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My very first 1/10 short course truck. Tips and advice needed please!


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So as the title says I have just purchased my very first 1/10 scale short course truck. It's a Traxxas slash 2wd. As this is the first large scale rc I have owned (I am Mini z and losi micros owner) I would like to know what's the best way to get the best out of this truck. At the moment I am not interested in upgrading to a brushless system or anything like that. This will be a purely bashing truck, mainly on dirt, gravel, sand and occasionally on tarmac. 

So my main questions are...

 

1. Will the stock electrics (esc,servo,motor) on my slash handle a 2s lipo?

 

2. Will I need to add protection for the servo? (as you know its sticking out under the chassis which to me looks dodgy!)

 

3. Do I need to buy new bearings or are the stock ones any good?

 

4. Which tyres, shocks/springs will give best traction?

 

5. What can I do to make the bodyshell last longer?

 

I am aware these are pretty noob questions but what can I say... I am a noob!

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Personally, for what you pay for a brushless system (cheap one) I'd go with upgrading to brushless to run 2s, it will be so much faster and run times will be longer.

Also, have you actually give it a run? Unless you're racing, I wouldn't really worry too much about spring set-ups and such either, I mean their is things you can do to help with traction, but unless you've run it and found a particular problem, it's very hard for people to suggest ways of improving it.

As for the shell, you can use dry wall tape and shoe goo which will add a little bit of weight (another good reason to go BL) but gives a fair bit of protection.

Some others use duct tape and Gorilla tape, I've used duct tape before and personally just prefer the dry wall tape and shoe goo method.

However, Gorilla tape is meant to be very good as well, but having not used it, can't really comment.

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Welcome 'noob' ;)

The electrics are 2s lipo compatible, if your ESC is the latest version, it will have lvd built in.

Servo will be fine, unless you intend on driving over mahoosive rocks, logs, small trees/wildlife

Stock bearings are ok, always worth carrying spares, see RCBearings.co.uk for ALL bearing needs

Stock tyres are ok for gravel/tarmac, very little grip on grass. Have a read through owners threads to see what is generally used/recommended, same for springs

Driving everywhere like an OAP on Sunday, is the best way of preserving the shell, and a sure fire way to bring on boredom. Use some gaffa tape to reinforce the wheel arches, and essentially all of the rear end of the shell, as this is most prone to crash/flip/roll damage.

Hth

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Hi flash, good choice of truck. I have a 2wd slash and it was brushed when I got it and I ran it on 2s lipo with no problems before switching to brushless! I've had no problems with my servo being hit by anything so wouldn't worry about it. The stock bearings were ok for a while but the rubber seal soon came off allowing dirt in so replaced them but defiantly got my money's worth out of the stock ones first. As for shocks everyone says buy powerstrokes but I couldn't afford them so I went with traxxas big bores but they didn't make much difference so was gutted, I have now put the traxxas lcg chassis on it and it's amazing! With the big bores on the truck is very stable(havent rolled it since fitting the lcg) and instead of under steering really bad like before it digs into turns now and kicks the rear end round nicely. I'm still running stock tyres on mine and they are good enough for bashing.

Have fun and think about the lcg chassis! It's the best thing I've done to my slash.

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Thanks for the advice guys. I haven't managed to take it out for a run yet due to bad weather. I live in the south of france and its not supposed to be this wet! I guess a brushless system will be on the shopping list sometime in the future but I want to get a feel for this size rc before I start increasing the speeds! All the videos I have seen and reviews I have read have all said that stock tyres are rubbish and the suspension is too loose. So I just wanted to get a few opinions from people who have run this truck for a while. No doubt I need to get a feel for it myself and go from there.

 

Here's hoping for some good weather this week and a good maiden bashing session!

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We all have our favorite parts etc, at the end of the day, the slash is a very durable basher that will bring plenty of smiles per mile. Replace with upgrades as things break, although running on lipo will be a much better bashing experience than using NiMH packs ;)

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I have had a few slash's, just sold one :crybaby: . My first one was like yours, brushed motor , all stock, nimh battery. Didnt take long before the need for speed took over.
 I would say just run it like it is, have some fun until you either break something or you get board of 15mph.
The shocks are fine for bashing about and dont bother with any bling aluminium bits RPM plastics and the Anza hardware are great.
 

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Ok so I managed to get out for a good run and already I have the need for more speed! But anyway I will get to that later when I can afford it! This is my first rc which I am running lipo batteries in and I have a few issues/questions. The pack I have is a hard case zippy 5000mah 2s 30c and I have a imax b6ac charger. So I will run through what I did since I got it and hopefully you guys can tell me if what im doing is right or not!?

 

1. Bought 2nd hand slash with lipo and when it arrived I connected the battery to see if it had any juice. it did and took it for a 5-10 min run to check it was all working.

2. took battery out and put it on charge. set up imax with 7.4v 2s 5.0a to charge. When it started charging the amp rating stayed up around 4.7 - 5.0 and was charging ok I think. Like I said this is my first lipo experience so I was constantly going to check on it (don't want no fire!) and every time I went back to check on it the amp rate had dropped until after a good hour or so it was at 0.1a. Is this normal? After two hours the charger told me that the battery was full but there was only 1890mah on the display. I guessed that there must have been a half charge already on the battery.

3. With this newly charged battery went out for a run and got nearly 15-20 mins before I noticed a drop in power and stopped the run. the ldv light was blinking on the esc so I disconnected and let everything cool down.

4. Repeated the charging set up and had pretty much the same experience. Charge started quick and then slowed down and was told it is full again after 2 hours at around 2000mah.

 

I haven't been able to take the truck out again yet (crying baby + angry girlfriend = no rc!) to see how long this charge lasts but I am hoping maybe i can get out for a late evening run and see how long it will go for. But does this sound ok? Do I have a bad battery or bad charger? 

 

Oh yeah forgot to mention that the test run was on tarmac and a little bit on some very short grass 

Edited by flashdaniels
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You have set the charger correctly, and it is performing right, in as much as it races off at first, then slows the charge rate down as it nears capacity. The mah display is showing what has been added to the pack, that charge.

Now, if there is an imbalance in the cells, then this can prolong the charge time as the charger sits trying to balance up...this can be an indication that a pack is poorly, if this process becomes frequent, and significantly increases overall charge time. Bear in mind that this balancing process is conducted via the balance lead, not the main battery lead, so the charger is dealing in very small current amounts.

I am not educated as to the display views/options available on the iMac, but would think there is an option to view the cells individually as they charge, so you can monitor what they're mdoing

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Well I thought that might be the case with the charging process but I just wasn't sure as this is my first time charging. I just managed to get a quick run in before it gets dark and I had a good 25 minutes, running full throttle most of the time and also this time on a some pretty rough terrain (almost too rough really) and finishing off on tarmac. Is this about right for a 5000mah battery?

When I press one of the option buttons when charging I get a display with the 2 cells and it says 4.20v each so I guess they are balanced right?

Edited by flashdaniels
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For that style of driving, I'd say so ;) Try not to keep your finger planted on the throttle, 10sec max, that way, the 'punch' of the lipo is always on tap (not to mention less heat generation)

4.2v is what you want to see, charger is doing what it's meant to :)

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ok so I guess that my charger is behaving the way it should do. It takes me nearly 4hrs to get a full charge on my battery, does this sound about right? I put the battery on charge and after 2hrs my charger stops for time limit. The battery was at around 2000mah then I left it off for twenty minutes and started charging again and added another 260mah (another hour and half) before it said lipo full. Does all this sound normal? It seems like a long time to charge to me.

 

Next item on the agenda for me is more speed! I am enjoying my truck as stock for the moment but can't help but feel a bit more speed would be even better! Which brushless system is good for this truck? I don't want anything mentally fast and uncontrollable but a system which is reliable and quicker than what I have right now. I have been looking at a few options but don't know which kv setting and amp rates are best for my truck. I plan on keeping it on 2s lipos.   

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OK so I got a new problem... 

I took my truck out today for a bash at lunchtime and all was going well until one of my shocks came apart. This obviously stopped my run but was an easy fix so was ok. I had gone through about half my battery pack on this run so I recharged it and took it out for another bash this evening. As I was driving out of my driveway I lost power to the motor. There is still power going to the servo and the esc but nothing going to motor. This happened after a minute or two into my drive which confuses me as it just stopped rolling over smooth tarmac. I changed batteries in my transmitter, I disconnected and then reconnected the battery pack but still no joy.

Any ideas what this could be? When my shock came apart I was going over some rough stuff and thought maybe I shook something loose? I haven't had time to get the motor off and have a look at it or the transmission but like I said it ran for two minutes and then just stopped.

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Check all connections basically. The stock titan motors have a reputation for early expiration, bearing in mind your example is second hand.....

They aren't rebuidable either, so, buy an identical replacement....or bite the bullet and go brushless ;)

Re your charger BTW, it does seem to take longer than I would expect to charge your packs...unable to offer a solution tho :(

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The first thing I did was check all the connections and they all look good to me. It really does seem like it just the motor has given up. It can't have had that much run time on it because even though I bought it second hand the guy I bought it from said he had hardly used it and when it arrived it looked practically new (hardly any scratches on chassis, no tyre wear and all very clean) but I guess you can never really know.

Well I guess this upgrade has been forced upon me earlier than expected. What sort of brushless systems are well suited to this truck? Do I need to buy a waterproof system? I want it to go fast but not insanely fast that I can't control it!

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Going WP is a personal choice, depends on how much muck you fancy bashing in ;)

2s will be plenty for getting to grips with bl, I ran a 2wd slash for a while, good fun without being insanely fast and hard to control. Practice always needed when trying something new (as my first truggy experience showed me, yesterday, lol)

I ran a hobbywing SCT set up, around 3000kv iirc, was a long time ago though...

I suggest looking through 2wd owners threads and seeing what others run. Just avoid the finned, blue, ezrun cans as they're not true 540 and will struggle a little.

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So I have got my brushless ordered. I have gone for the sidewinder sct system. So now I have to wait for that to come what do I do with my lipo battery? Do I need to discharge it to a storage level? what numbers should I be looking at do that?

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  • 4 weeks later...

Ok so I have been running my truck for a bit now. Got me a new brushless system and all that and it's a lot of fun. Although I am having trouble with one of my shocks, if I miss a landing or hit a landing hard my shock comes apart. Its the same back left shock everytime. It doesn't take much effort to put it back together but I feel like I am doing something wrong because it keeps on popping off. I think it is the small eyelet thing on the bottom of the piston which is the problem. Are they supposed to be glued on? I have just been pushing it back on for the moment but it is starting to come off more often and getting really annoying!

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Great truck, I got the ford f150 version, my rear right shock came apart but just once so far. Best upgrade was the LCG chassis, then I went brush less, got it on 3s with a basic esc motor combo, u fitted the castle sct system yet? Plan on getting 1, on 2s its good off road, if on road / grip available then 3s is crazy lol

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