Well I got a Villain IV off Ebay and was shocked at the shape it was in. The first thing I noticed was the yellowed paint job. I had a Villain 3 years ago and it had the same problem. It had a stripped gear, bent drive shaft, broken prop and had glue spots from the railings. I way overpaid for it as the lister neglected to mention all of it's problems. Oh well. First I started asking some local auto painters if they would be interested in painting it. I wanted a glass like real car finish and this is the best way to do it. I found a guy who is going to use corvette paint and give me Black with silver flake for 200 bucks. I can't wait to see it. I decided that with the extra money I had I wanted to make a Villain all it could be so I am going no holds barred in the price. Final costs should be about a grand. Second I ripped out the guts and scrapped the old motor mounts and old parts. I currently have the old motors hooked into a brand new drive system with the newer aluminum plate mount from Traxxas. I ordered the Villain IV and EX props but those are just to get me up and running while I wait for finished beryllium's. I noticed the u joints were annoyingly loud so I replaced them with the graupner carbon fiber 4mm's. Very big difference. I got to looking at the esc and until I get the brush-less system then I will need water cooling anyway. I pulled the two heat-sinks off the XL-1 and drilled out just enough to get 3 inch copper pipes through em. I build my own computers and I know the best heat transfer paste is arctic silver so I used some I had laying around to replace the stock white gunk. I used it on the motor water coils as well. Like I said brush-less twins will be the final result but I want to run it first with some of the other mods first to get a feel for it. I ordered 2 X 7 cell 3500mah Nimh matched and zapped packs for it and they should help make it a screamer. I got an auto-bailer to install with spin fins that I have to sharpen. The water cooling is made by a guy on Ebay that makes 8 turn coils and basically a dual pick-up system. I plan to use the nice water outlets, I forgot who I got them from. I plan to reverse the props to make them spin inward instead of the stock way.
Another mod that I have almost completed is the camera hatch. I have two hatches currently being painted. One will be normal and the other will have a 180* pan, 70* tilt color camera with audio on it. I already have the servo powered pan and tilt mount done with the video camera installed. I am going to use a laptop to view the camera and a 6ch futaba to control the boat and camera. It looks insane on the boat before it was painted. can't wait to get it back install all of the parts. I will post pics when I get the hull and hatches back.

sounds pretty crazy, cant wait to see this

blows my restoratioon away lmao

I talked to the painter guy today and he says it's looking awesome with only three coats on so far. He told me he wants to spend more time on it then originally planned because he wants to do more clear coats to make it look killer. I told him to have at it. I begged him to let me see it tommorrow so maybe I'll use my camera phone to sneak some pics of it. I will upload the pics of the camera rig and motor mounts tommorrow during the day sometime.

K here is the guts that are going back into the boat. Water coils and aluminum motor mount, modded esc with water cooling pipes, prather water outlets, graupner 4mm u joints, and my favorite, the camera and pan/tilt mount .

oops, heres the u joints, auto bailer, spin fins, and transmitter.

nice work, Good idea water-cooling the esc, I remember that thing used to get hot, I've got the already water-cooled, tekin marine m 432

That camera is sick, You better drive carefully.

hehe, best part about the camera... low price.... camera $30, pan tilt rig $10, and 2 servos of which I have tons lying around

you have to teach me how to do this......cheaply ofcourse. I actually want to use it for my hummer(truck), Ive already strapped my digital camcorder on the truck, But I want to be able to sit inside my house and drive it........so freakin cool...Ive got a decent computer, if thats needed.

Well, if you want cheap I hope you have a 4 channel radio lying around, otherwise start searching Ebay for a used futaba 4yf with receiver. Then you are going to need a camera and receiver. The usb receivers are tough to find but if this is gonna be in your house then you won't need usb. Just get one of the ones that hook up to a TV. They run anywhere from $80 to $110. The servos you can cheaply get, usually the cheapest are $10 to $15 apiece. They guys at linx motion have one camera mount with servos for about $36.
[link=http://www.lynxmotion.com/Category.aspx?CategoryID=61]Linxmotion.com[/link]
if you have the servos already then just order the pan/tilt assembly for $10. You can mod the pan servo yourself into a 360* servo by googling servo 360 mod. Thats pretty much it. But depending on what you have already to make one without having anything it will cost about $200 total for the intial setup. The good news is that the cameras by themselves are cheap, once you have the setup you can easily put one pretty much anywhere cheaply. It's the cam receiver and 4ch that are gonna hit the wallet.

I forgot to add that the 9 volt for the cam can easily be attached to the mount with some aluminum 9v clips from radio shack. About $4 I think and you get three of em.

I dont know if dual brushless is a good idea. The villain hull is a very good hull but i dont know if it owuld handle that power. If you are going to spend that much money i would consider buying a racing hull and putting ur brushless in there. Lou has a villain with a bushless in it and it flies but is really outta control. You can see his villain at http://www.lousfastrc.com/ I have a villain Iv myself here are the mods i have:

-Twin 14.4v Motors (not sure of brand) and i also have a set of two Team Orion Double 10 Turn BB motors. I switch them sometimes for different kinds of speed (they each have there own wiring harnesses so dont worry I know what im doing.
-Twin carbon fiber props from offshore electrics
-Rc Hydros Victory 90 Amp ESC
-Water Cooling for ESC and a seperate pickup and outlet for the Motors
-Autobailer
-Custom Paintjob
-2 Gp3300 6 cell packs
-Deans everywhere with 11 guage wires
-Carbon fiber motor mounts with aluminium (sp?) reinforcment
-Putting on Tun fins / trim tabs soon

I get it going at least 30 on 14.4v and get about 10 mins run time











Paint job by me tell me what u think

I like it . The reason I was thinking dual brushless, was to go with two smaller brushless motors with programmable speed controllers. That way I could dial it up slowly to reach the max power this hull could handle and maybe beat lou's record . I know it's overkill, but I haven't seen any boats with dual brushless. I also know the steering couldn't handle that kind of power but I was just looking for sprint speed not laps. I kinda figure if It's too powerful, I could build a new boat using the twin brushless counter rotation in maybe a 40" v hull. It will also be a learning experience in brushless before I build the big one. Or possibly build 2 smaller boats with it. But I asked a guy from offshore electrics and he gave the same advice. I was kinda hoping that smaller brushless motors would have a lot more control and speed than 1 big one. Maybe I'll just wait and get a nicer bigger hull for the dual setup. I still want to try it as dual counter rotating surface props would be insane.

Well an update on the Vill project. The guy thats painting it is having trouble getting the coats to dry. The Humidity in FL is unreal and he can't heat lamp it with out melting it . He has the silver flake and the gloss black done already and now he is just doing the clears to cover the flake. I decided to go with the EX decals after many hours of tearing my hair out trying to figure out what colors would look good at raceline digital. I'll probably apply the EX decals on the 2 hatch covers and top then match the colors and style to a raceline digital decal on the sides.

Well, I'm still waiting on the paint job to be done. Ernesto isn't helping paint dry here in FL

Just found a couple of Feigao 540 7S motors on EBAY for $40 bucks each. Hehe, I'll be ordering some barracuda 80's to power em on friday. Hopefully the darn thing will be finally done with the paintjob.

Well Here's the pics. Just ordered 2 feigao 540 7S and 2 Barracuda 80's for it. I'm taking it out for a spin today. I'll try to get a video.

[link=http://www.rcflix.com/photopost/showphoto.php?photo=1991&size=big&cat=571]http://www.rcflix.com/photopost/showphoto.php?photo=1991&size=big&cat=571[/link]

Everything sounds and looks good but I am a little worried about the 7 turn motors. There could be heat build up problems there. I hope not but we will see once you get it in the water. Hope you get some vids soon.

Ok heres some easier pics. I still have to get the right trim/spin fins. I have cut up the servo tray since these pics to eliminate some weight. I'm going to use the BEC on the Castle Barracuda 80's when I get them. I cut off as much of the tray as possible, even the battery tray. This should get rid of the transom sitting so low in the water. I have the water cooling sleeves for the motors and the cooling plates for the esc's. The water coils and tubes weigh a ton when full of water so I'm gonna cut out as much of that as possible. the sleeves should weigh less when full then the coils. I'll have more pics later.

How are you going to hook up the two esc's to your receiver?

I was thinking of using a Y harness from futaba. It basically makes a parallel connection. Using dual BEC's shouln't hurt anything in parallel. Both ESC's will receive the same signal at the same time. I plan to make a special wiring harness that parallels the 2 battery packs to the 2 ESC's so both receive the same voltage and current. If anyone here knows any reason this won't work please let me know.

i wouldt not use 2 bec's , ! u will be in for truuble
on one of the esc's take off the black wire that goes to the reciver , that will cut one of the bec's off so u will only have 1 bec
it will be safe

Been working on the camera hatch this weekend. I left my camera at work so I'll have some pics on tuesday night. I was wondering if anyone had a Vill antenna plate lying around. It's the contact plate that the antenna spring touches when you put the hatch on the boat. Traxxas is out of stock. I'll probably end up having to make one. I'm going to use 2 different Futaba radios. I'll use the 6 channel for the camera but most times I'll be using a 10 model Futaba 3PM for more control over the Villian.

Heres some more pics of the camera hatch and new spin fin/trim tabs. The trim tabs have an extra hole in them cause I was to lazy to measure the inside of the boat and drilled through the outer hull and never hit the inner hull. OOPS!!!. Nothing a little CA gel can't fix I can't wait for the polished copper props and the brushless setup. I expect the motors next week and the esc's I'm going to have to wait a couple weeks on due to bills. Since I fried the stock esc by using EX props and 7cell NiMh's I guess I have a while to wait before I get it back in the water.

heres some better pics of the Camera Mount. The others were crappy.