BigGinge's EMB Truggy Build Thread

[BigGinge]

After finally getting my hands on my LC Racing EMB-TGHK truggy build kit I figured it might be nice to keep a build thread going to keep tabs on what I'm doing and any issues I have along the way.

 

The plan for this build is to put together a truggy build based on the EMB-TGHK kit but with some optional upgrades and EMB-MT parts thrown in as well to make it a little more suited for the off road bashing it is most likely to be seeing once up and running. The main parts I have to hand for this now are:

 

LC Racing EMB-TGHK build kit (with the older style body shell)

LC Racing L6061 Monster truck tyres/wheels

LC Racing L6158 Carbon fiber top deck

LC Racing L6060 monster truck bumper set

LC Racing L6212 hard suspension arm set

Hobbywing WP-16BL30 ESC

Surpass Hobby Platinum 3100kV 2845 brushless motor

Flysky FS-BS6 Rx

 

I still need to get some batteries sorted for this but should be able to use some packs I have for my XLF F16 buggy to get me started.

 

 

[Alex97]

These are nice little kits, have fun building it.

[turok007]

Have  you got a link  as might get one

[Stormbringer]

enjoy the build and keep us posted as you progress 

[BigGinge]

2 hours ago, turok007 said:

Have  you got a link  as might get one

https://www.dms-racing.com/models/models---all-types---off-road/off-road-models-all-wheel-drive/lc-racing-emb-tgh-1-14th-scale-4wd-truggy-unassembled-kit-detail
 

This is the kit that I got, there is a slightly more expensive one that comes with an esc, motor and one or two other upgrades but I think I managed to pick up these parts for less than the difference in price between the two kits. 

[BigGinge]

Anyway. I made it through a couple of the bags today. 
 

First up, in bag A (surprise!), was the diffs. Despite the relatively small size of these the first one went together reasonably smoothly in about five minutes. However, the second one had me questioning if I’d made a terrible mistake somewhere as it took me about 10 minutes just to get the pin into the out drive shaft that goes into the cup section of the diff housing. After that struggle I then managed to snap one of the notched pins used as an axel for one pair of satellite gears when putting the case together. Luckily I’d ordered a diff build kit to put in my box of spares, so had a replacement part to hand and managed to get it done up eventually. 
 

For the diff oils I’ve gone with the 5k front and 3k rear recommended for the truggy by Daren from DMS in another thread on here. Hopefully it will all stay in the diffs when I run them. 

[BigGinge]

Next up in bag B was the bits for the four shocks. These went together fairly

smoothly though my fingers weren’t too happy with me after trying to push the e-clips into place on the shafts (I moved onto using some small pliers after the 1st one).
 

I put  a bit of XHP 222 grease on the bushings and (red, silicone) o-rings that support the shock shafts and filled the front pair up with 500 cst oil and the back ones with 350 (suggested values taken from the other thread again). The only really tricky bit here was working out a way of gripping the shafts to stop them rotating when I was fitting the lower mounting eyes. In the end I used a bit of electrical tape to protect them from the big pair of pliers I was using to grip them and they seem to have come out without any scuffs or scratches. 
 

 

[BigGinge]

Guess who's just spent 10 minutes wondering why they can't get a ball cup onto the (left hand) threaded end of a turnbuckle. 🤦‍♂️

[Stormbringer]

I think weve all done something like that mate lol 

[BigGinge]

Made some pretty good progress on this today but did come up against a few issues (not all down to me trying to work on little bits while joining in some work meeting via teams and not paying enough attention)

 

1st up, in bag c, was the front suspension arms and diff housing. This is one of the places where I’ve got some upgraded parts to use as I’ve ordered a set of the hard plastic arms which are supposed to help stop the universal drive shafts from bending too easily. Turns out the hard plastic arms set are also a few mm longer than the standard ones which was a bit of a surprise. 
 

I’ve also added in the front bumper from the monster truck variant at this point which meant rummaging in my spare screw set to get some longer screws to replace a couple of parts from the kit. I think it was four 2.6 x 8 mm button head ones that I ended up needing to add to assemble the two parts of the bumper and fix it to the shock tower. 
 

I could have trimmed the body posts at this point but I decided to leave that until later so I could do it after a trial fit of the body. 

 

The only issue I had during building this bag was with the left handed thread on one end of the turnbuckles. This isn’t mentioned in the build instructions and I wasn’t paying enough attention to what I was doing so I did spend at least 10 minutes trying to thread one on the wrong way. It went on much easier once I’d taken the time to think about what I was actually doing. 

[BigGinge]

Bag D was the slipper clutch and rear suspension arms. 
 

For the slipper clutch build there was one deviation from the listed instructions as they called for a small bearing to be pressed into the centre of the spur gear but they had only included a small brass bushing with the kit for this bit. I can’t imagine it will make much difference to the performance but was a bit confusing while trying to track the listed parts down for that step. The other slight deviation I made on the slipper clutch build was to replace the spacer on the rear diff input shaft with a second bearing race to go with the one specified on the build instructions. This meant I’d had to buy an extra pack of bearings but this size is used all over the car (including on the wheel hubs) so I imagine the spares will

come in handy. The two bearings on the slipper clutch then sit very nicely into the rear diff housing without any play which was good. 
 

I had my second lapse in concentration for the day while putting the suspension arms onto the lower diff housing and somehow ended up with this. 
 

 

After fixing that I managed to get the rest built up without further issue. 
 

One thing I hadn’t realised is that the wing mounts are going to stop me properly fitting the rear monster truck bumper as they block the shock tower mounting holes that are used by its upper brace. For now I’ll just fit what I can and will try and work out a permanent solution later on. 

[BigGinge]

One thing I forgot to mention is that I went with the middle 1.2mm sway bar for both of the suspension arm assemblies. After fitting the shocks I’m not too sure that this is quite strong enough so I may try the thicker ones that came with the kit after the first few runs. 
 

Bag E was the servo mount and steering rack. There is a disappointing level of slop in the Ackerman (I think it’s called that) plate which I might look to improve at some point as generally the assemblies on the rest of the car are much tighter than this. Though I suspect it won’t make too much difference to things out in the dirt. 

[BigGinge]

Bag F was the last labels bag In the kit so was pretty busy. This is also the point where another upgrade comes in which is the carbon fibre top deck to replace the stock plastic item from my kit (I think this comes as standard in the pro version of the kit). 
 

 

The first few steps for this section went by easily but I started to have some issues when trying to mount the diff/suspension assemblies onto the base plate. These are slightly awkward to “snap” into place and have a few edges that hang up in places where it’s a bit tricky to work out if they are properly seated or not. It took a bit of trial and error to get these lined up properly. I also had some issues with the screws used to hold the down; the 2.6 x 10 mm screws are a very tight fit in the diff housing and I think I managed to round out the heads on six screws (they use a 1.5mm hex bit which feels a bit small for these ones)  edited I had all eight home and tight. After the first couple of rounded heads I started putting some grease in the screws to make them easier to install but still stripped some when doing this. Luckily most only rounded for the force of driving them in but one did get stuck coming out which ended up needing a set of pliers to remove. Very glad of my spare screw set again for this stage of the build. 
 

[BigGinge]

By the end of the night I’ve managed to get the servo and motor into the chassis but have noticed a slight issue with my electronics. The motor I have has come with 4mm plugs where I think my ESC is only using 3.5mm ones so I’m going to have to replace one set of those before I can fire it up. I also need to fit an XT60 to the battery side of the ESC and see about ordering some new, bigger batteries to specifically fit this car as the ones I have aren’t a brilliant match. 
 

 

I’ve also now mounted up the rear wing, put the monster truck wheels on, trimmed the body posts and trimmed the body shell slightly at the front so that it doesn’t get hung up on the upper supper for the monster truck bumper. 
 

 

It feel close to being ready now but there are still quite a few little things to sort before I can take it out, so it doesn’t look like it will be done this side of our holiday next week. Things still to do are:

 

Paint the shell

Set the toe, camber for the wheels 

Sort the mismatched connectors on the ESC and for the new XT60 for the battery 

Fix down the ESC and Rx

set the gear mesh properly and loctite all the motor screws. 
Find a way to fit the upper brace on the rear bumper. 

So far though I’m very happy with this; it has been mostly fun to build and the general quality of the car/kit is so much higher than my XLF F16 that I wish I’d just gone straight for one of these (even in RTR form) last year. 

[BigGinge]

I've just been round setting the camber and toe on the wheels and realised that I could have saved myself a bit of trouble with these being so far out if I'd taken account of the difference in length between the stock suspension arms and the up-rated hard plastic arm set. The lengths specified for all of the ball cup and turn buckle assemblies in the instruction manual should have been extended by a couple of mm because of the extra length in the arms I used.

[MrCake]

Looks like a nice build so far.  Would there be enough height clearance to put the receiver in some kind of waterproof box?

[BigGinge]

 

16 minutes ago, MrCake said:

Looks like a nice build so far.  Would there be enough height clearance to put the receiver in some kind of waterproof box?

The Rx is pretty well wedged in where it is now so, there isn’t much chance of fitting a receiver box there. However, there is still quite a bit of free space between the motor and servo, behind the battery pack and on the top deck so I think it should be possible to fit one in without too much trouble.

 

[MrCake]

Looks like a perfect fit and at least it lifts it up from getting any low down moisture from wet grass or something.

[BigGinge]

I managed to get some more time in this today and it’s getting closer to being finished now. 
 

 

The list of things that got done includes: soldering new 3.5mm bullet plugs onto the motor, fitting an XT60 plug to the ESC battery leads, mounting the ESC and power switch, putting thread lock onto the pinion’s grub screw and all the motor mounting screws, modifying the battery mount, setting up the ESC and transmitter and finally taking it on a very gentle 1st run to make sure it was all working together. 

 

I trimmed the battery holder mounts to remove one of the side tabs so that my new 34mm wide packs will fit; these were a few mm too wide for the in modified parts. 
 

 

I now have a slight issue in that the wide battery packs foul the central mounting screw for the plastic trim down the side of the chassis. As a temporary measure I’ve used some adhesive rubber strips to build up a guard around the screw. I think, longer term, I’ll need to put a design together for some new battery clips that I can 3D print to hold the battery securely at an angle to the base plate, to make sure it stays clear of this screw when getting properly shaken about. 
 

 

The two battery packs that I’ve picked up to try to start with are a 35C, 2900 mAh, 2C Overlander Supersport and a 35C, 2200 mAh, 3C Overlander Supersport. Neither will safely fit without the mod to the mount or doing something about that screw. 

 

So, I guess the last big thing to do now it to sort the paintwork out on the shell. Hopefully that will go better than my last one. 

Edited July 30, 2021 by BigGinge
Typos

[Stormbringer]

coming on nicely 

what ya got planned for shell ?

[BigGinge]

6 hours ago, Stormbringer said:

coming on nicely 

what ya got planned for shell ?

I think I might try something very much like the black and yellow job I did on the last shell. Might give the flat clear coat a miss this time round. 

[turok007]

Money has just been taken from bank & shop shows stock  so looks like mine will be on way soon.

[BigGinge]

14 minutes ago, turok007 said:

Money has just been taken from bank & shop shows stock  so looks like mine will be on way soon.

Do you have plans for two different builds now or will you just move the Italian one on once you have yours built up?

[turok007]

3 minutes ago, BigGinge said:

Do you have plans for two different builds now or will you just move the Italian one on once you have yours built up?

Don't have a clue yet  i was hoping to just run this for a while before the other showed up  then make a decision  but i do like the look of the SC body.

[BigGinge]

I’m rather taken by these now:

 

https://shop.lcracing.net/products/copy-of-l6239-1-14-emb-serires-buggy-body-pc-2020-br-br-font-size-2-font

 

I suspect it might scratch a rally car itch I’ve had since a friend got a Tamiya Subaru when I was a kid. Only slight issue (ignoring the price/availability) is they don’t fit onto the EMB chassis so it would end up needing a whole new PRG-2 build if I did get one. Still tempting though.