Well, after about two weeks I have finished my Type R build. This was the longest, toughest and ultimately most satisfying build I’ve ever done. Man, what a nice looking car – no batteries hanging off one side, counterbalanced by a motor hanging off the other side waiting to get rocked in a racing incident. Nice, sleek design.
With this car I was also making the transition to LiPo/Brushless and this is where the fun started. At the time of my car purchase I also bought a Tekin RS Pro/Redline combo and an Integy LiPo with bullet connections. When I do a build on a car that’s new to me I always do a trial build to get a feel for the overall car and identify areas I want to concentrate on in the final build. To my surprise when I bolted in the Redline motor there was almost zero room for gearing adjustment due to interference with the left rear inner pivot block; and of course the LiPo was a problem in the lay shaft area, battery tray and access to the bullet connections.
After about an hour work with a Dremel cutting wheel on the pivot block I was able to create enough clearance to enable enough adjustment to use up to a 42T pinion with the stock 128T spur. A bit of advice to anyone trying this is to be careful cutting as this is a fairly expensive piece. I would also advise purchasing another set of inner pivots and making adjustments on this set also with the idea of using one set for high roll center and one set for low roll center. The cutting will get into the threads and you probably don’t want to rely on these threads in the alternate configuration.
The next area was the lay shaft. I know everyone recommends the Flying Fox product, but this wasn’t an option for me. I put a washer between the pulley and shim on each end of the lay shaft then Dremeled out a slot in the A3327 drive hub to accommodate a shorter pin (part # A6406) such as used on the other pulley. The slot should be deep enough to offer a good fit for power transmission purposes and allow free rotation of the lay shaft. This now locks the lay shaft to the hub rather than the spur gear. I would advise putting the slot in the lined up position of the original pin. The next thing is to cut off some of the nub in the middle of the spur gear to allow it to be able to be fitted on the shaft. Only cut off enough to allow the C clip to be installed. Unless long term racing proves different, I think I’m going to like the mod.
The next area was to Dremel the sides of battery tray to fit the battery. Even after doing this I still need to loosen the top deck in order to install the battery. I think I’ll leave it this way for the time being since loosening the top deck is easy with the above deck steering layout and I plan to leave the battery in the car and not exchange batteries anyway. Finally I had to Dremel the top deck to allow access to the battery posts.
When I went to do my initial in car charge the charge leads would not extend down fully onto the battery posts due to interference with the top deck and I was concerned about a possible short circuit between the two posts. I didn’t want to Dremel out any more of the top deck in this area so I made an adapter by soldering a male bullet connector to the end of a female bullet barrel and applied heat shrink for protection.
Well, hopefully I’m ready for a shake down cruise next weekend!
My thoughts, hope this can help any other new comers.
One question for you old timers. In the Outdoor Rubber Setup sheet it mentions 2 O rings above the bladder in the shock setup. Any insight and O ring part numbers would be appreciated.