The SCX30 Tips, Tricks, and Mods Thread

[Jarcher21]

I searched and searched for the arrow tools but never found them. Guess they forgot to put that tool with mine

 

[HPIguy]

My corner weight scales arrived today. And my calibration weight, that Amazon made look tiny. It's not, it's HUGE. LOL These things are pretty cool though.

Just from removing the spare tire, which hangs you up on steep climbs anyway.

 

[Tallbump]

I still haven't messed with my 30 itself yet, but, I did get this printed and glued.

I store and transport my rigs in 50 cal ammo cans. So this insert works great.
My printer only goes to 10 inches and the can is 11 long, so it had to be in 2 pieces. For the top I did end up gluing a piece of styrene under the seam just to help reinforce the seam.

 

[Mrgoodwrench35]

I hesitated to enter this thread. I ordered 2 of these but It will likely be early February before they arrive. The anticipation is killing me.

I saw a few videos by Holmes Hobbies and he was building obstacles out of Legos. I'm a bit of a Lego collector (understatement of the year) and I'm hoping these match up closely to the scale of my Lego city. I ordered a bunch of new bricks and and going to add 'Lego mountain' to the city. This should be fun.

 

[Doom!]

I hauled out some Lego to crawl over the other day. I need to get out one of my big bins of Lego, to make some real obstacles. (was playing with my SCX24's).

We too are Legomaniacs.

 

[HPIguy]

Been a minute since I updated. Busy weekend. Did that canvas and foil tape crawler course I found online, came out awesome. Installed the HR shock set, with the soft springs for a droop setup, and I love those. Also ditched the bumpers, flares, and rockers for clearance. And reset my steering endpints, which were WAY off. About to print new high clearance bumpers, working on wheels now. This thing is very capable now.

 

[TeknoJ]

Been a minute since I updated. Busy weekend. Did that canvas and foil tape crawler course I found online, came out awesome. Installed the HR shock set, with the soft springs for a droop setup, and I love those. Also ditched the bumpers, flares, and rockers for clearance. And reset my steering endpints, which were WAY off. About to print new high clearance bumpers, working on wheels now. This thing is very capable now.

Do those shocks hold oil? I don't see any issue with the stock shocks; they just need a softer spring. The added weight from aluminum vs plastic is an obvious benefit of a few grams??
Removing the bumpers helped a lot, the front needs something to keep obstacles from crashing into the servo arm though. With the rear bumper gone, the spare tire is now the hang up.
This little scx30 is fun.

 

[WickedFog]

Been a minute since I updated. Busy weekend. Did that canvas and foil tape crawler course I found online, came out awesome. Installed the HR shock set, with the soft springs for a droop setup, and I love those. Also ditched the bumpers, flares, and rockers for clearance. And reset my steering endpints, which were WAY off. About to print new high clearance bumpers, working on wheels now. This thing is very capable now.

That shock looks TINY! You guys are making my willpower to hold off buying anymore RC's fail me.

Do those shocks hold oil? I don't see any issue with the stock shocks; they just need a softer spring. The added weight from aluminum vs plastic is an obvious benefit of a few grams??
Removing the bumpers helped a lot, the front needs something to keep obstacles from crashing into the servo arm though. With the rear bumper gone, the spare tire is now the hang up.
This little scx30 is fun.

Just my opinion here man:

I don't even use oil in my 24's. You technically would need to scale down the viscosity of the 1:1 to match the scale of the RC. And since the SCX24's weight is nowhere near as heavy as a real truck scaled down to 1/24, the viscosity would have to be even thinner yet. The actual viscosity needed would be somewhere between ambient air and rubbing alcohol, and likely much closer to air. With the SCX30, this would be next to impossible to find something with the right viscosity AND stays in the shock.

And besides that, fluid in shocks is meant to dampen the suspension travel, to keep it from bouncing like a rubber ball. If these little trucks ran 15 to 20 mph, I could maybe see trying to dampen the suspension slightly. But on a rock crawler moving in slow motion, there is zero benefit of adding oil, and in fact, it will likely make things worse.

Seriously, I'd like to see somebody prove this wrong. Because I just can't see this any other way. Maybe there is something I am missing, but I am 99% certain there is no need to use oil in these tiny trucks.

 

[Doom!]

That shock looks TINY! You guys are making my willpower to hold off buying anymore RC's fail me.


Just my opinion here man:

I don't even use oil in my 24's. You technically would need to scale down the viscosity of the 1:1 to match the scale of the RC. And since the SCX24's weight is nowhere near as heavy as a real truck scaled down to 1/24, the viscosity would have to be even thinner yet. The actual viscosity needed would be somewhere between ambient air and rubbing alcohol, and likely much closer to air. With the SCX30, this would be next to impossible to find something with the right viscosity AND stays in the shock.

And besides that, fluid in shocks is meant to dampen the suspension travel, to keep it from bouncing like a rubber ball. If these little trucks ran 15 to 20 mph, I could maybe see trying to dampen the suspension slightly. But on a rock crawler moving in slow motion, there is zero benefit of adding oil, and in fact, it will likely make things worse.

Seriously, I'd like to see somebody prove this wrong. Because I just can't see this any other way. Maybe there is something I am missing, but I am 99% certain there is no need to use oil in these tiny trucks.

I use a drop of sewing machine or gun oil in my mini crawler shocks, not so much for dampening, but to help keep them smooth so the shaft doesn't bind.

 

[TeknoJ]

That shock looks TINY! You guys are making my willpower to hold off buying anymore RC's fail me.


Just my opinion here man:

I don't even use oil in my 24's. You technically would need to scale down the viscosity of the 1:1 to match the scale of the RC. And since the SCX24's weight is nowhere near as heavy as a real truck scaled down to 1/24, the viscosity would have to be even thinner yet. The actual viscosity needed would be somewhere between ambient air and rubbing alcohol, and likely much closer to air. With the SCX30, this would be next to impossible to find something with the right viscosity AND stays in the shock.

And besides that, fluid in shocks is meant to dampen the suspension travel, to keep it from bouncing like a rubber ball. If these little trucks ran 15 to 20 mph, I could maybe see trying to dampen the suspension slightly. But on a rock crawler moving in slow motion, there is zero benefit of adding oil, and in fact, it will likely make things worse.

Seriously, I'd like to see somebody prove this wrong. Because I just can't see this any other way. Maybe there is something I am missing, but I am 99% certain there is no need to use oil in these tiny trucks.

I agree, I just use a dab of grease and it still seeps out!

 

[HPIguy]

To be fair, the spare was ditched the first night as it did nothing but hang up on everything. I'm not worried about the servo itself, as it's likely the beefiest thing in the front end. The stock shocks left a lot to be desired, for me at least. To boingy and springy for my tastes. With the heavy hard-body, my goal was to lower the ride height, and control weight shift. The HR shocks are NOT oil-filled, but rather grease damped is my guess. Keeping the weight shift from happening like a mouse trap springing, and rather having it happen slower, like a soft-close drawer seems to help so far. I've always loved a good droop setup though, it's a scaler, not a go-fast rig so I don't see the point is having sprung mass sit higher for any reason, and we are not absorbing high-speed impacts. BUT, as always, I could be wrong.

 

[WickedFog]

To be fair, the spare was ditched the first night as it did nothing but hang up on everything. I'm not worried about the servo itself, as it's likely the beefiest thing in the front end. The stock shocks left a lot to be desired, for me at least. To boingy and springy for my tastes. With the heavy hard-body, my goal was to lower the ride height, and control weight shift. The HR shocks are NOT oil-filled, but rather grease damped is my guess. Keeping the weight shift from happening like a mouse trap springing, and rather having it happen slower, like a soft-close drawer seems to help so far. I've always loved a good droop setup though, it's a scaler, not a go-fast rig so I don't see the point is having sprung mass sit higher for any reason, and we are not absorbing high-speed impacts. BUT, as always, I could be wrong.

That is exactly my line of thinking. Fluid filled shocks are to smooth out the bumps when going fast enough that your suspension is going to travel beyond what the obstacle you hit that causes your suspension to compress, and to keep the tire from falling into a pothole and glide over the void. That is pointless on a crawler. And I totally agree about the droop. Drop that puppy all the way down onto the snubbers

This is the way I.like the suspension to work, particularly the way it moves between 1:25 and 1:35 in this.

 

[HPIguy]

That is exactly my line of thinking. Fluid filled shocks are to smooth out the bumps when going fast enough that your suspension is going to travel beyond what the obstacle you hit that causes your suspension to compress, and to keep the tire from falling into a pothole and glide over the void. That is pointless on a crawler. And I totally agree about the droop. Drop that puppy all the way down onto the snubbers

This is the way I.like the suspension to work, particularly the way it moves between 1:25 and 1:35 in this.

Great vid! I am 95% in agreement with you. However, just playing devil's advocate, you can "slightly" alter or tune a bad spring rate choice with damping. Beyond that, in the mini-micro crawling and scaling world, oil-filled is just a sales buzz word. Bigger rigs I think do benefit somewhat, to what extent, I don't know. As I always tell people; "I'm smart enough to point out the issue, but I'm not always smart enough to solve it."

 

[WickedFog]

Great vid! I am 95% in agreement with you. However, just playing devil's advocate, you can "slightly" alter or tune a bad spring rate choice with damping. Beyond that, in the mini-micro crawling and scaling world, oil-filled is just a sales buzz word. Bigger rigs I think do benefit somewhat, to what extent, I don't know. As I always tell people; "I'm smart enough to point out the issue, but I'm not always smart enough to solve it."

Yeah, you can, if you can find shock oil thin enough that won't leak out. But I guess you could always stay with a thicker fluid and just remove enough of your piston that it works. But at full droop, I just don't see the need for dampening on this small a scale.

 

[HPIguy]

Yeah, you can, if you can find shock oil thin enough that won't leak out. But I guess you could always stay with a thicker fluid and just remove enough of your piston that it works. But at full droop, I just don't see the need for dampening on this small a scale.

Oh I meant in general, not just 1/30 scale. For small rigs, I'm in full agreement with you.

 

[HPIguy]

So, I attempted to print some high clearance bumpers that I found files for. This is also my first foray into printing ASA. They're meh to be honest. I have a .2 nozzle on the way, should be here on Wednesday and I'll try again. May need to just do PETG, and prime and paint them instead.

PS: Any tips from our resident 3D masters is always appreciated, and I take criticism very well.

 

[TeknoJ]

So, I attempted to print some high clearance bumpers that I found files for. This is also my first foray into printing ASA. They're meh to be honest. I have a .2 nozzle on the way, should be here on Wednesday and I'll try again. May need to just do PETG, and prime and paint them instead.

PS: Any tips from our resident 3D masters is always appreciated, and I take criticism very well.

I was about to print those same bumpers but in pla. Once they look good in pla I will print in petg.
I have never tried asa but abs always came out ok.

 

[WickedFog]

So, I attempted to print some high clearance bumpers that I found files for. This is also my first foray into printing ASA. They're meh to be honest. I have a .2 nozzle on the way, should be here on Wednesday and I'll try again. May need to just do PETG, and prime and paint them instead.

PS: Any tips from our resident 3D masters is always appreciated, and I take criticism very well.

Try a 1 layer height. It's not idea, but will at least give you better resolution in 1 axis. You may have to creste a new profile and play with your extrudion modifier a bit to dial it in.

To smooth prints, buy this...
https://a.co/d/jk64zG1

Brush it on heavy. Give it about 30 seconds or so to smooth out. Then blast it with the UV light for about 10 seconds. If it were me though, I'd just buy the resin, and nuy a good UV flashlight. Clean the part in isopropyl afterwards. 99% is what I use.

Then you can easily sand the resin smooth.

These were all done with a.4 nozzle by the way. Just as I explained above.

.4 nozzle here too. Looks like crap up close. But when you're standing with your eyes 5'+ off the ground, it looks plenty real

 

[WickedFog]

365 nm is what ya want. It penetrates and cures deeper.
https://a.co/d/5ULoaHN

 

[HPIguy]

Also, a Harbor Freight Apache 2800 case will hold the SCX30, radio, and plenty of batteries and your charger.