After the huge improvement caused by the shock rebuild and motor/ESC upgrade, I wanted more. And I had all kinds of upgrade plans. Put some extra weight on the axles, get some better tyres, put on a set of beadlocks so I wouldn't have to glue my tyres anymore, and I had plenty other ideas too.
I was looking at cheap beadlocks on AliExpress, so there would be a little more budget available for the tyres. But you know how these things go. Yes, I came across a set of bronze colored Roost II beadlocks from DC Chequered Flag (a.k.a. Team DC).
 |
| Sigh, so pretty |
They were only 4 times what I was planning on spending on wheels, so I did the only thing I could possibly do. I ordered them. After the motor/ESC upgrade and the trouble with the spur gear cover, I decided to order a new cover too, as it wasn't going to impact the shipping charges. I thought about getting the very nice looking DC Chequered Flag aluminium cover, but with most of the budget being blown on the wheels, I decided to go with the original plastic part from Axial (but that's for future use).
The wheels were shipped from Austria, so I had to wait a few days. In the mean time, I decided to hit the crawler forums, looking for advice on non-destructive ways of removing glued tyres from rims as re-using them would save me some money. In the mean time I had figured I needed an external BEC if I wanted to keep my shiny new ESC alive, and after a visit to my local hobby shop to pick up said BEC, I had enough budget left for 2 tyres without foams.
When I got home and was trying to find info on the various tyres I had seen at the hobby shop, I stumbled across an add for 2 pairs of Axial Ripsaws in R35 compound, including foam inserts, from a guy that lives less than 6km from the hobby shop I hat just visited. They were only very lightly used and at a good price too. So I dropped him a message and a little later I was back in the car to go pick up my new tyres.
When I got home from the second parts run of the day, I rinsed out the foams and tires (there was some water left from the previous owners last visit to the Ning in them, and rust from his wheels 😜). DHL track and trace showed that the tyres and foams would have a few days to dry before the wheels would arrive.
 |
| More work to do |
A few days later, my new wheels arrived. And they looked even better in real life. By now, the inserts had fully dried and I could start on installing them right away. Cool, I was going to meet some other local crawlers later, so I would be able to try them out.
Installing the first tyre on the beadlock wheel was a bit of a pain, but I soon discovered the best way to do it and the other 3 together wheels took me the same amount of time as the first one by itself. Now for the next challenge, fitting the wheels to my rig. These wheels didn't have the axle go through them and fix them with a single locknut. No, these came with a wheel hub that was fitted that way and then the wheel was bolted to the hub with 6 tiny bolts per wheel. Ok, not such a big deal, a bit more work, but great for scale looks. But, with the Axial hex adapters, the axle stuck out too far to fit under the wheel.
First I stole the hex adapters from my buggy, they worked on 3 wheels, but production tolerances were on the tight side, so one of the hex adapters wouldn't play nice with the hub from the wheel set. Of course, this was on the last of the wheels, so to keep it all balanced, I had to remove one of the succesfully installed wheels too. In my parts bin I found a couple of hex spacers and used those with the original Axial hex adapters on the front of my rig and added new hex adapters to my shopping list.
I was happy with the end result though, as it doesn't just look good, with the heavier wheels and grippier tyres, there was also a noticeable gain in traction.
 |
| Man, they look good |
No comments:
Post a Comment