Got my ERBE and I'm going to change a lot of things

[Revoroller13+]

Yet another nice revo done by mc

[E-maxx Sweden]

Is this thread sweet or what, just love it. (you remind me of popoxx's thread for the e-maxx)

http://monster.traxxas.com/showthrea...ghlight=popoxx

Keep it coming

[mistercrash]

That E-maxx thread is cool. I loved looking through all of it. Thanks for that link. Well we have two things in common for sure Popoxx and I, we both like to go over board and we're both French

[Popoxx]

Interesting thread with uncommon mods mistercrash ! I like that
Major mods, major change ? We will see !

[pntmachine]

MC, very nice work my friend, not much to suggest, shave 2mm off the front arms and run 6 clips forward. Always nice to see what you are up to.

[SteGra]

Nice work!

A couple of comments and suggestion.

The leaking stock differential (assuming it rear), might be from its movement inside the bulkheads. I had the same problem. My rear diffs, bulks, and drive shafts were all changed and still had about 3-5mm up and down movement from the drive shaft. The chassis diff support was a littler worn, so will put strip of hard foam inside the bulk to keep the diff movement at a minimum.

My rear bulks broke on a stock e-revo (once, rear left) and a brushless e-revo (twice, rear left), at the point where the diff center drive is supported by the bulk. I'd be afraid to file down the bulk and chassis to get the diff to fit, but since your modification will be a tight fit, it shouldn't be suseptible to the 3-5 mm movement impact. Plus with a center differential, it will transfer some of the acceleration power to the front diff.

Also black turnbuckles are available, but Traxxas hasn't released the black push rods.

Thanks for the informative post and best wishes to your future mods!

[mistercrash]

Thanks for the compliments. I never tried to run six caster clips as I never felt the need to. Maybe if I tried it I would find out I couldn't live without it I will think about it.

I'm already ahead of the game on the dense foam suggestion for the diffs, been doing that for my 3.3 Revo ever since I got it in 2006

The bulkheads scare me also, I seriously have no idea if they are a lot weaker then before or not. So I decided to address the situation, if there is one, and add material on the outside to compensate for the thin layer that was removed inside. It's called plastic welding. But I don't have a plastic welder....yet It looks awful but the bulkheads now feel stronger than ever before. As always, testing will determine if I did a good job with that.



I was looking for something to do this morning and since I have to wait for parts to come in, I decided to balance the stock tires/wheels. I balance all my wheels and it makes a huge difference on how the truck handles plus it saves on bearings and suspension parts. I use a modified Dubro prop balancer.



I also used a sharp 1/4 inch wide wood chisel to shave off the splines in the wheel hubs so that I can put them on my Ofna adapters. The hole I made in the body's windshield was a little off center because the motor is a little off center. Like an idiot, I off centered the hole on the wrong side of the body So I enlarged the hole and I Shoo gooed some bug screen to keep the rocks out. I also put a few decals on.

[mistercrash]

I replaced the rear bumper with a carbon fiber tie bar and put a useless decal on it



And I wanted to show what I did to my DX3R, the radio is rated to run on 4 alkalines, 1.5v each for 6v total. A little more when the alkalines are brand new. It can also run with 4 rechargeable AAs, 1.2v each for 4.8v total. A little more when they're fully charged. I wanted to run rechargeable AAs but wanted 6v. So I put 5 cells instead of 4 in my DX3R. I know of another person on RCM who did that and both of us haven't had any issues. The radio has tremendous range at 6+ volts.



I registered my ERBE on the Traxxas site yesterday Do you think they will honnor any warranty if I have problems?

[mistercrash]

This is interesting.

MIP splined CVD drive shafts and splined CVD center drives

Has anyone tried those? They seem to be fairly new. The shafts look to be 6 mm thick hardened steel. beefy.

Also, the heat shrink I put on the Summit shafts are no longer there, I took them off because the thickness of the shrink was enough for the shaft to rub on the rear bulkheads. Two set screws with blue Locktite will have to be enough to hold the cross pin.

[BMWNLA]

yea i saw those on towerhobbies yesterday looks like MIP is going to help us with the stock driveshaft breaking problem

[yzf128r]

Hey MC, i'm very interested in your dx3r mod. Can you explain what you did to get the 5th battery in it? I don't want to start hacking away at my radio without some guidence.

[mistercrash]

Originally Posted by yzf128r

Hey MC, i'm very interested in your dx3r mod. Can you explain what you did to get the 5th battery in it? I don't want to start hacking away at my radio without some guidence.

The battery tray that is in the DX3R has spaces for 6 cells. Only four are exposed and the other two are hidden by a plastic piece that clips on it. I did this mod right after I got the radio and I got one of the first ones released so I don't remember all the details on how I got the battery tray out. I know I opened up the radio the best I could to get to that tray, then I found where that plastic piece clipped and I unclipped it to expose the six spots for batteries. That plastic piece was cleanly cut so that when I put it back, Ca glue had to be used if I remember, there would be one more slot exposed for a total of 5 and the sixth one hidden. Now you have to find an extra metal piece with a spring on it to connect two slots together. I got one from a broken toy thgat my son didn't use anymore So if I remember correctly, the metal piece that the black negative wire is soldered on has to be put on the opposite side of the tray in the newly exposed battery slot and the extra metal piece with a spring on it has to be clipped so that the power goes through the 5 cells + to - from beginning to end.

I hope you can make sense of this, If I have some time I'll take some pics that can explain a little bit more, but I'm not opening up my radio again

[yzf128r]

Thank you, I think I will give it a try.

[mistercrash]

I took some pics and Photoshopped one of them to reconstruct how the radio was when new. I hope these pics can clarify how to do it.

[yzf128r]

thanks. that makes a lot of sence now. that's nice that there are spots for the extra cells hidden behind the plastic cover! I think it's gonna rain tomorrow, so i'll give it a try. I'm just having to much fun bashing today to take things apart!

[mistercrash]

I found some time to work on the sway bars today. I did the rear ones. Like I expected, it's a mix of Traxxas and Tekno parts with home made parts to get exactly what I want. Traxxas parts used are sway bar balls and ball ends on the front to go on the sway bar, the turnbuckles for the front were used in the rear, I made 1/4 inch more threads on them and cut them to the length I needed, two blue spacers used on the stock ERBE push rods. The Tekno parts used are the rear sway bar mount, ball ends that go on the rockers and the M3 button head screws. The sway bar is custom made to how I like it. Raise the turnbuckles and it's like you just put a thinner sway bar. Lower them and it's like you just put a thicker sway bar. very adjustable.
I took Longbill's trick of zip tieing the connectors to the air vents. It works great thanks Longbill. And with the connectors not moving, the wires could be tucked away to not interfere with the sway bars and shocks. It's going to work great.

[FireWire79]

Thanks for the right up mistercrash. Here I was thinking that it was another n00b thread saying a bunch of hoo-haa on how they wanted to make the ERBE cooler, without actually doing anything to it. (Hey, at least it wasn't a battery question. )

Looks like you've done some really good work and I am looking forward to hearing how you do on the track now that winter is officially over. (And I know it's not really over, I am from Wisconsin, and know that winter goes until at least April. Canada is like Wisconsin's backyard after all.)

Good luck with your mods and hope they hold up. The only thing I have on my list for track prep is the Sladen mod and a center diff.

[mistercrash]

Thanks FireWire. So what kind of batteries should I use in this?

[FireWire79]

Get some Zippy 12 cells 8000mah. You can run them in a series/parallel harness to get 6s and 16000mah. That way you get the best of both worlds, and they fit inside the battery bays.

>>Here<< is the link. (Man, I hope I don't get anymore warning points for that.)

You have to scroll down, they are at the bottom of the page.

[mistercrash]

yeah! ok

Ask a stupid question....

After my son fell a sleep I got to have some alone time in the garage so I did the front sway bars. Again it's a Traxxas, Tekno, home made pot pourri.

[mistercrash]

This is what I did before I go to bed. Whenever I see a clown making balloon puppets for little kids, I lure the clown away with a trail of multi colored marshmallows to a dark alley and I take his balloons. They are great for protecting the shock shafts from dirt and grime. Please don't talk to me about shock socks. I tried them and I hate them. I gave away the ones I had.

[Bradus]

Great job mc, the LST2 diff's and Hyper CD mod are brilliant. Maybe one day Traxxas will get the message that 100's if not 1000's of revo owner's want diffs with 4 spider gears. But if they don't think a MMM equipped revo is worthy of stronger diff's then I guess they don't care.
Hopefully Mike at RCM will help us unskilled revo owner's out with a kit we can use with the hyper cd. Anyway that's enough ranting at Traxxas.

Originally Posted by mistercrash

I was looking for something to do this morning and since I have to wait for parts to come in, I decided to balance the stock tires/wheels. I balance all my wheels and it makes a huge difference on how the truck handles plus it saves on bearings and suspension parts. I use a modified Dubro prop balancer.

I like your balancer, I'm going to have to get one of those. Just one question. Would the shaft on the balancer be long enough to fit 4 1/4" wide big joe's?
Thanks man keep up the awesome work.

[Badcop]

Where do you buy your carbon fiber? I really like the carbon fiber pieces you've constructed? Even looks laser cut!

[mistercrash]

Thanks guys,

Mike at RC Monster does have a solution, expensive but you get what you paid for and Monster Mike is great to deal with. You need to get the diffs with the buggy gearing.

RC Monster Hybrid diffs for the Revo

The only mod I did to the Dubro prop balancer was to make a wider base to accommodate for up to 40 series wheel/tires. You can just make a base wide enough to fit the wheel/tires you use and if you need to have a longer shaft, you can get a piece of round stock of the right diameter at the hardware store. It's just a straight shaft, nothing special about it.

I like to use carbon fiber from Full Force RC. It is of a good quality and it's good to work with. I also use CF from Penguin RC because they thickness' that Full Force don't have. There's also Hobby City that sells CF sheets. There's many other places I tried but they ended up being unreliable sending the wrong kind of product or taking months to ship it.

Full Force RC carbon fiber sheets
Penguin RC carbon fiber sheets
Hobby City carbon fiber sheets

I never dealt with those two but I heard good things about them.

DAGraphite
Protech Composites

[mistercrash]

The front wheels throw a lot of things to the back of the truck while driving it. Dirt, sand, mud, rocks, dog poo. To keep the rear shafts and suspension cleaner and protect the shaft's dust boots, I make mud flaps from scrap Lexan pieces or thick rubber. In this case, the are rubber held with zip ties. This really works. Also no one noticed but I always switch my rear shafts around so that the dust boots are close to the center. The dust boot trick is from ''WUDS'' on Revo-World.com. Thanks WUDS.

[mistercrash]

This build is coming to an end soon. The ''Platinum Edition ERBE'' is almost finished. I have to wait for a couple of parts like aluminum pivot ball caps from Golden Horizon and a few more Summit shaft to modify them to use as center shafts.
The wheels and tires in the pic are Traxxas dish wheels and Panther Python tires with Trinity two stage foam inserts.

You can see inside the front wheel the lead weights I used to balance the wheels/tires. Wheels have to be balanced, especially MT wheels and tires.

[Geogenesis]

this is one sweet build keep up the work mc

[mistercrash]

I put the stock middle shafts back on to try out my ERBE to see if it will actually runs after all the mods I did to it It's a short boring movie of it running around in the street. As you will see, the 50k lube in the center diff proved to be way too thick. I'll try to go down to 30k next time and see what happens. Right now it still wheelies like crazy.
The LST2 diffs have a different ratio than the stock ERBE diff so I kept the 18 tooth pinion and installed a 56 tooth spur gear to be very close to the original over all ratio. I also did some changes to the MMM settings to try to tame the beast a little bit. The front diff has 10k lube and the rear has 5k lube. I ran my Panther Pythons tires even though I shouldn't run them on asphalt. The sway bars are awsome, they worked perfectly and the blue/silver springs helped a lot to make the truck handle much better.

I'll have to learn to stop blipping the throttle like I do with my nitro Revo.

Here are the MMM settings I used





And the movie.

[rcmaniac]

MC, i think you will be good with 30k in the CD, thats what I run, and it doesn't wheelie at all, also i run 30k f/r as well. Give that a try....you might like it.
Here is my setup
JR Xs3 radio
Quark 125b
CastleNue 2200kv
Proline Badlands
23mm Velo's
23mm Dace Adapters
Hitec 5645MG
2s2p 8k lipo
Spring Shock 3.2 Rate Orange Revo
Spring Shock 3.8 Rate Gold Revo
Pro-Line Aluminum Steering Arm Revo
RPM A-Arms Front Left Black Revo
RPM A-Arms Front Right Black Revo
RPM True Track Rear Conversion
Heavy Duty Servo Saver Spring Revo
Tekno RC Sway Bar Kit
And of course the CD I designed and built, that you have made yourself as well.
PS... here is a pic if anyone wants to see it

[mistercrash]

Thanks rcmaniac, I will try 30k for sure in my CD. I can't be running 30k in my front and rear diffs though since I run with LST2 diffs with 6 big gears in them instead of the ERevo's four.

[rcmaniac]

Hmm. i forgot about that, give the 30k a try in the center, it should be a good fit, thats what I ran in my RCM slipperential when i had it, and I decided to use the same # of fluid for this CD, since they are almost the same,( both being 4 spyder and all)...that should help keep the front down, also turn down your throttle epa, to about 75-80%, I find that is a good setting as well, because i had mine at max 125%, and it was to much to handle.

[yzf128r]

How did your CF slipper plate work?

[8ight-e]

Originally Posted by mistercrash

This is what I did before I go to bed. Whenever I see a clown making balloon puppets for little kids, I lure the clown away with a trail of multi colored marshmallows to a dark alley and I take his balloons. They are great for protecting the shock shafts from dirt and grime. Please don't talk to me about shock socks. I tried them and I hate them. I gave away the ones I had.

Traxxas already makes these cheap.. jato boots Been running them for a while now, they work great Nice thing about buying the jato ones is they come with a retainer part to keep them from sliding around like most shocks have (8ights etc).

[8ight-e]

[quote=mistercrash]The front wheels throw a lot of things to the back of the truck while driving it. Dirt, sand, mud, rocks, dog poo. To keep the rear shafts and suspension cleaner and protect the shaft's dust boots, I make mud flaps from scrap Lexan pieces or thick rubber. In this case, the are rubber held with zip ties. This really works. Also no one noticed but I always switch my rear shafts around so that the dust boots are close to the center. The dust boot trick is from ''WUDS'' on Revo-World.com. Thanks WUDS.

The better mud flap I did this mod a while back too.. this is more for people with RPM truetracks though When you zip tie at the top they don't hold up long expecially racing and jumping.. on either stock or truetracks, they are fine for street running though.

Losi 8ight-t mud guards with slightly longer pins (do a quick search for the part #'s in my prior posts but they were sportwerks I think)

PS the best center dog bone option iMO is still the set at Kershaw Design.

[mistercrash]

I did some more bashing with my ERBE yesterday. It's running really good. I made a parallel harness to run 4S batteries when they come in. I have a pair of 5S cheap lipos from ebay that I have to try. I am very unsure about these lipos but at the price I paid for them, I had to get them and try them.

[Ray00Ray]

To everyone that have the ERBE or the EREvo. I would like your opinion on the chassis. I think it has tons of flex. Flex can be good as it will give instead of brake but I find that this chassis is like a wet noodle. I'm talking about the front and rear ends. The middle has a lot of ribbing underneath and the center skid helps a lot. But the front and rear ends that lock in the bulkheads are very flexy. Once the bulkheads are on, it seems rigid but it's the bulkheads holding the chassis in place. That brings me to think that the bulkheads will snap more easily since the chassis' front and rear ends have too much flex to help the bulks dissipate the forces of impacts during extreme suspension movements. It's just an observation here, maybe I just think too much.

Thats an excellent observation MC. The rational behind that lies in a question the goes like this: Would like to replace the whole chasis or bulk heads everytime you have a massive accident at the front or rear? So keep those observations flowing and we will help out with reasons. Good work Bro.

[SteGra]

Ray00Ray, it might a good idea to start a new thread on this topic (i.e. chassis flex). I think the chassis flex is fine (like having a built in sway bar).

I've repaired three broken tail wing mounts, two rear bulks, but never a chassis. Although am having chassis issues unrelated to this thread.

[mistercrash]

The Summit shafts came in yesterday so this morning I got to work on modifying them to fit as center shafts, I only had time to try them for 5 or 6 minutes before I had to leave for work. I'll abuse them more very soon.



Someone asked about the slipper clutch pad, it seems to hold up very well and grabs like crazy. I'm going to loosen it to see how it can withstand a little heat.

The motor plate I made out of CF is doing good, although it has less flex than the stock aluminum plate, it still has a little too much flex for my taste so I'm trying to figure out something to catch or hold the rear of the motor to keep it from moving.

[mistercrash]

I installed the spacers under the rear rocker posts, the ones that come with the Traxxas sway bar kit, it is to raised the rockers to make clearance for the sway bar's ball links. I installed them because I didn't like the fact that the springs of my shocks were rubbing on the chassis. It helped but not quite enough, the springs were still rubbing so I made this carbon fiber shim that goes under the shock tower and that raised the shocks enough to not touch the chassis anymore.

[mistercrash]

I didn't like the flex there was with the stock aluminum motor mount so I made the 3 mm thick carbon fiber one. But there was still flex even with the CF, not as much as with the aluminum mount but the flex was still there. After running the truck a few times, I even noticed a notch on my rear shock tower made by the motor hitting it. The rear of the motor moves up and down when you land a jump and it also moves side to side. I made this mount to support the rear of the motor, It is a piece of maple with a hose clamp of the right size. I split the hose clamp in two and secured it to the wood block with screws.



The block as to be made with precision. It has to sit under the motor without pushing the motor upwards.



Here it is installed. There is no need to clamp the motor very hard, just snug is enough to get rid of any flex. This I hope will prevent stripped spurs due to motor mount flex.



The maple block is secured to the chassis with just one screw from underneath.



And here is the final installation.



The truck is running great, between each mod I do I run the truck as much as I can. It's a lot of fun. A little wrenching, a lot of running, I'm having a ball with this project.