Mid Motor Rustler Build

[rc10nick]

CF Nylon sounds like it would be fun to try, but the Ender 3 V2 can't print it without throwing more money at the printer. Eventually I want to experiment with silicone mold making and use polyurethane resins to cast parts. There's some pretty good casting resins out there that are as tough as other plastics like delrin, abs, and nylon.

I fixed the problem of my turnbuckle hitting the wheel before getting to full lock. I was having trouble trying to figure out what to do, but at one point while I was fiddling with the Rustler and trying to visualize a solution I looked over at my Mini-B and noticed the rod ends on it were kinked. I took inspiration from that and designed a kinked rod end and tweaked the steering block to make it all work.



Great success!

So next I need to make some minor tweaks to the arm and add some better camber link mounts to the caster block then I'll be ready to print another batch of parts.

[Dadio]

You can also get CF PETG and CF ABS , I have some f the ABS and it seems quite good , you'd only need a hardened nozzle on a stock ender 3 and that's £10 maybe , otherwise the CF just eats brass nozzles in a matter of hours !

[rc10nick]

I made some more progress on the design today. More importantly, I figured out what I'm going to do about achieving my design goals with with stadium truck wheels. Give up! lol, the ST wheels have beaten me, and honestly I'm starting to really hate their design. They're too wide and the wheel diameter is too small. I either have to give up on steering angle or my design goals. So rather than get hung up on the stadium truck, I'm shifting focus to buggy and SCT.

The tweaks I've made today have pretty much finalized the buggy and SCT geometry. Both wheels give me maximum steering angle through the full range of suspension travel with no binding anywhere. On top of that, the buggy wheels have 0 scrub radius and I'm confident I've got the suspension arm as long as I can get it without rubbing on the wheel. I need to get a set of TLR offset SCT wheels, but I should be at or near 0 scrub radius on those, too. I'm pretty happy with that, I've hit my design goals for the front end on 2 out of 3 of the 2wd classes.

Here's where I'm at so far. I need to make a few more tweaks like QOL improvements with hinge pins, etc., but this is pretty much it. From here I'll move on to making the front pivot as narrow as I realistically get it.

[matt1ptkn]

Too bad the stadium truck wheels wouldn't work. But your progress has been very satisfying to follow. I get frustrated too easily with similar projects, and I probably would have thrown everything across the room a long time ago. But you stuck with it and hit the nail on the head. Great job! BTW, that looks like a heck-of-a steering angle!

[rc10nick]

Too bad the stadium truck wheels wouldn't work. But your progress has been very satisfying to follow. I get frustrated too easily with similar projects, and I probably would have thrown everything across the room a long time ago. But you stuck with it and hit the nail on the head. Great job! BTW, that looks like a heck-of-a steering angle!

Thanks for the kind words! I'm pretty bummed about the ST wheels, too. My first RC was a T3 and it's been my favorite class ever since. I might loop back around to ST later on in the development process but for now I don't want it to be an impediment to getting to the rest of the car. If anything I might just design an ST using SCT wheels. It's not technically "legal" but I doubt most tracks around me would care about that for regular club races.

lol, that does look like a lot of steering but its actually based off of my RC10T3 and my TLR Mini-B. Both cars have more or less the same max steering angle so I figured that's a good target.

[rc10nick]

Man I get distracted with projects so easily. Instead of working on my car design I got sidetracked with organizing the tools I use for wrenching on my cars.



That's a gif - if it doesn't play you should be able to click it to watch the clip.

Anyway I have a set of MIP speed tips and Wiha nut drivers (two of which I had to grind down the OD to fit some tight spots) that cover all of my wrenching needs. I'm always losing them on my benchtop so I designed this holder for them. I've been using it for a few days and it's amazing how much of a difference it makes just having a place where I always know I'll find the tools.

Design features:
-the lid is held to the case with magnets
-the lid neatly sits underneath the case and is magnetically held in place
-bespoke cutouts for every single driver
-drivers are held in place with magnets
-the tips of the tool cutouts are recessed so the tool tip can be pressed with a finger which causes the hex side of the bit to pop up into my hand
-I added a small holder for the rubber tips of the MIP drivers so I don't lose or misplace those

[Mr. ED]

smart design!

[rc10nick]

Thanks! I think my absolute favorite part of the design is the storage spots for those little MIP rubber tip covers. I was pretty sure those were gonna get lost real fast if I wasn't careful with them and this makes it super easy to keep track of them while I use the driver.

[rc10nick]

Not only did I get a chance to make it out to a track today, I even managed to rope a kid into taking a video for me! Check it out! This was after a few packs and the tires were completely shot at this point, but it still drove pretty good.

[Mr. ED]

jumps well!

[rc10nick]

It did a lot of things well! I don't know if ever posted about it, but I swapped out the plastic traxxas shocks with my old RC10T3 shocks and they made a huge difference. I put some nice V2 shocks on my T3 so the original shocks were just sitting around. The car soaks up jumps so much better without slapping (when I time the jumps right, anyway) and I can run a reasonable weight oil like 30 instead of the 50 I had to use with the plastic shocks.

And for another fun off-topic project, check this out! I cast my own Mini-B tires using a shore 30A silicone from tire molds I designed and 3D printed. Then I designed and printed wheels to mount them on. The whole process was surprisingly easy and the tires are super grippy. I ran them on the concrete floor on my basement and even on the street out in front of my house and they held up really well with no obvious signs of wear or damage.

[Mr. ED]

i'm sure it does many things well. The jumping was just the easiest to tell from the video on my tiny screen.

[Chewbacca]

Too bad the stadium truck wheels wouldn't work. But your progress has been very satisfying to follow. I get frustrated too easily with similar projects, and I probably would have thrown everything across the room a long time ago. But you stuck with it and hit the nail on the head. Great job! BTW, that looks like a heck-of-a steering angle!

My thought exactly, do you really need THAT much of steering?

[rc10nick]

I've been going deep down the rabbit hole of making my own tires. I made a version that uses an insert, then I spent a ton of time figuring out how to cut inserts out from upholstery foam. Unexpectedly it was way harder than casting the tire. But man, these things GRIP! There's a few minor details I need to figure out but man I'm so close to being able to make my own tires!




Anyway, for something a little more on topic, I've been using my mini b track in my basement to give myself a throttle control workout by running my rustler on it. I'm starting to get pretty good at it!

[Mr. ED]

very impressed with your driving on that tiny track.