Project SLT-1 (60% completed)
August 30, 2005
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I don't have a good source of raw material for this project, so I make do with things I find around the house or things being sold off for cheap. This is a section of an aluminium frame for a sliding window. I cut it into 3 pieces here. The 2 smaller pieces will form the housing for the front axle of the car. |
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The donor for the front and rear diffs is a Smartech Mega 1/10 electric touring car. The axle ratio (3.09:1) and heavy metal gears made the Mega sluggish on the race track, but I am very glad for these "flaws" now that I'm putting the diffs into a crawler. |
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After bolting them to the gearbox, this is the side view of the axle. Both are cut from the L-shaped corners of the original. The smaller piece sits on top of the chunkier bottom one. The differentials and gearboxes for this project comes from the Smartech Mega 1/10 electric touring car. |
The back view. You can clearly see the ridges on the top piece of aluminium which helps keep it stiff, but I had to
cut slots into it, to bend it properly. These gaps will be filled in with my not-so-secret formula gap filler later
(super glue and talcum powder, if you haven't already guessed).
The front view of the axle. I was admiring my work here when I suddenly realised I could almost fit in 3 of
those 2/3 NiMh battery cells on each axle. However, since I had the dogbone shafts slanting down
to increase ground clearance, it doesn't allow enough space for the cells. Also, the C-hub that held the steering
knuckles got in the way a little (C-hubs, dogbones and steering knuckles are from a Smartech 1/10 nitro buggy.
My LHS sells them dirt cheap and has a lifetime supply hanging on their wall).
As far as I know, nobody has ever had battery cells stored inside an axle before, so I really wanted to run this
setup. One option would be to forgo the ground clearance and have the dogbones poking straight out of the diff cups
but this meant I either needed to bend the bottom plate upwards (which I definitely didn't want to do) or build
my own parts to hold the knuckles in place. Here you can see my experiment with a piece of plastic I carved out of
a kitchen cutting board.
Sept 16, 2005:
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I got some universals shafts that got rid of my steering binding problem but they widened the stance of the truck a little, so I had to make a new axle. I finally decided on a battery setup. This is the top view of the new axle with 3 of the battery cells in place (the top half of the axle casing is removed to show its innards). |
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Front view of the front axle. The driveshafts still slope down to give me my extra ground clearance, but they fit neatly into the little space between the 2 parallel battery cells. Sweet! |
October 1, 2005:
The new front axle, all done except for battery mounts and link mounts. Here's the front view.
Top view. The servo mounts are kitchen cutting board. Looks like I forgot to add a couple more screws
to hold them down.
Rear view.
Bottom view.
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Side view. |
Oct 27, 2005:
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Finally built the center tranny. Here's the view from the top. |
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And from the rear (of the truck). The tranny is made of pinions, a spur, diff plates/output cups (clamped really tight around the spur), some bearings and some dowel pins. The front and rear see-through plates are acrylic signboard material while the two white chunks by the side are carved out of a kitchen cutting board. |
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1/8" dowel pins are actually a bit bigger than 1/8", so I had to turn their diameters down a little by doing this. |
