Gari_Ferret

I have made a discovery that with the aluminium chassis, I can fit slightly larger battery packs in the Vantage and have also found low profile 5s packs from overlander with similar dimensions to the factory 2s pack... Would 5s be overkill? Asking for a friend. 😅

I made modifications to the little battery posts on the vrx spirit/ftx vantage aluminium chassis, to try and prevent the batteries from being chewed up by the centre drive shaft/clutch assembly.

I made the same mistake with my vantage(If I remember, the only difference between the vantage and carnage is the chassis are slightly different shapes) but you can get 3s packs that will fit, such as the overlander sport track low profile or the core rc packs(both linked in text), it's a pain having to buy different batteries again but hey, you'll have a pack ready for when you get something it will fit in.

Just went looking for the adapters and some tyres, I came across some proline tyres that are rated for 100mph which would be ideal until I get to and I'm used to 100mph.

So I took her out today after rebuilding on the aluminium chassis and on the factory 2s she was a handful off-road but on 3s 55c... Wheelies, at 45mph, anytime I even looked at full throttle, resulted in blowing out the foams of the front wheels but other than that, only had the ESC come loose(the sticky pad was dirty anyway) and lost a couple of screws despite all the tumbles. 😅 Think I might need to find belted tyres or something, be nice if I could fit dboots somehow, would there be a way of doing so?

At least they're cheap. 😂

Hard to keep it on it's wheels at high speeds with an off-road vehicle I think. 😅

Recently ordered a compatible VRX Spirit aluminium chassis for my vantage and aluminium shock towers from aliexpress as I got fed up with breaking the plastic ones and I didn't want to pay £66 for the carbon one in case I broke that too, hoping it should be arriving tomorrow with the postman.

In the second image, does it still have the slipper clutch? I've also been toying with making a new upper chassis plate for my Vantage to make more space and give more space, also been trying to find metal gearboxes that house the diffs, I almost always break the plastic ones at some point.

Overlander sport track 3s packs have the same dimensions as the factory 2s pack, I run the overlanders myself, I believe the Spektrum smart packs up to 4s might also just about fit, though the carbon battery hold down plate might give just that little extra wiggle room.

I made a little discovery, if you want to make the shock rate a lot slower without changing oil, shock pistons or entire shocks, you can undo the nut on the piston and put a small, thin, M4 washer on then tighten the nut onto it, the hole in the washer is just the right size so it gets centred by the nut but won't slip over the nut, perfect if you want more stability during speed runs.

The brushed version is actually reasonably good, maybe swapping the spur gear to hardened acetal or swap the spur/pinion set to hardened steel just for longevity(the stock spur gear doesn't always last too long) but other than that, without hard crashes, it should hold up well until you decide you want to go much faster.

Don't worry about it, I'm pretty confident in my ability to take measurements but it's always good to see if others get the same numbers, just to be sure, I'm just going to take apart a spare diff to see if there's a way to reduce the amount of play in the cups as well, maybe see if I can find alternative parts that have a better fit.

That's cool, I've noticed that a lot of things like driveshafts, etc tend to be a pretty standardised range of sizes, so approximates should be close enough, I mean, I have measured them myself but I'm not sure if I've measured them correctly or not, so I'm just trying to get some more data to increase my certainty, as I'm sure there's probably stronger parts from other manufacturers that are less likely to twist and bend with regards to driveshafts and similar points of failure, like if what I've measured is correct, then the centre driveshaft from the Kyosho Inferno MP9e Evo should be able to replace the aluminium Vantage one.

Does anyone know the dimensions of the drive shafts/dog bones and the shock springs? It's a pain that FTX doesn't really show any dimensions for anything.

It's not the clearest image but this is what the cups end up looking like in a short amount of time for me, this is a complete diff assembly I had already replaced as I didn't want to try taking it apart at the time.

No exploding cups, like, they still function but they're really badly worn, wondering if the shafts couldn't be a little longer, maybe 1 or 2mm, as I have previously been told that it could be where the shafts have a little bit of play, which is why I put some little rubber bands for float fishing into the cups before putting the shafts in.

Driveshafts on my Vantage have been chewing through the cups, looks almost like they're ripping the metal, then again I am running it on 3s lipo with plans of going for 4s if I can find slim enough packs for it.

So we all know how the diff cups on the vantage tend to be made of cheese but I was wondering if anyone has tried using similar parts from other models/manufacturers to at least see if they'd fit, the maverick part MV22019 looks like it would be most likely to fit or the Absima part 1230166, they look almost identical in size and everything but might be stronger, I might try it myself, if it doesn't work, I can just put the bits on ebay or something, just think it's worth trying if it could make the model better and it's relatively cheap too.

Not running metal or carbon towers, as for the o-ring in the cup, that is something I thought about doing.

Everywhere calls the front and rear diffs "gearboxes" which makes no sense but meh, I found that the plastic ones have a tendency to break at the screw holes for the upper chassis plate/brace if you hit a jump in the wrong way(I know it's not a basher but you'd still expect it to take some abuse), as for the cups, it's almost like the pins on the rear shafts(which also bend and twist) are slowly ripping through them on an etronics 4350kv motor, 3s 50c lipo, 49T steel spur, 24T pinion. I might just stock up on spares when I can, they're cheap enough to do so.

Trying to find an aluminium gearbox for the vantage as I've always found the plastic ones to be too brittle, also need stronger cups on the outputs of the rear diff, any ideas?

I did look at that tbh but saw it was a sensored ESC and taught it was only for sensored but now I see it can also run sensorless, so thank you for the recommendation, hopefully it won't quite literally melt like the etronix ones when I can get it, also need to get a faster servo but getting it actually running is more important. 😅

A while back I bought and fitted the higher power Etronix ESC and motor, only to have it almost go up in flames, looking to get a 100+ watt ESC now, to be fair, i was using a 3s 50c pack on it at the time but boy did it rip while it ran. 😅

Yesterday was interesting, fitted the new dumbo radio, new straight shafts instead of twisted and bent ones, new OEM wheels and tyres, rebuilt the front shocks, then took the Vantage for a rip... Surely the 60Amp Photon ESC should be able to handle a 55c 3s LiPo but nope, 5 minutes and it was smoking, melting the shell and flinging solder around under the shell, going to get the Maverick FLX-104S 120Amp ESC which should hopefully be good, need new batteries and charger too, thought I might try finding low profile 4s packs but I think even those would be ever so slightly too tall.