Project TLRampage

[Hcp22]

[Coelacanth]

That looks really cool! But totally unsuited to offroad driving, being a front-steer, rear-drive trike. (If it was 3WD, that would've been impressive!) On anything but a smooth surface, traction under acceleration will be a problem and it probably has the tendency to swing out the rear wheel whenever turning, not to mention it'd probably be hopeless on jumps. But it's definitely cool and cleanly executed.

If things were reversed, with the drive coming from 2 wheels at the rear and the front single wheel being able to steer, that would've been what I was initially aiming for. I had to scrap that idea because the logistics and lack of available parts to get a steerable front wheel would mean a great deal of fabrication & cost...more than I'm able to commit to this project, for sure.

[GoMachV]

[youtube]kkin_g9AONo[/youtube]

[Coelacanth]

That's what I'm talking about! Very cool, particularly how it steered from the rear drive wheels and the front was just a solid fork...looks like it worked quite well, with the exception of climbing hills front-first. That guy did a really nice job on that build, with the scale look & accessories & paint. He definitely invested a good deal more time in that project than what I have to work with...so I'm sticking to my plan to do a RWD with stretched chassis and 2 front wheels. I'll find ways to make it unique, like all my other builds...but I won't get back to the drawing board until autumn/winter for this bad boy.

[j0pp3]

LOL, amazing build

[SMOKE-DOG]

Sweet!
Now that's the kind of innovative stuff I like to see.
Not sure why it wouldn't work offroad but if you switch it to Onroad it will still be badass.

[Coelacanth]

I finally found a cheap parts car that will provide the components I need to build this beast. I saw this on eBay, and tossed out an offer of $60 shipped for just the chassis, I didn't need the body (not shown but included), radio gear or wheels & tires. My offer was accepted.

http://www.ebay.ca/itm/Kyosho-outlaw-/391087053923?

I'll disassemble the nitro motor & related parts and put them up for sale because I don't have a use for nitro and I'm just not into it.

I'll basically disassemble the front & rear bulkheads & connected suspension parts and mount them on a hybrid chassis I'm going to fabricate from graphite Losi & Optima Mid donor chassis plates. The idea is for the resulting chassis plate to have a changeable wheelbase. I did some initial measurements and hope to be able to mount the alloy front arms with the Outlaw's front bulkhead in place of the Ultima arms.

[Coelacanth]

I received my parts car chassis a few days ago and started disassembling front end stuff from the thick aluminum chassis plate. The early plan is to re-fit the HPI Nitro MT2 front arms/knuckles/carriers in place of the original Ultima front arms, and with a few spacers, everything swapped in perfectly. I found the MT2 front arms are much too wide, they'll splay out the front wheels too far apart, so I'll cut each arm down about 18mm. I do want it to be wider than a stock Ultima/Outlaw because it's going to be stretched out to at least 1/8-scale...but not stadium-truck wide. I just don't like that look.

I'll chop the chassis plate off right behind where I'll mount a steering bellcrank, then secure this to a donor Losi graphite chassis plate.

What I'm not sure about yet is the rear "half" of the car. The nitro motor has been removed, all that's left is the gear in the middle that the nitro motor's flywheel would've meshed with, and the shaft running back to the gearbox which connects to 2 belt gears and a belt. The diff inside the gearbox seems to be nice and smooth, and works great.

Here's my question, for those of you who've done nitro-to-electric conversions: If I wanted to use the existing gearbox, where would I mount a motor plate for a brushless motor? For instance, would the motor pinion mesh with the same gear in the middle that the nitro motor would've? Or should I yard out the whole gearbox & shaft system and simply bolt on a gearbox from an electric car? I'd like to try to use the existing gearbox if possible, because it's built for nitro and should be heavy-duty and the diff works great.

Pic for reference:

[Hcp22]

The easy way out is an electric gearbox, but sins when do you take the easy way Marc?

[Phin]

DerbyDan's TeamC TM2 was what got me originally thinking about doing a brushless Rampage conversion....that's the driveline set-up I was going to follow. Eliminating the Rampage's pulleys and running the shaft down the center of the car like the Inferno 10.

http://www.rc10talk.com/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=30662


My major gripe with the Rampage's gearbox though was it's transmission ratio. There's also the lack of toe and anti-squat in the rear arms but that's not too hard to work out a mod for.

[Coelacanth]

DerbyDan's TeamC TM2 was what got me originally thinking about doing a brushless Rampage conversion....that's the driveline set-up I was going to follow. Eliminating the Rampage's pulleys and running the shaft down the center of the car like the Inferno 10.

http://www.rc10talk.com/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=30662

My major gripe with the Rampage's gearbox though was it's transmission ratio. There's also the lack of toe and anti-squat in the rear arms but that's not too hard to work out a mod for.

Thanks for the link, Phin. I'm not overly concerned about rear toe and anti-squat on this build. The stock toe-in will be fine because this is going to be a big beast of a basher, not a racer...and I'm not going to pay much attention to aesthetics. Good point about the tranny ratio, though. I have gearboxes for Optima, Optima Mid and Ultima, but would also like to incorporate a modern slipper gear because this beast is going to be running 3.2" (tall) by 2" (wide) alloy wheels in back.

I like the idea of installing a motor in line with the middle drive gear, mounted either fore or aft, and finding some pinions with the same chunky pitch as that gear has. The driveshaft has a spring assembly of some sort at the gearbox end...what's that all about? Is that an adjustable slip of some sort?

[Coelacanth]

The easy way out is an electric gearbox, but sins when do you take the easy way Marc?

I always look for the easy way...but all too often, I can't find it.

[Coelacanth]

Here's a pic of the original Outlaw Rampage front bulkhead and front end:

And a pic showing the HPI Nitro MT2 front arms bolted on, all that's needed is a few alloy spacers on either side of the arm to get rid of a little play, because the MT2 arms are a few millimeters narrower than the Ultima arms. It also shows how wide they are, the front wheels are splayed out far too much:

Front arms getting ready for a date with the hacksaw & files:

And some pics of one cut-down arm assembly:

[Coelacanth]

Almost done building the front end; cut-down front arms installed. Drilled new holes for the camber links and put them on. When I receive some bell-cranks, I'll install one, then decide where to chop the front end off the chassis plate.

[Coelacanth]

I had some spare time this weekend, as a result of an unexpected dump of snow in western Alberta, in late April for Pete's sake...so my planned yard-work is postponed. Got out the tools and went back to work on this.

I installed the $18.99 3Racing alloy bellcrank. It took a day and a half with a lot of creative mix-and-matching of spacers to get everything working silky-smooth. I had to work out issues with bump-steer, it took a lot of trial and error test-fitting before I could get the tie-rods parallel with the front arms, but I finally got a spacer combination that eliminated the bump-steer...

But as always, once I got everything bolted back together--(this always seems to happen as soon as you threadlock everything, doesn't it?) --I noticed that I forgot to install the ball-stud for the link to the servo...and once I installed that and re-tested the steering, it would butt against the center-link when turning right, and prevented it from turning right properly. I'd already done a bunch of test-fitting to eliminate the bump-steer so there weren't many options other than flip the bellcrank "L" arm to the outside. Rather than having the servo link inboard, I'll mount the servo inboard, instead. This way, everything works silky-smooth, throughout the full range of suspension.

And one of my offroad builds just wouldn't be complete without a set of Kyosho Golds. Since I'm not running goofy stadium truck muffin-tires on this beast, I decided to use medium Golds instead of long ones, as I won't need that amount of suspension travel. I'll hack off the tops of the shock tower.

So the front end is done, steering & suspension works perfectly...I'm ready to chop it off and plan how to bolt it to a graphite chassis plate to stretch out the wheelbase.