unversal drive shafts

[3series takumi]

i hope everyone understands that stuff. i would take a picture of my actual work but i cant find my good camera. the digi cam i have near me sux at taking macro shots

[cdog4w]

Yea, its really tough taking shots of small parts.

So what did you do with the rear or did you just install the universals up front only? If you did it in the back too, I assume you had to buy 2 AWD kits to get enough parts?

I think once I get the replacement bearing I'm going to try to tweak my modded axles and see if I can make them work. This time, testing will occur in the kitchen! I might have to fish under the fridge (ew), but at least it won't lose anything this time. By that time I should also have the OL tires which should be hot. I ordered some GPM's with my last tiny order, but I was a tard and didn't notice that it was only a set of 2 tires as opposed to a full set of 4.

Oh well, I finally convinced my friend to get a mini-x and I just added those bearings and OL tires to his order (woo, save on shipping) . Actually, all it really took was giving him the Tx for 5 min outside :P

[sawhit4]

hey cdog4w, what do you have to do to the ol wheels for them to fit? that sounds cool. does the mini z use an axle with a pin like the mini x?

i got one question that has nothing to do about this but i dont know where to put it. ok here it is. can i solder two wires to the battery pack so i can charge it without taking the battery out or would that run electricity through the esc and receiver? and if i cant do this then can someone tell me a way to make it easier to get the batteries out?

[cdog4w]

I got the GPM mud tires:
http://mini-zracer.com/shop/product.php?pid=562
(tho i got the last 50 degree pair apparently

I dunno anything about the mini-z axle, but the tires fit on the mini-x rim. The only real issue is that the OL tires have a hollow space so that only 2 small edges touch the edges of the rim. I haven't run on it but I would guess the tires could slip off due to low surface area contact to hold them on. What I plan on doing is finding some kind of foam tape or something and cut it to the width of the gap on the inside of the OL tire and just tape it to the center of the mini-x rim to hold the tires on.

As for your second question, if you have the stock 5 cell pack, then it has no wires at all and the ESC has leads with battery springs attached that you slip in to the spring holders on the battery case to connect to the batteries. What I do when I'm not using it is pop the red battery spring out to disconnect the circuit. For charging, I still have to pull the batteries out, but I plan on putting a deans connector on the pack at some point. Anyway, you should be able to solder leads onto the pack, but you'd either have to solder them so you can still use the springs from the ESC leads or replace the ESC lead springs with something that will attach to the leads from the battery pack (ie. a deans plug). I haven't done it yet since one of the ESC leads is short and I'm not confident enough to solder on the PCB to add a longer lead to the ESC.

Sorry, lots of rambling but hopefully you can get enough info out of it :P

P.S. yea, the OL tires LOOK hot, and I'm guessing will RUN even better. Especially since I run on craptastic asphalt. Mmmm soft springs + OL tires...

[cdog4w]

heh, forgot I had a picture of the tire :P VNC'ing to home to submit this. PS over VNC = fun!

Left to right...
1. Stock mini-x rim/tire
2. xmod rim/tire from kits
3. xmod rim/GPM OL tire

The tire laying down on the left is also a GPM OL tire, so maybe you can see what I mean about the tire being hollow.

[sawhit4]

yeah i get what your saying. how do you plan to get those tires on? wont they rub on the chassis? or have you done some mods to solve this?

[cdog4w]

They don't rub up front, but they do in back. I'll either get out the dremel or those hobby files in the back. I do need to make sure they don't rub at full turn in the front, but I don't think they do.

[dgilpin]

A Dremel is the Mini-x's best friend!

[3series takumi]

amen to that!