Manda’s (Amachan) RC Adventures

I finally got the tops of all of the shocks…. They were on so fucking tight, my hands hurt like hel. Anyway, I can now continue my RC truck spring clean tomorrow.

Today is not my day. I tried taking apart the shocks and was only able to get 1 of them apart. I am going to have to get some tools tomorrow to help me with that.

Then I thought, I want to at least get something done today, so I started replacing the Deans T-plugs with XT60 plugs. That didn’t go smooth, I messed up one of the plugs.

But I did at least get the ESC and 1 battery soldered up properly-ish. It’s on okay, they aren’t coming off. I only got enough plugs to do what I had not thinking I could mess this up. But today I can mess everything up it seems. Today is not my day….. ?

Taking the rear drive axle apart again to replace the scruffy bearings and re-grease the diff with some marine grease.

Taking the front drive and steering axle apart again to replace the scruffy bearings and re-greased the diff with some marine grease.

I got the motor and gearbox assembly all back together, lubed up and ready to go.

I got a new spur and pinion gear, new bearings to replace the scruffy ones I found earlier, new shock oil to rebuild the shocks and make them a bit stiffer, XT60 plugs to get rid of these dreaded Deans T-plugs that I really start to loathe with a passion and some additional accessories.

One thing that always bothered me is that the motor seemed to run smoother and faster in reverse and that there was a red dot thingy, not a light, where the black cable was soldered on. So I decided to de-solder both motor wires and re-solder them on the other way.

I went out driving near the dunes yesterday and 15 minutes in this started happening….

You can hear the motor still turning and the drive shafts stop, this is a breakage in the main gearbox, most likely the spur or pinion gear connecting to the motor.

After taking it apart it became obvious that the pinion gear (small) had lost most of it’s teeth, the spur gear (large) however looked like it still had all of them. On closer inspection though, they are also ground down a bit shorter, you can see the splinters of the gears in the dirty lube on the side of the casing.

You can’t blame this on bad maintenance or that I put it back together incorrectly when I took it apart last. I had a picture of the pinion running the spur gear from then and you can see the pinion’s gears are already mostly gone. Somehow due to me being fairly new to this I missed this and thought it was fine. Learning along the way I suppose.

Before my car started grinding its gears I did get a nice picture though, so there is that to enjoy. Now it is waiting for replacement parts and then we continue the spring clean or spring repair updates for my RC truck.

On a side note, I did fix the rear light on my RC truck…