crazydave's Mini-T Log

[crazydave]

I don't know, the name Team Losi don't carry much weight with me lately.

You're half8 acting up you? I thought those were tough cars.

[ph2t]

oh, it's going well..... But it's bit of a prick to maintain in parts. Mind you it's nowhere near the headache my RC18T was....

[viperdout]

Yeah, I gather it's a lot easier for you to get the Kyosho parts since they are on the same side of the world.

I upgraded the wires on a friend's 18B and found it made a HUGE difference, so no surprise there. I'd suggest a Reedy mini-max motor for some real punch. I had one in my 18T and it rocked (USATorque has my old 18T now, and I think he's still running it). Have fun with it, and keep the pink body for racing. When you're racing other people, pink stands out a lot on the track.

[crazydave]

A little update, nothing major, just a few small parts to get things running right.

Replaced the antenna tube with one from Racer's Edge. A good tube really makes a difference, I can drive under my couch now, and it comes right back up.

I replaced the pinion and spur, to solve my clicky problem. The new spur also helped the slipper, since the old one got notchy from being overtightened from the factory.

The pinion is a hardened aluminum one from Robison Racing. When I took off the old pinion, I immediately realized where my mystery clicks were coming from. The plastic pinion was on a splined motor shaft. When the motor got hot, the pinion would slip, I get it now.

So I had to cut off the splined part to get the new pinion on. While I was at it, I grinded a flat side for the grubn screw to grab on to.



Since the motor shaft was too short to put the grub screw on the outside like most people would, I had the pinion turned with it towards the motor. This caused the pinion to stick up past the spur, and the grub screw to smack againstthe spur. So I had to remove about a 1mm from the bottom of the pinion. Gotta tell ya, this hardened aluminum stuff is hella tough.


So here it is all mounted, and its all good now.


When I ran it, everything was nice and smooth. It was so nice to hear the "wheeeeeeeeeet" of the motor, and nothing else.
I'm really happy with the speed for running indoors too. That kinda surprises me because I read a lot of reviews complaining about out of the box speed... they must've been using the 4 AAs.



Might as well update you on the MLST while I'm at it. I replaced the center driveshaft, drive cups, and body mounts. When I went too install the driveshafts, I discovered several issues. The front supspension was sticking severely, probably why my front center driveshaft went out first, weight tranferance. So I polished the hinge pins, and the supsension is super smooth now.

Then when I took the front diff case apart, I found it full of gear dust. The gears were worn to a point, and probably were right about to go. When I installed a new gear that Losi had sent me, I found it to be out of round. With it installed, it would get about halfway around and bind. So I went through a couple gears and found the smoothest one.

Then I discovered the driveshaft going to the right front wheel somehow got severly bent, which chewed up the end, and the drive cup. Which also filled my bearings with metal shavings, and I wasted almost a whole can of motor spray getting them to spin freely again. So I ordered these Integy UV shafts.


They were only $11 bucks vs $9 for stock replacements, so I figured WTH. I'm really satified. They're hardened steel. Machined rather than stamped like the stock ones, and a lot thicker. There is virtually zero slop, so I think this will make my steering more precise too.

While I was at it I remembered I still needed to replace the bent wheel pins. Had to order a new set of wheel hexes to get those, and the new hexes were sloppy, had to stick with the ones Losi sent me.

I getting ready to drive it. I'm hoping that for the first time since I've owned it, it will be issue free. (fingers crossed)