As a baseline I drove around my back yard snow track and did one lap at 20 seconds.
An average lap and actually this thing has to much speed and I think with the axles I have in it I could change from 13/56 to 11/56 and still fell like it’s going to fast enough on a trail.
Looking at the axles both portal and non portal use 8/30 diff gears but the portals cut that almost in half to the tires.
Portals drive shaft turns 7.25 times to turn the wheels one revolution.
The non portal the drive shaft turns 3.75 times to turn the wheel one revolution.
So the portals have 12/23 gears or 1.92:1 reduction. Changing to the 15/20 portal gears will give it 1.33:1
Next step is to install the portals. And see how it laps.
I got the portals installed. I still need a shorter steering link. But I did get a short test drive. It feels like it’s stuck in first gear. Good off the line performance. But then it just stops accelerating. From half throttle on it’s not much difference.
I think the gears will help. I definitely like the way the AR45s fit.
After driving the truck again this morning I am a little more confident the gearing will help. And I am going to get some 80mm shocks. The fenders are designed so the tires go all the way up to the top without touching. So I can drop the whole rig 10mm.
This is all looking pretty good. Might put in a faster motor but not until I sort out the gearing.
After a lot of back and forth in my head today I realized what my problem is with this class 2 build.
I just have this nagging thing of something ain’t right and it hit me.
My Toyota class 2 truck is hitting 7 pounds with brassed up portals and the FMM a winch and mamba X it is huge. Meanwhile I have a power wagon tow truck that is like 5 pounds. Toyota pickups didn’t have portals. Power wagons do. So I am doing a bit of a swap. I’m basically swapping chassis. I’ll sort out the shocks and all that. But I’m excited about this. Now the tow truck is a monster. And the little Toyota is a climber.
I’m still going to figure out the gearing but now it’s a power wagon.
I’ll start this discussion up on a different thread and rebuild my class 2 Toyota.
And for the Toyota it’s back to a 5.5 lb crawler with a 60/40 balance. But of corse there is always something. Both the power wagon and the Toyota have similar frames the skids are different. And now the wheelbase is to short. That’s OK I can fix that pretty easy with longer links.
Going the Class 2 rig back together. I am getting a set of Hard Core RC links. Be a week or more. Tried to make the links but I just don’t have enough odd links to get the wheelbase and driveline right.
Putting in a Team Garage Hack 2.low trans with a 2200 kv Revolver V2
Plenty of power.
Axles are AR44 knock offs with brass upfront. This is just clean and mean..
I am still waiting for the links to set the wheel base at 12.5 inches. I did a mock up and the length is good but I’m worried about the front to rear ratio. I don’t want the rear wheels forward and the front wheels hitting the bumper. I have the front sorted with a mismatch of links. But the back is what I ordered for.
I also need a longer driveshaft for that wheelbase. SSD makes a nice one. Everyone else is sold out. I had to use valve lapping compound to get the splines to move smoother. But it’s definitely strong enough.
I spent a couple nights disassembled the axle housing s and cleaned and greased checked all the bolts and filed and cleaned up some spots . The front is turning 47 deg without any chunking and it has brass C blocks and brass hubs.
First comp is in two weeks. Time to get the Class 2 out and start running the crap out of it every day. This is going to be fun. The rig is pretty good but the winch needs a better fairlead and I gotta check my bumper width.
I like the tires from Vanquish that came with the vs410 but I will probably use Hyrax.
Pretty sure everything else is good.
Winch practice is my concern. I have a mamba X in this so I can release the drag brake and winch up. I think that will make the throttle/ winch action easier.
The class 2 truck needed a whole lot more tuning than I thought. It had a couple issues and was tuned more scale and trail truck than rock crawler.
I really like the smaller wheels but they did not do it and the 80mm shocks also caused a little performance issues with articulation. So I stripped my best rig of shocks drive shaft and the receiver is headed to the 6x6. It is just going to get upgrades so don’t worry.
I spent the day making one adjustment at a time and now it does all the climbs in the back yard except the crazy jumps. The comp won’t have that so now I need to practice running gates.
First comp is Saturday. I got the Class 2 rig out on the rocks. It’s been raining and Hyrax tires and wet mud are not the best combination. But I wanted to practice. Then I said “Better Film it” well that got me a lot more practice than I would have gotten not filming. Two battery packs and 25 takes I finally gave up and said this is it. And it was a pretty complete run. I did fix the sand on that last climb. It was dug it pretty good from all the other tries. Over all I’m happy with it. I’m only know realizing I did not have the drag break on. That is why it was struggling and did not stop at the end. Lesson learned.