m4inbrain's reasonably priced RMX 2.5

[m4inbrain]

 

Can't forget the £12 fee for doing absolutely nothing. All in all, still cheaper than ordering these parts in the UK (if you can find stock, that is). 

 

If everything goes well, i should have it by tomorrow. Syke, haha, as if. Probably gonna be next week thursday.

[m4inbrain]

Well, i was wrong - look at what the cat dragged in. 

 

The servo:

 

 

Feels weighty, can't comment on performance because obviously, haven't built anything yet.

 

Gyro:

 

 

Same thing, but i will say it's kinda fun to have japanese text on your stuff. Makes it immediately feel more "dedicated", if that makes sense. Had the same thing with my Soft99 car-detailing products - also all japanese, a sticker with the english instructions added by the importer/distributor or something. At the very least, feels "JDM", which is what drifting is mostly about anyway lol.

 

Last, but not least:

 

 

 

Not much to it - but everything included. Grease, shock oil etc. Haven't gone further, no bags opened yet (only looked into the manual) - but seems quality so far. Lots of plastic of course (it's the S variant, the RS has lots of carbon fibre, and aftermarket is all alloy parts), but no obvious flaws in the moulds etc. Manual seems detailed enough, one thing i like is that for every step there's a separate "required items" window on the side, which is 1-1 sized. So if there's a question about screw size, you just check it against that window. 

 

 

Feel like every kit should do that.

 

Now i just need to find some spare time to get stuck in it, looking so much forward to it. Earbuds in, AC/DC and then just losing a few hours. Weeee!

[Stormbringer]

Woohoo it arrived this Thursday and not 2 weeks away , glad its turned up mate 

[m4inbrain]

So, started the build with this:

 

 

.. and ended up here:

 

 

Sadly, that's already it. I'm missing a part, and i must say that it royally peeved me off. If you look at the advertising for the kit, it clearly says that you have two options of mounting your motor/hardware - one LCG, one HCG option. If you go here:

 

https://www.rc-mst.com/product_car_info.php?class_sn=1&class_sn2=154&sn=3688

 

It says in multiple places that "two install methods of motor mount - upper or lower gravity deployment", and then there's this:

 

 

Well. It turns out, this is misleading at the very best, if not a bit scummy. While they say that you need extra parts to convert the RMX to an RRX (those abbreviations mean basically rear-mid-x and rear-rear-x, refers to whether or not the motor mounts in front or behind the front axle) - they very much omit that fact for the advertised two motor mount positions. If you, like me, choose to mount the motor in the HCG position (to help with weight transfer in transitions), then you need to mount the servo laterally as opposed to vertically (servo horn pointing to the side of the RC, rather than the front). Turns out that the turnbuckle you need to reach the steering in that position isn't included. 

 

So, that's where i'm at. Built the lower suspension arms, and the steering assembly with upper front arms, (not in the pictures), but can't mount it because i gotta wait on a 58mm toothpick, can't really fit it afterwards without taking everything apart again. Grmbl. 

 

Also ordered a few more things including a camber/ride height gauge (should've bought one years ago, really), turnbuckle wrenches, a battery, new pinion (slightly taller gearing), new receiver, and a few more little bits and bobs. Currently trying to look into LED sets, would like one with working brake lights/reverse light, but i got zero idea here. Certainly not urgent, urgent would be making it work. I'll also pick up the motor finally tomorrow, so that'll probably brighten the mood again a bit. Bit of a boner kill, meh. 😞

 

Edited April 14, 2023 by m4inbrain

[m4inbrain]

There we go, got me motor today.

 

 

Soldering is a bit.. questionable, also the wires are too thick, so i'll be cleaning that up with 14awg wire (same as the ESC). 

 

But, the puzzle is now complete - got all parts apart from that stupid turnbuckle, so once that arrives i can go straight from a few buckets of parts to "omg why isn't this working properly". Yay. 😄

[Lone-wolf]

Im jealous you got a motor...............i ordered one from ebay and seller ended up just refunding me before it was due, now i have to see about ordering from another place and waiting for it to arrive

[m4inbrain]

7 minutes ago, Lone-wolf said:

Im jealous you got a motor...............i ordered one from ebay and seller ended up just refunding me before it was due, now i have to see about ordering from another place and waiting for it to arrive

 

Picked it up local, so got lucky on that front. Saved a good chunk of money too. Waiting for parts always sucks tho. 😞

[m4inbrain]

There we go, after waiting for the turnbuckle (more on that later), i finally got some more done. Starting with: 

 

more turnbuckles. 

 

 

I just absolutely hate setting turnbuckles. Especially plastic ones. Kind of important to get it right though, these were the steering linkages. Next was:

 

 

You guessed it - more turnbuckling! With the added bonus of me ordering the wrong turnbuckle. I needed 3x68mm, and somehow ebay translated that into 3x76mm without me noticing. But cranked all the way down, it reasonably fits. I don't have any adjustment left though, so at that point i was just crossing my fingers.

 

 

Steering assembly with upper suspension arms ready to receive my botch job. Of course, before i install everything, i need to centre the servo:

 

 

Yeah. Of course i'm going to use an 8s ESC to centre the servo. Mainly because my XT60 connectors haven't arrived yet (tomorrow) - so i can't solder the XR10 ESC just yet. To get on with the build, i had to connect what i had - in this case, well.. yeah. Looked funny though. 

 

Next was the differential, and i thought to myself "oh, that's a generous amount of black and ball grease - but..

 

 

Still more than enough though, so no complaints. Just thought it's funny how misleading those tubs are. 

 

Now, the (to this point) most annoying part of the build so far. Assembling the rear differential. I've built a few diffs so far, but never one that i had to assemble the thrust bearing myself. Turns out that sausage fingers + 0.3mm steel balls = infuriating. But, here's the result. 

 

 

That one was easy, but this one:

 

 

Boy. It'd been reasonably easy if there was a groove or anything to hold everything in place, but nah. It's just two tiny washers, and you gotta stack eight micro-balls in there - and not with the good ball diff grease (sticky), but the ugh black grease (sticky, but also liquid-y). That one i really didn't enjoy and almost made me flip the table.

 

Let me start another post, don't know if there's limits i'm approaching here.

[m4inbrain]

So, here's the result then.

 

 

Not noticeable in this picture, but the rear end clip is the wrong way around, caught it before installing though.

 

 

New home, was pretty straight forward except the block that holds the two idlers was the wrong way around as well, leading to me not being able to close the gearbox properly (1mm gap). Was an easy fix also, though. Not going to pretend it all went together smoothly so far - but i will say that everything that didn't go together smoothly was me being a monkey, not the kits fault (clips backwards etc). 

 

 

Gearbox together with the stiffening bars (this is also where the gyro is going to mount, on top) - i will say, assembling a plastic gearbox with mostly plastic internals is considerably easier, and cleaner than a full metal box. I did enjoy this part of the build, despite it being fiddly. 

 

 

Motor mounted - pinion hasn't arrived yet (also tomorrow), but the motor gots to come off again anyway, those huge blobs of solder offend me. Ordered a desolder pump as well as solder wick just for that, lol. I'm also not quite sure if i keep the motor clocked like that, because from the motor to the ESC is barely two inches. Not enough space to mount motor bullets (unless i directly solder the ESC to the motor, which i don't want to do), so i will have to figure out some routing. 

 

 

All offered up now, almost starting to look like an RC. Reasonably, ish. Here's why i'm not sure where the motor is going to be clocked: 

 

 

That's a mock-up for the ESC position. It's so close to the motor, again, no possible way to directly go from motor to ESC and install bullets at the same time. I of course also want it to be tidy though, so i'll be doing some thinking man tomorrow, once everything is completed and mocked up.

 

That's where i stopped today, kinda savouring the build a bit - it goes nicely together, and building a kit is somewhat rare for me (at least nowhere near as often as i'd like to build one). Tomorrow is soldering day, motor bullets, ESC bullets and connector, cleaning up the solder on the motor etc. Maybe i'll do a little more on the chassis itself depending on whether or not i can contain myself. 

 

Also started to think about setting it up (camber, toe in etc) - turns out that the guy who let me drive his blinged out RMX 2.0 also has a Hudy setup-station, because of course he does. So that's £200 saved for me lol, he already told me that he's going to bring it to the next meet. I did order a camber/ride height gauge to set the rig up, but if i get the option to use some stupendously expensive toy to do the setup, then absolutely i will.

Edited April 18, 2023 by m4inbrain

[Lone-wolf]

making good progress now coming on well nice to see attention to detail rather than lobbing it all together, question how are you able to space images out with text between?

[m4inbrain]

48 minutes ago, Lone-wolf said:

making good progress now coming on well nice to see attention to detail rather than lobbing it all together, question how are you able to space images out with text between?

 

Yeah, making good/smooth progress - and i'm taking it deliberately slow, to the point where i shave the plastic parts with a craft knife where they were attached to the plastic grid thing. No need to rush, needs to be done by the 28th, not sooner - might as well do it right, have a few brews with it, listen to music and shoo the cats away every three minutes. 

 

Not sure what you mean about the pictures - they're imgur URLs (to save MSUK the traffic of loading the pictures), so i just paste the URL, press enter twice, then text - then enter twice again, next picture/URL. If i understand correctly, the "pressing enter twice" is what does the spacing.

[m4inbrain]

Well, did a little bit more. Build is slowly coming to an end, so both excitement and sadness are creeping in. 

 

First, cleaned up the motor a little bit. From this:

 

 

To this. 

 

 

Not perfect, but better. It's good enough for the girls i'm dating, so i'll leave that part alone now. On the other hand..

 

 

Not happy with my heat shrinking job. It turns out that when you heat heat shrink, it, well, shrinks. Something that you should take into account when measuring/aligning it. Because if you don't, then it's looking like this:

 

 

The ESC isn't stuck down in that picture, it is now. Not happy with the heat shrinking there (i wanted some longer runs on the cable so i don't cut the ESC wires all the way to stubs). I'll remove that heat shrinking, instead of two parts i'll just use one long shrink, no point in being able to readily disconnect the motor anyway. Sadly, my battery connectors haven't arrived yet (thursday, sigh), so while the ESC is now gorilla taped in the correct position (as is the gyro), i can't really do any power wiring just yet. Also not 100% certain where to put the receiver yet, i'll figure that out tomorrow. 

 

For now, that's how the thing sits:

 

 

Tomorrow then will be shocks, as well as figuring out the rest of the electronics - maybe mocking up the body as well. Depends on how well my thumbs recover from them stupid pillow balls, really need a tool for that. The rear arm sits so weird because there's a cable stuck underneath so it's not drooping properly, only noticed afterwards. Receiver needs connected to everything, and the cables routed decently - and i gotta figure a spot for the capacitor as well, probably just going to zip tie it somewhere underneath something out of the way. I do have a battery now (was tempted to just use bullets to connect to the battery, but knowing myself, i will eventually get it wrong and short it out), but as mentioned, connectors still missing. 

 

To this point, no stripped screw/threads, no major issues with the manual (a few typos, like dmaper instead of damper, that's it), everything fits nicely. For a 95% plastic build, this is pretty good to assemble. Pinion sadly hasn't arrived yet either, that's why the motor looks so disconnected there. 

 

So far, so good.

Edited April 19, 2023 by m4inbrain

[Lone-wolf]

Ha ha been there and done that with heat shrink and on same 3.5mm bullets as i use them a lot in rc planes......well i did before i decided to give up flying

[Stormbringer]

Your certainly making progress tho 

[m4inbrain]

1 hour ago, Stormbringer said:

Your certainly making progress tho 

 

Yeah - i actually finished earlier 😞

 

Well, at least with the general assembly - needs an alignment urgently (currently not really toe-in, more toe-around), needs the shell fitted (and figured out - doesn't really fit with the magnetic mounts, so gotta figure that one out). And needs a bit more soldering/cable routing, but in terms of assembly it's done. 

 

And sadness ensued. Will add pictures later, my fingers are still bleeding from all the E-clips for the shocks. As mentioned, still faffing about with the shell - sits around 10mm too high on the chassis, and i don't seem to have any adjustment downwards left - so that's going to be interesting.

Edited April 19, 2023 by m4inbrain

[m4inbrain]

As mentioned, here's the last real update for now in regards to building. 

 

The chassis is assembled, the body fitted, at the moment trying to chase electrical gremlins - but, pictures first.

 

These are the devil. 

 

 

Probably took me bloody 20 minutes to get those E clips seated. Though they did give you three extra, so there's that. My needle nose pliers didn't want to grab, constantly slipped off - drove me absolutely nuts lol. Next:

 

 

Don't have a shock stand, so a random box will do. Took 15 minutes for the bubbles to disappear (i've read that some people use heat to accelerate it, but i don't smoke so i don't have a lighter lol - also, plastic shock bodies). Apart from them awful E clips, they assembled reasonably well (as well as plastic into plastic would go well). 

 

 

Wheels and shocks on for the first time - but the wrong wheels, also note that the motor wires are still awful.

 

 

Now they're fixed. 

 

 

Correct wheels on now, at that point it still had way too much toe out at the front, since rectified - but still needs a full and proper alignment. The top one is my 2.0 RTR, doesn't seem THAT much different i'll be honest, though the main difference apparently lies in the gearbox, i don't know. Don't care either, got to build a kit, so i'm happy. 

 

Connectors also arrived, soldered everything up now - but there's an issue. Started programming everything (ESC, radio, Gyro etc) - but the motor is cogging like mad on low throttle. Which it shouldn't, considering that it's sensored. Or at least, supposed to be sensored. Could not get that out of it, the ESC also doesn't recognise the motor as sensored (no sensored programming options appearing in the setup menu). If my experience is anything to go by, there's really just three options: ESC borked (the sensor-port), sensor cable borked, or motor borked (sensor port - though the motor has two sensor ports for different mounting positions, doesn't work with either) - it's wired ABC correctly. Got late, so i couldn't be bothered to check where my castle 1717 sensor wires are (i don't even know if they'd fit), that's for tomorrow. 

 

That's it so far. Next will be fixing everything in place (nothing cable tied yet, stuff still needs to go in and out of the RC for fitting/testing), and programming (once the motor works as it should). Then it's down to setting it up, as mentioned one of the lads at the club has a full hudy setup station, so i'll be making good use of that. 

 

And then.. probably going to buy a Yokomo chassis too, just for the giggles lol, forgot how much fun/how relaxing it is to build a kit. And of course drive the wheels off of it. 

[Stormbringer]

For heat on the shocks you could have used the Mrs hairdryer 

Hope you track down the electrics gremlins tho 

[m4inbrain]

1 hour ago, Stormbringer said:

For heat on the shocks you could have used the Mrs hairdryer 

Hope you track down the electrics gremlins tho 

 

That is in fact true, didn't think of that. Though while they were settling, i assembled the rest of the rig (bumper and stuff) - so it's not that big a deal. Next time though i'll probably use the dryer, cheers. 

 

I think i've chased the gremlins away for now - one of the two sensor ports on the motor seems to be naff, doesn't want to pick it up when connected there. Sucks a bit for cable routing, but it'll do until i consider upgrading to the XD10 ESC with D10 motor. Had a quick play in the house, still needs all kinds of adjustment both mechanically (toe in, camber, caster etc) as well as the gyro - just turned it to roughly "that'll do percent", and had a quick go. Works as it should - not well, mainly because i'm using carpet tyres on wooden floor (absolutely zero grip), but it does act/react like it's expected to. All ready for next weeks meet, already making plans for the next (the "good") shell, lol.

 

Currently torn between this:

 

 

and this:

 

 

I do like my wagons, i kinda like the Corolla better - but i did own an E30 20 years ago, so, hms.

 

The E30 is also made by an Ukrainian company, so i can tell myself that i'm doing a good deed by buying that one. I can certainly sell "helping Ukrainians" easier to my wife than "yeah remember the shell i bought two weeks ago? Ordered another one now.". 😄

 

[Stormbringer]

they both look good but i think the beamer looks like it means business 

[BashingBrian]

Corolla all the way, let's be honest drifting is JDM..!!! 😉

[m4inbrain]

While true that the home of drifting is japan, the E30 is well loved by drifters too (in europe). That's why you can't find any reasonably priced ones anymore. -.-

 

I'll probably end up with both eventually anyway, the question is just which one first. The E30 is cheaper (almost half the price), so it doesn't hurt if i ruin it by making a mistake, haven't done a shell in almost a decade. That's what swung it. Easier to find a colour for it, too - though am a bit sad that still no one is able  to offer a midnight purple in a can. 😞

 

[Stormbringer]

Yeh midnight purple would look sweet but pity you cant get it in a spray can 

[m4inbrain]

Yeah, sucks. Found a few places that sell combos for airbrush sets (primer and multiple colours) including tutorial how to get the effect, but that method won't work for shells that are sprayed in reverse (as in, instead of primer, colour, colour, clear - colour, colour, "primer"/backing). 

 

Over 30 year old colour, one of the most iconic (to petrolheads) to be ever created - and to this day, not possible to recreate it. Mind boggling, really. 

[Stormbringer]

yeh it really is mate 

[m4inbrain]

Well then, finally the day. First club/drift meet, first drift kit, first RWD drift - absolutely perfect, and i'm not exaggerating. The rig ran absolutely spot on. Didn't touch any settings, completely dialed first try. Apologies for not really having pictures, had to screen grab from the (awful) video, but enough to get an impression of what it looks like running.

 

 

 

 

 

I didn't mention it, but it does have an LED kit now, with working brake lights - though that was a faff and a half to set up, i'll write up what i had to do to get it work properly at some other time. The issue was that it (Killerbody LED set) went into blinking mode by itself after a few seconds, looked arse. Got it fixed, looks good - but lost an LED somehow, tore a cable out. No biggy, that's the only battle damage i sustained as well.

 

 

Coffee and donuts were provided by the organizer (included in the £5 admission fee), the beast my belly was happy. 

 

And lastly, because it thought it was kinda funny.. That's the (1-1) car of another attendee, lol.

 

 

Pretty sure that has seen some sideway action too. 

 

Already big plans for the next steps, which will be a new shell, accessories (want an engine bay etc), airbrush kit, and yet another LED kit that also provides the option for backfire LEDs.