Axial SCX10-II (AX90046) SSD-RC 2-Speed gearbox

It has been a while since I actually performed this upgrade, but as it was an upgrade on my main RC, I still wanted to do a write up on it.

For fathers day, my wife and RC Dork Jr. got me a SSD-RC 2-Speed conversion kit. I put off installing it, because I wanted to wait for some other parts to arrive (RC Schrauben torx screw kit, GPM 57t spur and a Axial 11t pinion). And then replace the motor mount with the cracked screw hole and the spur gear cover that can't be taken off due to a stripped screw.

<rant mode on>
At this point, I would like to point out that I will never do business with Toemen, the supplier of the pinion, again. I should have known better to begin with (read the reviews, you'll know what I mean), but as they were the only dutch reseller that said they had the pinion in stock, I took a gamble.
I ordered an Axial pinion. But when the package arrived, there was a Corally pinion inside. No big deal if that's a honest mistake, but the shipping documents showed that they had scratched out Axial and replaced it with Corally. So they did this on purpose. The way the pinions are built are quite different between these brands. So they are not equal. The Axial is more beefy, the Corally is lighter. Guess what I perfer for a high-torque crawler. Now if they had contacted me to tell me the Axial was out of stock and asked if I wanted a Corally as a substitute, it would have been a different matter. Then it would have been my choice. But they didn't, and now I had payed for shipping, which was half as much as the part itself, for a product that I could have just picked up from my local hobby shop at no additional charge. Returning the part for a refund would mean more additional costs to send it back, so I decided to use the Corally pinion for now. And I'll try to see it not as an expensive pinion, but as a cheap lesson not to do business with this company again. This way of working is totally unacceptable to me and judging by the reviews on the internet, not uncommon for this company.
<rant mode off>

Now, back to the 2-Speed gearbox. Installation was easier than expected. Taking out the annoyingly long screws of the gearbox housing being the most difficult part. There's a couple of attention points though, first, you need to swap the spacer on the axle for the shorter one that was supplied with the kit. Second, don't forget to take out the piece of plastic that's used to close off the opening for the shift fork rod. Other than that, it's just a matter of swapping/installing the gears from the 2-speed kit, sliding in the shift fork and reassembling everything. On reassembly I used the torx screws from the RC Schrauben screw kit, which made a big difference. While I had everything apart I replaced the motor mount, pinion, spur and spur gear cover as well. But guess what, on the new motor mount, a screw hole cracked. Please look into this Axial Quality Control!

After I put the gearbox back in my rig, it was time to install the shift servo. I used the HPI Racing SF-10W waterproof servo that had originally been in my HPI Racing Bullet Flux monstertruck. It's pretty weak as a steering servo, but as a shift servo, it'll probably be just fine. For the installation you need additional servo mount parts that were supplied with the Axial SCX10-II kit, the required spacers for the mounts are included with the 2-speed kit.

Now that the physical instalation is completed, it's time to hook up the electronics. The Y-cable for the lights that was connected to Channel 4 of my RX has to go, as the 4th channel is required for the shift servo. That was easy enough to do. Configuring the channel on my transmitter was a little more work. The shift action needs only very little throw from the servo, so I had to limit the end points quite far to prevent the servo from continuously fighting against the stall point. It took a bit of experimenting, as the servo had to be at an angle to make it fit, so the endpoints had to be set assymetrical, but I got there in the end.

RC Dork: The RC history Part 7

The revival.

I had rediscovered another old love, my love for music and over the years this love for music grew into a new hobby: Headphones. This is not really relevant, but I felt like mentioning it so you won't think I spent a decade without hobbies :P
One day, I found my old Corally C4.1 in a box in the attic, I think I was looking for Christmas decorations or something. And the sight of that chassis in that box instantly brought me joy. I immediately knew what to do. I had to revive the old C4.1.

Not mine, but one just like it. Picture courtesy of the internet.

I ordered a bunch of parts to give it new life. A brushless motor with a matching ESC, a new LiPo saddle pack and some new rubber. Well, things had changed a bit over the years. The battery didn't fit any of the standard mounting options so I had to stick it in with dual sided tape, which was a pain, as I didn't want to risk charging in the car. The new motor was so powerful that the ball diffs wore out in the runtime of a single battery and spares were extremely hard to find. I found some compatible parts, but the chassis, while fully featured was a pain to work on if you didn't want to take it apart completely. I had some fun, I wanted more, but I decided to abandon this project to save the chassis for historic purposes. That, and there were even less suitable spots to run an on-road competition grade RC in the area I now lived.
But my son was growing up, and started to show an interest in Monstertrucks on tv.
So, I had an idea. I would buy a small 1:18 scale cheap semi-hobbygrade monstertruck, give off-road a second chance and see if my son would like it too. If we liked it, I planned on buying a nicer monstertruck for myself and passing the small one on to my son.

RC Dork: The RC history Part 5

The Racing days.

The 1:10 tourers had my preference after the disastrous experience with the messed up 2nd hand Kyosho Ultima ST. I had been looking at Tamiya kits, but couldn't really decide what to get. Then, I stumbled across a Corally C4.1. A competition grade chassis with a 40% discount at a hobbyshop. They were shifting focus to model trains, so all the RC stuff went on sale. I decided then and there that this was the chassis for me. The kit and the build was of a whole different level than the ones I had worked on before. Carbon fiber, graphite, glass fiber reenforced plastics, aluminium bulkheads, ball diffs, it had it all. I added a 12 Triple motor, a no turn limit ESC and a Nissan Skyline R34 body. Boy was this thing FAST, it made my Nitro cars look like kids toys (and they were no slouches either). Soon I realised that just a few milimeters of groundclearance brought along some problems when racing parking lots. The last bash spot we had had a nice smooth asphalt surface, but even the tiniest bit of debris sent the car out of control if you were unlucky and happened to hit it the wrong way.

Not mine, but one just like it, right down to the NiMH cells used. Picture courtesy of the internet.

It was time for the next phase in my hobby. I joined a RC club. But they were just a bit too far from home, and I still had some sort of a social life back then, so I couldn't visit the practice days very often. The club was Electro only, so my brother in law didn't join as he was still running Nitro. I participated in the club competition, but with no time to put in any practice it wasn't much fun as even 10 year olds were able to run better laps than I did. But with a chassis with all the bells and whistles and desparate to have at least one race where I didn't end last I did learn a lot about setting up on road cars. Switched my body to a Dodge Stratus, which was a downforce monster at the time. Bought a set-up board, learned about how to fine tune gearing to the track. And in one short moment of glory, I managed to finish a race in 8th place (out of 10 drivers). They say you should quit while you're ahead, so I cancelled my membership and went back to the parking lots.