mm shocks they are a bit longer than I expected.

Initially I went for the single hole piston head on the piston, rather than the 4-hole one that was installed by default. Mainly because the original shocks also had 1 hole. I removed the bottom and top spring that was installed by default with a medium longer top spring for a sprung setup. A sprung setup is basically your traditional setup. I chose that spring because it felt just a bit stiffer than the one from the original shocks do. Filled it with the same 500 cst oil that I used before and then I got these installed on the truck, but it was feeling very stiff.

So this was way too stiff, after some fiddling around and testing stuff later I settled on a droop setup (where the suspension is basically limited by its travel down by another spring) using the lightest springs included. I also changed the piston head to a 3-hole piston head and these are working like a charm.

So I went out for a test drive until I broke something again…. Easy fix this time though. I am really loving these shocks they are working great and I really need to get some for the front as well.

During my RC crawls last week you may have noticed the rear left suspension not really working well….

So I took them apart and found out why.

I then checked all the shocks, the front ones were fine, the other rear was rather dirty on the inside, so I cleaned the rear ones out and refilled the front with a drop of oil. Don’t mind my very professional shock stand….

Put all the shocks back together and left them for a bit as I need to do something else. And about 1 hour later 1 of the rear ones has left a puddle….. Does anyone know how to potty train a shock absorber? I have ordered new ones for the rear by the way.

After some maintenance on the truck the last couple of days I cleaned all the tires, we can’t have that now can we? There should be a law somewhere saying that any off-road vehicle should not be allowed to have squeaky clean tires. So, off to the beach I went.

Also I have made a new Youtube channel dedicated to my RC stuff, so please subscribe. You can find it through the included video.

I apologize for any stutter in the video, I was trying a different camera so I can record video in 1080p it obviously didn’t work properly.

I went out for a bit of a crawl last Wednesday afternoon. Everything was going as well as you can expect on wet soil covered in leaves. Until I noticed something odd on the front left tire, it seems that the tire was coming off the wheel. On closer inspection the right one was starting as well. No biggie, just beadlock wheels that need to be taken apart and put back together again.

I went out and had a bit of drive yesterday. I have a tripod with flexible legs, so I thought maybe I can wrap those around the frame of the rear of my RC truck. And this is the result. It is not the best for performance or for the centre of mass, but it works.

Here is the footage:

Does it work? Kind of…. The ESC tends to go into LiPo low voltage cut-off while running on the NiMh setting with a NiMh battery. I think one of the soldering jobs I did on my bad day was not as good as I had hoped. So it may be getting a low voltage from that. Now it still should go into LiPo low voltage cut-off when running on the NiMh setting, but the entire programming of this ESC seems to be bust and it just uses whatever setting it pleases it I think. The ESC will need to be replaced, especially if I want to run a LiPo battery on it, this is most likely from the water damage it took from the swim it took early on in its life.

Is the suspension fixed, NOPE! The one shock that I was having problems with before I rebuild them was still not functioning well and seems to be leaking and lost a lot of oil by the feel of it. I adjusted the pre-load on the spring to compensate a bit, but I feel like these need to be replaced.

I can run it for now like this, although I will redo my soldering job, but then comes the question. Do I replace the broken parts and wait for the next ones that I may not be able to find replacements for to break or do I just hold on a bit longer and buy a new truck? I am leaning to buying a new one and it definitely will not be an FTX. I don’t think I will ever buy an FTX ever again.

All back together and ready to go out once the battery is charged….

I got my shocks all rebuild and refilled with a stiffer oil. They are really smooth now. All I need to do now is but the whole truck back together and I can go out with it again.

I finally got the tops of all of the shocks…. They were on so fucking tight, my hands hurt like hel. Anyway, I can now continue my RC truck spring clean tomorrow.

Today is not my day. I tried taking apart the shocks and was only able to get 1 of them apart. I am going to have to get some tools tomorrow to help me with that.

Then I thought, I want to at least get something done today, so I started replacing the Deans T-plugs with XT60 plugs. That didn’t go smooth, I messed up one of the plugs.

But I did at least get the ESC and 1 battery soldered up properly-ish. It’s on okay, they aren’t coming off. I only got enough plugs to do what I had not thinking I could mess this up. But today I can mess everything up it seems. Today is not my day….. ?

Taking the rear drive axle apart again to replace the scruffy bearings and re-grease the diff with some marine grease.

Taking the front drive and steering axle apart again to replace the scruffy bearings and re-greased the diff with some marine grease.