Well I had a fun week last week, I built some meaty bash plates for the axles. I know, they’ll catch on stuff all over but they look as mean as hell IMHO 
It was a bit of a trial an error job. I pretty much got the plates worked out right the first time, but the 3-screw mounting to the back of the axle was giving me that ‘please don’t put that kind strain on me’ puppy-eyes look, so I had to add a brace at the top.
Dad (bless him, I’d have never gotten anywhere with all this metal working without his tuition!) had the idea of bracing the plate again the top link mount, so impact stress was directed into the triangle of the top links and spread out between the top links, the mount and the chassis. It was a solution, and a good one, so i went with it. The first version used 10mm wide 1/16th plate strips with a bend at each end to screw against the bash plate and the top mount. This seemed to work well when I built it but…
While testing the truck for the first time with the plates on, it took a nose dive off a log and landed on it’s face. The bash plate worked great, nothing but the tyres and the plate hit the ground. The only problem was the bracing strip snapped clean off. after a bit of muttering expletives, I went back to the drawing board. I came up with the idea of using tie-rods anchored to the battery plate at the front and a small lump of 1/8th plate at the back. These weren’t 100% straightforward to do, however as I had to drill the tie-rod holes at a slope through the plates on the axles to get the angle to the bash plate right. I used M3 all-thread and 4mm allu tubing to make the rods and place a nyloc at each end and would em up. They seem to be a lot tougher and have stood up to me carrying the truck about by them. The combination of the rod and the sleeve tightened up against each other makes a very strong tension/compression system that makes them very stiff and resilient.
All-in-all they look nice and work well. I dunno how much use they will be for crawling though, as they could well get hung up easily. Oh well they make for nice eye candy at the very least 
Had some good clean fun with the new Wheely King tonight. I unwound after work by taking it on an initial shakedown test around the garden at home. We’re lucky enough to have a vast garden, driveway and mown paddock right by the house, so I had plenty of room to stretch it’s legs.
It glides real easy over rough bumpy ground, is perfectly at home on grass or gravel, and can climb over some really lumpy obstacles, even with no diff locks. I even managed to fight my way through a patch of grass that was taller than it was, without stopping! It takes the knocks and has a pretty goo lick of speed for something that’s primarily for off-road bashing out of the box.
As far as the rock crawler project goes, I’ve identified these important problems so far:
It grounds out in the middle on pointy obstacles. This could be cured with locked diffs, I feel, and maybe reducing the ground clearance in the middle to make is see-saw more over the pointy bits.
It stops when it lifts a wheel at both ends. Obvious really as it has unlocked diffs.
It leans to on side. I\m pretty sure this is caused by the mega soft suspension. I removed the collars from the springs, and the rear stabiliser bar from the lower links. This gives it insane axle articulation but also means the constant side ways torque from the mid-mounted motor tips it to the right. This won’t be an issue once it’s slowed for crawling hopefully.
It scared also the cat senseless 
Picture alert!
Well I got it today, was delivered to work at about 11pm. That wasn’t bad considering I ordered it 9am the previous day and paid nothing for the shipping!
Big thanks to: http://www.modelsport.co.uk/
It’s am impressive truck for the money (135GBP all in), very well designed and built, very neat electrics with a full ESC (electronic speed controller) that has a brake function for changing from forward to reverse (a neat trick I thought!).
My only reservations are the radio controller bundled with it is a wheel and trigger type and because I’m old fashioned I prefer the 2-stick type. I was delighted when I discovered that swapping the crystal into my Acoms 2-stick radio transmitter worked a charm, it works fine with HPI’s radio receiver and ESC.
Pictures to follow, along with more progress on the planned mods.
