BKNate

Very Well Put!

brice_arnold

My Feedback: (6)

Here is some new video from today. We took a bunch of video including some off-road bashing. This footage was taken from an iPhone at the end of the day. I threw some tarmacs on the baja just to see what it would do. Manny and myself basically wanted to see what the average joe could expect when they throw a two-speed onto their baja. This footage is of my Baja 5B 2.0 with a 100% stock 26cc Fulie. We threw on one of the Custom Street Toyz 5T pipes and that's it. There are some additional upgrades to help with durability and handling including

- BSW CVD's
- BSW Ti Layshaft
- BSW Rotostart
- BSW front brakes
- BSW hinge pins
- BSW rollcage quick release
- BSW third channel servo mount
- TR HD clutch
- CST Pipe
- DS axle extenders
- RPM front arms

I guess when you list everything it's not all that stock however the motor is stock.

The gearing on this setup is a little taller than that of the production run. For second we were running 24:50 and the first production run will have 23:51. Here are the specs on the run.

Tires: Used (slightly bald) HPI Tarmacs
Foams: HPI foams, taped with duct tape
Gears: 17:57 (sock plastic hpi) and 24:50
Final Top Speed: 61.2 Mph

Our goal was to break 60 with a stock motor. This was a piece of cake. We hit 61.2 on the last run which we forgot to record. The first run which was recorded we hit 59.6. I have some footage from the beginning of the day where we hit 60.5. This was recorded.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKLa_9AsBd4

I have about four or five more videos to post so stay tuned.

Oh yeah, I did clip my foot at the end. Nothing broken but I did cut myself through my shoes and thick socks. I am fortunate and in pain.

looker2756

Awesome video. The shift point sounds great. That's one scary place to drive & Man I hope your foot gets better.

The craftsmanship award in the Baja world No doubt goes to Brice & BSW. That latest Tank addition, Comeon' Man. Simply Amazing !!

brice_arnold

My Feedback: (6)

Ok so here is some bashing video. Basically we were trying to torture the drive train. We found a nice spot with ruts and boulders and everything in between. All through the day we were basically running the same hardware. We would occasionally stop to swap out tires and change shift points on the two-speed. Because we were running stock motors the 24:50 gearing was a little too much for these motors on this terrain. But we weren't really looking for performance. We were looking for durability of the two-speed. So we were looking for mid air shifting and lots of loose ground contact. The typical stuff that is hard on your drive train. There is a cool spot in the video where the baja busted a wheelie in second. It did this a couple of times during shooting but only made it onto the camera once.

I was once again impressed with how well my Baja held up. The 5T, which was far more stock and the 5B, busted a front A-arm early on. The 5B survived the day without any serious damage. We did loose a tire but that was due to our own torture test. This loss is shown in another video to come. Also there is a typo in the video. I was running Badlands not Bowties on the rear.

In case you missed I will repeat. This video is to show durability and that's it. We know that shifting was mediocre and the gearing was too tall for the terrain.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=loi_s-9Nwgw

brice_arnold

My Feedback: (6)

Here is a torture test that we thought would be cool. I want to start by saying this was not done to make the proline tires look bad in any way shape or for. I love the proline product line and use their tires on a majority of my rigs. This was more to show the two speed doing some torture shifting and getting a feel for just how fast things get moving.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GzfprLcpYEU

brice_arnold

My Feedback: (6)

Here is a video showing how easy it is to adjust the shift point of our two-speed. In our design we use a locking set screw and an adjusting set screw. Because there are two pawls there are two sets of screws. you have to adjust them equally. The adjustment can literally be done in less than a minute as shown in the video. And the beauty is that once you set the shift-point it stays put and never creeps!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLcXmMXRTEs

Mudgy

Always when someone gets hurt...you hear someone else chuckling

That musta hurt, mate.

Does this mean the Miami fellas will be aiming for 200 now?

Mudgy

Mate I suppose there will be the need for a belted tyre now?
C'mon tyre manufacturers!
They ballooned out huge.[8D]
at WOT in 2nd gear, your contact patch will be bugger all, right?

I saw a belted slick on a mates 1/10 tamiya car; worked OK on nitro 2 speeds at our local track.

Great piece of engineering - Brice, you're the man.

nitrohead5300

The RC consumer is the winner here 2 purpose built trannys that are superior to anything I have seen.

brice_arnold

My Feedback: (6)

So here are some more pieces to the puzzle. I haven't been posting much but here you go. I am only waiting on one more part to finish everything off; which is the layshaft. This happens to be one of the more complicated parts because it get machined, case hardened and the centerless ground after hardening. This insures a true shaft with zero run-out.

Here are the stand-offs for the gear cover. The gear cover bolts on to these guys and thats what keeps it in place. It's simple and effective.



Here are the clutch pawls. There are two of these in the clutch. They are heat treated for maximum durability.



This is the clutch body. This is also a heat treated steel part. Instead of using a set-screw, which can and will come loose over time (from experience), my design uses a 5mm cross pin. Notice the tapped holes on the front face. These are for locking grub screws. These grub screws lock the shift point adjustment screws in place so that the shift point does not creep over time. This was something that I discovered and improved upon in my three years of testing and development.







I wanted the clutch to be truly rebuildable. Almost every two-speed design that I have seen uses pins that are pressed into either the pawl or the clutch body. The problem with this is the pin can either work itself out or if you try to rebuild the clutch the pin gets looser and looser over time. I designed a special pin, similar to my hinge pins, that is removable. It is held in place with an M3 locking nut. These pins are also heat treated stainless steel for maximum durability.



That's it. One more part and we can start shipping!

brice_arnold

My Feedback: (6)

Here is a quick run through of the two-speed. until recently I have been keeping the clutch design a secret. Since I am planing on shipping next week I will go ahead and share.

Here is the kit. Lots of parts. Aside from the prototype layshaft and the missing gear cover this is what will come in the box.



These are all the parts that get crammed into the clutch.



First gear and pinion adapter installed....



Second pinion installed....



Second gear installed....



Clutch and cover ready to get installed....



Clutch installed. Notice how the strike pins are supported by the aluminum clutch housing. These pins are completely captive by the cover, housing, and gear. It's impossible for them to fall out. This means you should get countless, worry free shifts.





Cover installed....



Adjustment screws....

brice_arnold

My Feedback: (6)

Just so there is no misunderstanding that the BSW two-speed is nothing like the FG two-speed I wanted to do some comparisons. Sure the fundamental design is similar and very popular among many of the two-speeds out there. A spring loaded pawl, under centripetal acceleration fly's out and engages a striker pin. The magic is in the execution of the design and what has been done to improve upon the durability, reliability, and the ease of use. This is where the BSW design excels and steps outside of the box.

Here is a typical FG two-speed which many of you are probably familiar with.



For first gear, almost all two-speed implement a gear supported by a one-way bearing. The BSW two-speed design is based on the HPI baja gear carrier using the rubber dampers. This has a couple of benefits. The first being that the user does not have to pay for an additional set of gears. they can use what ever they have on their car or sitting in their tool box. Second, because the dampers are still used in the design this helps with shock loading between the one-way bearing and the layshaft. What this means is that you are less likely to blow up your one-way bearing which is historically one of the weak points on a two-speed.

Here is a comparison between the FG and the BSW clutch housing/second gear. There are several fundamental differences. Notice how the BSW striker pins are supported by the housing. The FG only uses a single tiny strike pin. The BSW uses four 5mm fully supported pins. Also, the BSW clutch housing is able to be fully sealed up to keep dirt, sand and crap out of the clutch assembly.



Here is a closer comparison of the FG striker pin to a single BSW striker pin.



Here is a comparison of the FG clutch mechanism to the BSW clutch mechanism. Everything is bigger. Bigger is better! Some may argue that the additional weight is overkill. In fact it is desirable in a two-speed. The additional weight acts as a flywheel. Due to it's inertia it want's to resist changes in speed. So when the baja gets up to speed in first gear, and just before it shifts to second, the mass of the clutch and second gear are going to want to resist changing speeds (by speed I mean RPM). When the clutch shifts there is a tendency for the engine to bog down and the RPMs to drop. However, the rotating mass of second gear and the clutch help keep things moving and keep the RPM's up. The disadvantage of course is initial spool-up. This can be compensated for by stepping down to a lower gear for first.







The BSW clutch is also fully rebuildable unlike the FG clutch. Instead of using a press fit pin the BSW design use custom pins with a low profile head and threaded base. The pin is held in place with a locknut. The BSW design also uses two pawls instead of one. This helps for a solid shift and adds a level of redundancy that also helps with durability and reliability. It also helps keep the assembly balanced. The pawls on the BSW clutch are twice as big as the single pawl used in the FG design. Also, the BSW pawl pivot pins are 4mm vs the 3mm pins used by the FG design.

The FG clutch couples to the layshaft with a single 6mm grub screw tightened down to a flat on the shaft. From my experience these grub screws work them-selves loose over a short period of time. You are constantly having to disassemble the two-speed to retighten the screw. The BSW design uses a 5mm cross pin that the clutch slips over. There is nothing to come loose.



Adjusting the shift point of the clutch is fairly typical. There is a ball bearing that pushes up against the pawl. This ball is spring loaded by a compression spring. The spring is pre-loaded with a set screw. This is true for both the FG and BSW design. However that is where this similarities end. The shift point is a fairly precise adjustment where a fraction of a turn can mean the difference between hundreds of RPMs in a shift point. Because there is nothing to really lock the set screw in place, the adjustment usually creeps over time due to vibration and jolts from shifting. Eventually the adjustment set-screw works itself loose which results in a lower RPM shift point. Even with the use of red or green thread-lock the screw still creeps over a period of use. Then you have to disassemble the two speed to gain access to the clutch and readjust.

With the BSW design we added locking set-screws to the face of the clutch. These screws lock down the adjustment screws so that once you set them then never creep. Another innovation that was implemented in the BSW design was the ability to adjust the shift point externally. With out the need to disassemble the two speed to change the shift point it can literally be adjusted in less than a minute.

Well I guess that's it. Hopefully I didn't go too over the top in some of the explanations. If you have questions feel free to ask.

nitrohead5300

Looks bulletproof!! Work of art.

Mudgy

I Know I've said it before...Brice....you are - The Man[8D]

clubin

Looks very good.

BKNate

It looks good, BUUTTTT!!! how do you know when you have both shift claws set the same way??? it's kind of hard to set the shift screws the same. Not saying that it will not work, just saying that the owner might find it hard for both claws to catch. Plus me myself, have 5 FGs and they all have 2 speeds on them, and that has been a proven system that works, so I see nothing wrong the FG 2 speed style.

brice_arnold

My Feedback: (6)

It's not really as hard as you think. You start with a known setting. For an initial set-up the adjustment screws are turned all the way in until they bottom out the springs. Then they are backed off a certain number of turns. With this method we know that they two springs are balanced. We have checked this on a bench-top setup where we can ramp up the RPM's of the clutch and watch it engage. We also know that both pawls do engage because we see evidence of wear on both pawls where they engage the striker pins. This is not the first time a multi-spring/shoe system has been used in RC. Look at the Elcon and Lauterbacher four shoe clutches. In those designs you are trying to balance four spring loaded shoes instead of two. People don't seem to have a problem with this. So, once an initial set-up has been done to balance the two shoes it's seems obvious that any future incremental adjustments be made equally between the two pawls.

Worst case scenario, which we have also tested, is that one pawl is set significantly different than the other. The pawl with the lowest spring pre-load will engage first. Even with this set-up the clutch still engages and works perfectly fine. This is where the redundancy of four striker pins and two pawls becomes beneficial. Even with operator error, the system still works reliably.

"The FG works so why change it?" This design seems to be the paradigm. However, when there is really only one large scale two-speed design out there and it's been out there for a decade or more; that's not really saying much because there has never been something to come along and challenge it. I didn't pull my design out of thin air. What you see is the product of the evolution of a two-speed design over the last three years. Based on my own personal experiences, I finessed the design until I was able to work out all of the bugs that I personally found not only in my original designs but also in the fg design. Sure, the FG may work fine and be tried and trued but if that's all you know then you don't know what you are missing. I wasn't happy with the design. It wasn't good enough for me. So I set out to make something better.

nitrohead5300

Why did you choose the pawl design 2 speed instead of the large clutch shoe design that Serpent uses in their 2 speed on their 1/8 scale cars??

Soloratov

My Feedback: (1)

Craftsmanship, and art. I know one of the first upgrades I will be getting if I can ever get around to purchasing a 5B. Always wanted one, and they seem like so much fun. I like the video on the road, guy in the car must have wondered what was going on when it caught up to him.

roccos_van

My Feedback: (1)

This is real transperancy. Remarkable. Good for you BSW I hope you sell out of every unit you make.

Sideslider

Hello to all,

I just wanted to ask a quick question of what is the best diff oil to use to make my baja slide on command but still maintain a good line trough the cornerswithout spinning sideways.......

Kind Regards

bajamaniac69

when will these be available///????????

nothinbetr2do

man i can't wait, i'm on the list
when i get it, i'll be posting [8D]

brice_arnold

My Feedback: (6)

These are now available at TGN.

http://tgndistributing.com/2-speed-gearing.html

I will post more info this weekend. We are playing around with our two-speed and doing some more dirt bashing. We are also going to try out the supertwin with twin two-speeds. Some say it can't be done. I love a challenge.

TGNdist

For those who missed the post. The Baja Skunkworks 2-speed is available at TGN, we are receiving orders shipment from Baja skunkworks everyday to fill the amazing amount of orders we are receiving for this amazing product.

We would like to send out a Big Thank You to Brice over at Baja Skunkworks for making this dream product come true.

Look for more updates coming soon from TGNdist of RCUniverse