Fat Freddy

The really fiddly bit is yet to come…the electronics.

And so, on to bag D. Shocks and drive shafts. The drive shafts are all plastic. There are metal upgrades available but for now I’m installing the placcy ones. They are mad fiddly to put together, but this time I managed it without ANY minuscule pieces of plastic pinging off into oblivion. Then I hit the first real problem that I couldn’t find my way around. One of the shock shafts has no thread on it. Most kits have some glitch or other, but there’s no way round this one I’ve emailed the supplier, who got back to me almost straight away, asking me to confirm the part number. So hopefully will sort me out a replacement soon. put the rear shocks together and fitted them to the chassis anyway, just so I could take this picture… 😁😁😁

Really, that would be fantastic. The available space is 12 mm x 20mm x 38 (could prob fit 40 at a push)mm. If you have one that’ll fit, just let me know how much you want for it, thanks 🙏👍

Definitely worth investing in a half decent charger.

Found time to finish assembling the chassis. I’m struggling to find the right size LiPo to fit in the battery tray. Everywhere is out of stock. So I’m toying with buying two small 1S batteries and wiring them up as a 2S but with one cell on each side of the car, mounted on the rock sliders. That will spread the weight and keep it lower. Then I’ll try to stuff the electronics into the battery tray (which would have fitted on the rock sliders and on the plate above the battery tray). Will hopefully help lower CoG and look a bit neater than the birds nest in my landy?

10 mins seems a little short but it depends how you drive and where you drive. Full throttle on long grass will draw far more power than moderate speeds on a smooth surface. Switching to LiPo’s would greatly increase your times and the power doesn’t tail off near the end as it does with Nimhs, but of course that probably seems like a big investment at this stage. How many batteries do you have? When I used Nimhs I used to charge a few up in advance.

What scale are they for?

Welcome Henry 👍

If you’ve fritzed the motor it’s probably through overheating. A heat sink will help with that, and avoid driving everywhere at full throttle helps too. It’s a good idea to check everything is turning smoothly too, no resistance, as even a little friction can stress a motor. Swapping the motor is relatively easy, but if you are switching to brushless you’ll need a new ESC as well. You can get them as a set. The pinion gear ( the bit with the teeth) will fit a brushless motor, no real need to swap it, except for gearing. A brushless motor will be way faster so you might want to gear it down a bit. If you do change it, less teeth means slower but more torque, more teeth means faster but less torque. For now though I’d just get a brushed motor and get used to the car before making it go super fast. If you want a bit more speed relatively cheaply, get a faster motor. Brushed motors have a T number. More T’s equal more torque, less T’s offer more speed. So for exampleI think the stock vantage is a 15T motor? So a 12T motor with slightly larger pinion gear will be noticeably faster, but still very manageable. What happened to the steering? Did you sort it?

Had to drill through where the screw holes in the battery tray should have been (they were only about .5mm deep?) ..and finish putting bits and bobs like bumpers and shock mounts together… before assembling the chassis 😁

Attached the light buckets, front shock mounts and rock sliders to the frame rails

I really should get round to putting these on EBay.

I have 2 receivers for mine….both in cars I’m not using 🤦‍♂️

I have one of those. Really like it.

You have to buy the motor separately (plus servo, radio gear, electronics and of course batteries. It’s not easy sourcing a 2s lipo small enough to fit in this thing). The motors come with little reduction gearboxes attached. You can get anything from 80rpm to 3000rpm. Stock is 150rpm and is super slow but has lots of torque. I put a 200rpm in my Defender and tbh it’s a bit too slow still. I had every intention of putting a 300rpm in this, but at time ordering they were out of stock so I went for the same as the Landy. Motor and gearbox fit on my fingertip! More bearings…. Aluminium gearbox plate is an upgrade on the standard plastic one. Motor and transfer case all bolted together 😁👍

Links popped onto axles, time to tackle the chassis….. Note, the steel C section chassis rails…. a whole 11cms long😁

This is WAY too complicated for me. Even if I could cope with the technology I can barely manage left/right, forward/reverse. Add up and down to that and my head would pop! Looks awesome Stormy 👏

First task in bag B is assembling the suspension link rods…. Surprise, surprise, they’re tiny. Discovered last time that using a small Philips driver to open the hole in the rod end really helps get the little bastards on. With this truck being so tiny, getting the rod lengths right is quite important. The instructions give you an accurate guide to follow EXCEPT for the section below the one with the link in it. That says 22.2mm but the pic is 19.5mm. This is the only mistake I’ve spotted in the manual so far. Other than this they’ve been easy to follow, step by step instructions. Above a complete set of links and steering rods, below, a comparison with links from a 1/10 scale crawler 🤯

Completed front and rear axles. I forgot to mention what a fiddle those little ball headed screws are. There is a tiny little L shaped Allen key provided, but if you get one of these kits, splash out on a .9mm hex driver. You’ll thank me.

B u m p

No, I have to wear reading glasses to see anything small, but for this, I’m using stronger glasses to magnify everything 😵‍

Here’s what’s inside the axle housing. The front axle shaft was a bit shorter to accommodate the CVDs, but otherwise the two are the same. How about that for TINY. (They provide a spare in the kit for that inevitable whoops moment). Needed to fit it using tweezers! And it’s held in place by a rubber ring add some bearings… ..and pop it in the axle case… And we have a rear axle 👍

Yes, and maybe a light bar on the roof?

So the first task is to build the front axle. Forgot to take pics of what’s inside that pumpkin, but it’s pretty similar to the rear axle’s internals and I took pics of that. There are four sets of bearings in that 👆 Then it’s time for the CVDs and steering knuckles and steering servo. The kit gives the option of chassis mounted or axle mounted servo. I’d prefer the CMS for scale looks, but there’s too much slop in the suspension and steering and I found axle mounted was far more effective. And to be fair, you’ll have to get pretty close to notice when it’s being used. I can’t help grinning at how small this stuff is.

This is my second Orlandoo Hunter kit. I wanted a new project on a limited budget and really enjoyed building the first. I always forget to take photos at key points, so apologies in advance.