tech question…..im currently awaiting delivery of an hpi mini trophy truck …. my intent is to build a 4wi suspention rock crawler/trail rig i have misc. parts from an axial scx10 i bought used and beat more than sunk money into ..but anywho i want to use either the whole locked diff or the locker block in it in the rear only diff on the hpi would you know if it will fit? i want to run a vxl3s esc to the brushed motor statistically the vxl claims it will run a brushed motor my question is will it burn up the brushes faster than stock esc in the trophy truck?
Tim H. (via Facebook)
Cubby- Yo hey Tim, what’s up and thanks for the questions. How about last one first. Will a Traxxas VXL-3S speed controller burn up brushes faster than the stock HPI Mini Trophy Truck speedo? Yes, there might be a slight difference in brush wear between the two speedos, but I’ve never personally performed such tests, so I can’t say first hand if there truly is or not. If there was a difference I’d guess it would be very, very small. However, I will say this, if you are truly concerned about brush wear- take the extra hour and properly water dip (read seat/break-in) the brushes. Properly seated brushes yield much longer motor life, that I can assure you from first hand testing. And… if you ask a dozen people the proper way to seat brushes you’ll probably get a dozen different answers. My personal “standard method” (which came from Jammin’ Jim S) is dipping the motor in water while applying a low voltage load until you notice the color of the water starting to change. This can take anywhere between 10-45 minutes depending on the motor and voltage used.
Now, about your first question. If I read it properly, it sounds like you are making one heck of a unique trail truck. It sounds like you are making a trail/scaler machine (with a locked rear diff) out of an HPI Mini Trophy Truck. Good for you, unique projects are great fun. Will the locked rear diff parts from an Axial SCX10 fit in the Mini-Trophy truck? I have absolutely zero clue, nor am I going to tear two trucks apart to find out. You have both trucks in hand (or will soon), give it a try and let us know. If they aren’t compatible there is always the old standby of JB Weld to lock that rear diff solid as a rock. Good luck, and shoot us pics/vid of that beast when you are done.
I am pretty sure someone has emailed about SMC Lipos, but if not, I am. I have owned a few SMC 2s packs and just ordered some more and I have had really good luck. I have also followed the SMC Lipo Battery Lipo thread on rctech.net and there are a lot of good things being said about them. The reason I am sending this email is because I think they sell and produce a better battery than the gensace 5800 that won the lipo shootout. Their batteries are also less expensive. Now before you jump to conclusions, I have owned many gensace lipos and I really do like them, I just think these smc lipos have an edge. Anyway’s, it would be nice to see SMC lipos in your next lipo shootout. Also, if there isn’t a shootout planned in the near future, I think posting a link about these batteries would be helpful to the bashing community. Good batteries at a cheap price are hard to find sometimes.
P.S. – I really do enjoy your site!
DMW
Cubby- Yo hey DMW, shoot Brian your snail mail for a free BSRC sticker pack. Hopefully you are as good of a spokesman for BSRC as you are for SMC Batteries. We haven’t reviewed any SMC batteries for a while so I have no clue if they are any good now days or not. I don’t know if we’ve contacted them lately, but I’ll put Brian and Kevin (our new ad rep guy) on it to see if they are up for a solid third party review. If they are truly after a piece of the enormous basher market maybe they’ll hook up with us and advertise. Btw… we do have a couple of Lipo reviews coming up in the very near future, two packs from A Main Hobbies/ProTek. We started the review process a couple of weeks ago, maybe one of the reviews will be ready in the next week or so. Not to spill any beans, but what we’ve learned about their packs should make for some interesting reading for you guys. Lastly on the Lipo topic- I have been awfully impressed with the last Pro-Match Lipo we reviewed. No, it doesn’t put out the most voltage we’ve ever seen on the West Mountain, however it has done something I consider to be more impressive- it has put up with crazy amounts of abuse (for over a hundred cycles) and still puts out solid numbers while always stayed well balanced. The pack I’m talking about is their 2S 5000 mah pack that we’ve used for numerous truck and charger reviews. We’ve subjected that pack to multiple runs at 60 amps on the West Mountain, we’ve charged it at 20 amps (multiple times in a row with no cool down period), and run it in high draw 8th scalers, yet today, after over 100 cycles, it performs like a champ. That is truly the most impressive thing a Lipo can do in my eyes- to withstand hard use and still last.
That’s it for this week ya freaks, shoot me your questions or whatever else in on your mind to Cubby at BigSquidRC.com. If your letter makes the front page you get free stickers, if I proclaim yours as “letter of the month” you’ll win a free t-shirt. Btw, I try to do the “letter of the month” in the first ASK Cubby of the month, so next week I’ll be picking a shirt winner, get those questions in!
YOUR Cub Reporter
