Going all in

[BA0701]

Gentlemen and ladies (in case some of you swing that way, not judging), the mission, which I have willfully chosen to accept, though fully aware of the entire lack of any danger to myself, my neighbors, or even my dog (though I cannot speak for the list of dangers to my brand new Capra, she chose me to place her trust in, and dang it I will try pretty hard to not let her down), is not a simple one. It is a mission fraught with pitfalls and inevitable mistakes. It is the most detailed, most invasive RC upgrade ever performed in my short and storyless RC career (this part is actually, partly true). I am on a tight clock, I must install all of these laughably tiny parts into my Capra, restoring her to running condition, within the next 2-4 weeks.

I have breached the EP (Entry Point = box tops for the non-English Speakers among you), using my TS-SCI Compartmentalized breaching tool:

I have rigged the structure to blow, and laid out det cord for you to utilize, in the inevitable event of my failure. Should that happen, notify nobody (this mission never occurred), and ask the neighbors to feed my dog, she is a good girl, and she gets one Werther's 2x per day for being such. I have absolutely zero doubt that I will be reaching out to this thread/group often, as I will be entirely lost the moment the screws begin to get removed.

Stay safe, out there, remember that I was here once, I'm going in!

The tools of my trade, along with the intended victim, er... I mean patient:

 

[Tunedfrog]

I loveee project time.

 

[BA0701]

I loveee project time.

At least someone does, I am nervous as a chihuahua in heat, in a room full of pitbulls.

 

[Tunedfrog]

I'm sure @Hammer Down would loan you Nordy, afterall, he is packing a night stick.

 

[9x19]

Good luck, keep moving and pay no attention to those plastic-snapping sounds.

 

[majin]

I'm so jealous! its gonna be awesome

 

[BA0701]

Good luck, keep moving and pay no attention to those plastic-snapping sounds.

I thought those were normal, even unintentionally added some holes into that new Vitavon body panels, some of these darned tiny screws are just a smidge too long, and just kept right on going. We'll call that adding some air cooling vents.

I'm so jealous! its gonna be awesome

I hope you're right, you've got more faith than I.

 

[BA0701]

Progressing, but I hit a small equipment snag, and had to order some parts. So, I am sort of stuck until their arrival. This is where things sit.

By the way, punching screws through the new Vitavon body didn't actually happen, was only meant as a joke. I may be at a loss on a lot of this stuff, but I do hope I could avoid something like that. I hope that I learned not to do that, back in 1997, when I actually did do that to a customer's Compaq laptop, when I punched a screw through the palm rest, wrong length screw, and it really did go right through, there was no additional resistance.

 

[BA0701]

While I am awaiting the arrival of those parts, I have been messing around with the shocks. I have some Desert Lizard I was planning on using for this truck, but there were some fitment issues. While I have not given up on the Lizards, still have some things to test (different springs, different placement, etc...) I also decided to try some Team Associated Enduro shocks, and see if I liked them better. A lot of people claim that the enduro shocks are the best crawler shocks on the market. The issue with the Enduro shocks, was I wasn't sure the path I wanted to take to add droop to them, so I tried the springs from the DL shocks, and they fit perfectly inside. This opened a whole other world of possibilities. The image I am uploading shows the Enduro shocks, one with the lightest medium length DL spring inside, and under the plunger, and the other has no spring inside, to show you the difference it makes. Given the DL spring sets have in three different weights, and three different lengths of each weight, I have a ton of possibilities to try out. But, I still plan on playing with the DL shocks, and then will decide which of the three I like best. I just wanted to put this up, in case someone is looking for a way to droop their shocks, this is certainly an option you can try.

 

[thatcraig]

Good luck with building the rig on time, it looks like you've made good progress so far. It would be awesome to build that.

 

[Robert Droner]

Seems you fellas all like to make each other drool a lot in these posts....

 

[thatcraig]

Hell I drool anyways

 

[BA0701]

I'm drooling currently, from the catatonic state that working on this rig is putting me in.

 

[BA0701]

Ok, so, as much as I hate to say it, my soldering skills just are not good enough for soldering an EC3 together. Not only have I had to snip the wire on two occasions, causing it to be too short for the Capra, I have also ruined a connector because there was too much solder on the tip, and it would not snap in.

Knowing I have an Axe R2/R3 on the way (motor will be here on Monday), I have located a local hobby shop, who I plan on calling tomorrow, to inquire how much they will charge me to simply replace the power cables on the 1080, adding a proper EC3 at the same time. I will then sign up for some soldering classes, if they offer them, since that is the weakest (read nonexistent) point in my RC building skills. If the class doesn't happen before the R3 ESC arrives, I will simply ask them to do the same thing with it, so that I don't end up in the same boat again.

In the mean time, subject to change of course, I have honed in on the Protek 1KTBL for my eventual servos, and am looking at either some Super Shafty or DluxFab axles for it. Of course, like everything else, that is subject to change, as nothing has been ordered yet, those are the items I am currently considering, but neither is currently a necessity. I will likely give Dlux a call this next week, for some guidance, and hopefully they will be as honest and helpful as Buddy RC was.

Cheers, guys, we're still plugging away, once I get past anything requiring soldering (ie, the ESC), things will move a whole lot faster.

 

[Greywolf74]

EC connectors are a pain imo. Half the time I struggle getting them in the housings too and I've been soldering for years and I have the punch tools made for seating EC connectors.

You may want to consider XT connectors. The only thing you have to worry about with those is not melting the housings.

If you want to stick with EC then I'd suggest heating up the bullet with an untinned tip and only filling the cup about 40-50% with solder so when you melt your tinned wire into the cup the extra solder from the wire doesn't make the cup overflow.

 

[BA0701]

EC connectors are a pain imo. Half the time I struggle getting them in the housings too and I've been soldering for years and I have the punch tools made for seating EC connectors.

You may want to consider XT connectors. The only thing you have to worry about with those is not melting the housings.

If you want to stick with EC then I'd suggest heating up the bullet with an untinned tip and only filling the cup about 40-50% with solder so when you melt your tinned wire into the cup the extra solder from the wire doesn't make the cup overflow.

Thank you so much for that, now I don't feel as bad. I truly appreciate your guidance, thank you for that. I did get the tips on this time, just fine, in fact they are on there still. I have a second set that I purchased for just such an occasion, I may try to clean that tip up a little more (I have some solder wick too, and that already helped some) and see if I can get it seated. It can't hurt, at this point, for sure.

Thank you again, cheers, man!