860Crawler

The original source of that silvercan I use is from my CR-01 so it got plenty beat climbing rocks before it was replaced with the 35T Tamiya motor and moved to the GH. It also took a salt water bath on the beach once when the GH hit a bump and went into the ocean. It still cleaned up good and ran fast.

This issue had to be because the battery was half dead or something. It was comical how slow it was, maybe 8-12mph tops. I've seen Clodbusters move faster. It could barely break the tires loose on dirt unless I turned and pulled full throttle.

mechanizeddeath

Nice. The one that was originally in my Brat was submerged in salty runoff water a few times. I just hit it with WD-40 and dried it, then used electric motor oil. Still works, though it is without a doubt my most tired silvercan.

positron

<meta charset="utf-8">Being 4wd the drivetrain sucks a bit of power. I only used mine once with the mabuchi and nimh, it was fairly slow. I drove my vintage madcap recently with a new mabuchi and nimh and was surprisingly slow also, Things were a bit better with the lipo.

Least the 27T's seem fast in a crawler

edit: well I finally had some minor yet annoying failures. Lost the end piece off the battery stop, I have a spare one of those but I figure good excuse to get the bling blue one. I also lost the screw and flange out of the front knuckle.

I ordered screw bag D, battery stop and then some alloy knuckles, looks like my df-03 is out of action for a week or two
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860Crawler

When I was putting the new knuckles on the other day I was thinking it would really suck if that little bottom screw and flange fell out! I didn't see any spares in the kit either. I wet and put a bunch of threadlock on it since it's in metal now.

860Crawler

Novak received my stuff back on the 17th. Hopefully it should be on its way back to me sometime this week.

positron

Thats good news, still awaiting my parts also, miss driving this thing.

mechanizeddeath

I just got a bumper on mine and can't wait to run into things with it. [&:]

positron

did you get a T-bone? I got mine going again, such a blast to drive after being stuck with a 2wd all week. knuckles are on and loctited. 

mechanizeddeath

Yep I bought one of the T Bone bumpers. Love it! It looks a little weird right now as my DI has 2 years worth of bashing on it, and the bumper is still shiney. Not for long though. [&:]

I'll report back if I ever manage to break it. Seems pretty strong, yet flexible. Reminds me a lot of the old school Tamiya bumpers found on the Brat, Frog, etc.

THE HP FREAK

My Feedback: (1)

HI!... I'm running the T-BONE front and rear bumpers. They take a ton of abuse.

860Crawler

Got an email from Novak today and my ESC/motor is repaired and on it's way back. They even went as far as to send it out UPS 2nd Day so I will get it on Tuesday with the Monday holiday ahead.

860Crawler

Got my stuff back today from Novak. New ESC, same motor. The papers that came with it said the original ESC had multiple mosfet failures and the motor tested fine. So I had to desolder it from the motor again and cut down the wires to like 4". They tossed my Deans back in the box which was nice of them so I didn't have to use another.

I noticed the on/off switch came with a shorter wire this time so I had to mount it closer to the ESC instead of on the other side of the chassis like before. I also had picked up a 4" sensor harness while my parts were away. So everything tuck up nice under the body now where before it was kind of pushing the lower rear part of the body out away from the chassis. I only got to run it through the house at low speed since its been pretty stormy this afternoon, but at least I know it works.

positron

glad you got it back, i double folded the motor wires.... functional, but doesnt look the greatest, mines been flawless since I got the knuckles. Think I'm going to get a new servo saver for it, the stock one has a little too much play for my liking.

860Crawler

I'll take a pic later when I get home from work of the wiring. Its funny how short the wires look now, but hey, they don't give you much room to work in there. Even being that short I had to ziptie them up so they don't push out at the body. They seem to tuck up into they little fake air intake moulded into the side of the cockpit. The PowerCap seems to be mounted to this ESC with shorter wires as well, much easier to tuck away. I wonder if I had gotten old stock from Tower Hobbies and now I've got a newer version since there are a variety of little changes. Still, its not quite small enough to mount the fan directly on top of the ESC. I was able to mount the fan straight on, but at the side of the ESC this time since I moved the ESC back a tiny bit.

860Crawler

New electronics and cleaned up wiring







I ran 1 NiMh and 2 Lipos through it this afternoon and it rips just as good as before

mechanizeddeath

looks nice! the only issue with this car seems to be wiring, it can be quite a challenge!

THE HP FREAK

My Feedback: (1)

HI!... I had no problems with my wiring at all. Just depends on what ESC/MOTOR combo you go with.

860Crawler

I've been down in Pennsylvania at my in-laws all week and I brought the DF-03 with me. There is a hobby shop with a track about a 15 minute drive from their place. I went there today. Its pretty bare bones track, no real dirt jumps just some 12" diameter corrugated drainage tube with plywood up against them in various places. Mind you, this is the place I spoke of before in the CR-01 thread that is heavily oriented to trains and planes and Traxxas stuff. The track seemed to be made for Traxxas trucks, not very groomed, but high speed driveable, the borders of the track were 6" corrugated tube held in with spikes. Landings were harsh since you had to land flat off every jump with no doubles or landing ramps to ease the impact. The kind of stuff big trucks and bashers would do well on, not a finely tuned Tamiya racing machine.

Literally within the first 30 seconds I rubbed the side of the track and hit one of the spikes holding the tube in place and it bent the crap out of my 3Racing knuckle. I mean BENT! The little trailing arm was touching the inside of the wheel. So I threw the plastic one back on there and got the feel for the track and was doing alright then I notice my front toe is a little wierd after about 6-8 laps so I stop and look and the OTHER knucked was slightly bent too! Probably from a little tumble. So that gets changed back to plastic. I'm doing more laps then the car just spins out and I notice when I give it throttle it looks like I have 3 wheel drive. I think, great now my front diff is blown. I went and pic up the car and there was a rock wedged in between the wheel and the knuckle so it stopped that one wheel from turning, thank goodness it was only that. After that a pin backed out of the right rear CVD so I had to replace that. The pin took a good chunk out of the rear upright as it backed out too [&:]

I will throw up some pics of the track and the carnage when I get back to Connecticut. I dont want to upload this stuff to the in-laws computer. I will also throw up a video if it even came out alright. trying to aim the camera at the car while holding the camera and the controller sucks.

positron

eesh bent the knuckles, they seemed nice too, going to try another brand?

THE HP FREAK

My Feedback: (1)

HI!... I just got my rear knuckles for my Dark Impact. I'm back in action... I also just ordered the front/rear lower aluminum "A" arms and front knuckles.

860Crawler

Those look nice! If I had those the pin on the CVD probably would not have been able to come all the way out. In that pic your have there, the part with the three screw holes is where the pin sawed it's way partially through as it was backing out. I doubt it would have been able to cut through aluminum. Probably would have just snapped off as soon as it hit the upright. [&:]

Not sure if I will try another brand for the front knuckles. Maybe its better off I do stick to plastic so it can flex back if I knock into something the way I do. It didn't take much to bend the first one, I was going maybe quarter to half throttle.

mechanizeddeath

I haven't been in RC very long (2.5 years or so) but everything I've seen and experienced myself points away from aluminum. Big parts, like the chassis or bulkheads are fine in some cases, but anything small is best left to plastic. There's a reason my DI is left all plastic.

Also, I think a bumper should be the first upgrade everyone makes.

mike_o

I had so many TEU-101 and 540 silvercans lying around that I decided for a Lipoexperiment:

I inserted a cheap 7805 (5V, 1A, $1) regulator in the receiver output wire of the non-BEC'ed TEU-101 and put a 11,1V 30C Lipo battery in my DT02 (use 17Tsprocket and ball bearings, at least in the gearbox). And holy crap, doesit go now. I've run 5-6 charges now, and no sign of breaking down. Just keep an eye on motor temp :-)

The Lipo battery is also so much lighter that it helps thesoft springs of theDT02 and the handling is improved.

I can only recommend this to others. In fact, any receiver feeding of a TEU-101 will benefit from the 7805 modification.

Mike

PS: I can confirm that the silvercans have a performance spread. And some tolerance on axle length. Make sure the pinion screw sits right - I sacrificed a 100% sprocket alignment to get a decent bite of the screw.

PPS: Came to think of it: The DT02 is 2WD. The 4WD Dark Impact may be too heavy a load on the suggested 11,1V set-up.

860Crawler

Here is the track at that hobby shop near my in-laws. They still have some work to do. Put some real jumps in there instead of boards for one. Especially if they want to compete with Hobby Hut which is like 40 minute drive away and has a sick track.







And here is the two 3Racing knuckles that got bent to hell with not much effort.

Looks ever so slight from this angle, but its tweaked


Here is the other one which is really bad






And when I lost the pin from the rear CVD, here is the sliced upright

THE HP FREAK

My Feedback: (1)

HI!... I'd just heat those arms up and bend them back. If you do it right it won't crack at all. I've done it many times with aluminum RC parts over the years. About a 80% success rate.