So over Christmas when Santa brought my little lad his first RC car I thought about getting my old Jato up and running again so we could have some fun together, so rummaging around in the garage I found a complete pile of bits.
over a couple of nights this was dismantled further and cleaned, bearings replaced where needed added some grease, slowly it became this
Now this ran great for a few months, took it a couple of times to ARC raceway in Marks Tey where the only time we had a problem was when I lost a front lower spring cup, was impressed how she managed to keep up with the other cars down there, but after every tank full or stall she was getting harder and harder to start, having to wait five mins or so to cool down was getting boring so I decided i'd had enough of Nitro as that engine was second hand when I got it in 2007 and it's had soo much fuel through it i've lost count
Time to go brushless...
So off to eBay for a conversion kit, it come down to either the Hot Racing one or the one I got from some dude in Greece which was cheeper, here it is test fitted to the chassis
Motor mount is a solid chunk of aluminium and a plastic battery / reciever / ESC tray.
Only other mod was to cut the Jato's upper plastic chassis so the steering servo could mount to it, here we have the steering servo mounted (original traxxas one) and the old reciever plumbed in
Now motor and ESC wise I went for a Hobbywing setup - the Max10 & 3300KV combo and running 3S
Here she is minus a pinion gear, but that turned up next day, ended up with the stock 54T Spur and 24T pinion which seems pretty good for now
And since I still had the original sticker sheet I can use the 3 upside down to further enhance the structual integrity of the shell and pretend it's an E
It's pure comedy gold, wheel spins alot, i've got a set of alias tyres which are better on grass but still spin up.. wouldn't change it at the moment but would like some tyre and body shell recommendations for the future.
Picked up a Revo rolling chassis the other week as the next project, love the size difference