Planning a summer E-Revo build!
 

Hey everyone. I've been reading around here quite a bit trying to get a grasp on the whole E-Revo thing, and I think I've finally got a basis on which to build it. I just had a couple of questions before I start planning too far in.

I guess, first, I'll express my plans. I found a Revo 2.5 *chassis* that has been dremeled out for an E-Maxx transmission on ebay for $25 shipped. I figured it was a good deal, and impulse bought it. What this means, though, is now I have only a chassis, and nothing else. So I figure why not build it part-by-part. Maybe I can save some money picking stuff up on ebay, and maybe adding hop ups right off the bat. This also allows me to spread the money output across a couple months, rather than all at once.

That said, my goal is to SAVE AS MUCH MONEY AS POSSIBLE, without buying a roller or conversion kit.

So. Currently, I have a MambaMax system running in my Rustler. If I get far enough into this build, I'd like to take it out of my Rustler, and sell that as a roller, and use the MM for my E-Revo. With this in mind, I focused my research, and found stum's thread:
http://www.rc-monster.com/forum/showthread.php?t=9470

He has, what seems like, a fantastic setup. Perfect for my taste. I think I'm going to end up matching his electronic setup, if he doesn't mind, and go with a 2x2s?p Lipo, MambaMax, and Feigao 8XL. I plan on also using the Hitec 645MG from my Rustler, and possibly ordering a Spectrum 2.0 radio system. We'll see about that.

Sooo... I guess that's the first thing I'd like input on.

Next, since I'm building this mostly part-by-part, what hop ups would you guys suggest I grab right off the bat? With the Revo being, apparently, the most popular basher nowadays, there must not be too many weak points in the stock setup, but what should I be looking at anyway?

I already plan to grab a Hexcrews AP screw set. I'm 100% satisfied with the kit I bought for my Rustler, and I honestly wouldn't go any other route. I'm still deciding what to do for battery trays. I might just pick up the Teckno set, but even those are pricey. I don't understand why they would be, but whatever.

Sooooo... I think that's about it. The worst part is going to be making sure I have all the parts, I guess. It's probably time to put together a checkoff list.

Thanks, and sorry for the long winded post. :P
Matt

Looks to me like a great plan. A stock Revo is extremely strong. I have only broke a rear a-arm in the couple years I have had it. If you are buying part by part, I'd try to get quite a bit of RPM stuff like hub carriers and a-arms. You may need 2 645 servo's to turn the wheels of the Revo at a reasonable speed and with enough torque. Maybe you can try to sell the 645 and buy another servo (just one) with about 200 to 250 ounces of torque, that is unless you want even more torque.

The electronics you mentioned would work perfectly, although, if you are looking for a little less speed and more efficiency and longer run times, I'd go with the 9xl motor instead of the 8xl.

Good luck with the build!!

Thanks!

I'm going to look into a mix of RPM parts and stock parts, I guess. RPM has served my Rustler well, and I bet their Revo parts are just a good. I'll probably just look into arms and hub carriers, as I've read those are worthwhile upgrades. But the price of those hub carriers is what bothers me. Regardless, I'm leaning that way. I really like the idea of dying the RPM parts, and maybe I'll finally be able to do a purple build. :P

I'll look into the servos. I could try to fit a 5955TG into the budget, but I'll wait and see how the 645MG performs to decide. I know DickyT used a 645MG in his build, initially, and I couldn't spot any complaints from my little perusal, and he was running 12 NiMH at the start. So we'll see.

I don't know much about Feigao motors, and so deciding between the 8XL and the 9XL would be hard for me without some solid numbers. I'm not too much of a speed freak... I run a Rustler with 8-cells NiMH, MM5700 geared at 13/86, and that is plenty fast for me. I really just like POWER and relentlessness, not necessarily speed, but speed is always a nice thing to have. :P If the 9XL is my best bet, then I'll go for that. :)

Thanks again!

I'm using one 645 in my e-revo. It works just fine. I ran two for a while, but honestly I didn't find it necessary. I originally ran an 8xl, but it continually overheated and eventually I fried it. I've just finished installing a 9xl and I am liking that setup much better. Of course, I upgraded to an 8000mAh TrueRC pack at the same time, so I can't make runtime comparisons. It runs a whole lot cooler though.

The Revo's are a blast. I'm sure you'll love it.

Sounds like I'll be running the 9XL then. Thanks for the input, guys.

I've been looking at parts for a little while, and jeez, it's overwhelming. That's not going to stop me, though. I found a set of front/rear bulkheads with rocker arms included for like $14 shipped on ebay, and I'll be ordering those in the next day or two to get things started. Unfortunately, I think the hexcrews AP kit will have to wait, so the Revo will sit in pieces until that happens. I'll be looking for an E-Maxx transmission soon. Ebay has some deals for pre-modded transmissions for around $50. What do you guys think about that? I'm not afraid to do the FOC and 2nd gear mods myself, though, so I might just try to find the new version transmission and do it myself.

I'm going to think very hard about selling my Rustler... because it's actually getting rather boring, and I'm pretty excited about the Revo. And I think I can get enough money from the Rustler to cover a substantial portion of the Revo... soooo... we'll see about that, too. Hopefully this term's class load is rather light so I can consider working again. But with Field and Track in the way, it's not looking likely.

erevo
 

building a tranny from scratch will cost you a lot more than buying complete one. why don't you pick up the newer 3905 emaxx tranny and do the mod that stumblin did? I'm also working on my erevo build and have decided to go down that route. got one off ebay for $45 bucks.

I got an extra 3906 emaxx tranny that came with my erevo roller. will consider selling that to you if i'm not successful with stumblin's mod.

Deleted my previous post... 'cause I ended up winning the 3905 transmission at ~$53 shipped. Soooo, I'll take a look at stumblin's mod and go from there. :)

Also ordered a pair of complete front/rear differentials. Haven't yet ordered the bulkheads. I'm waiting on a particular auction... after that I might look at other options. I should be ordering the hexcrews AP kit this week, though.

Waiting for trueRC to restock their 2s or 4s lipos so I can grab one of those and run it in my Rustler for a while before the E-Revo is running. Actually, I may try an A123 pack. I'll order a Castle BEC as soon as I can get the lipos and charger. The 9XL will wait until the truck is rolling. I'm also considering a cheaper radio solution. I don't mind using crystals since I don't race.

Thanks.

o good. the only problem that I have with stumblin's mod right now is trying to find a way to strongly secure the tranny. i've tried using the washers as suggested and the tranny seems like it could come loose in hard crash. i have a couple of alum pieces laying around and was thinking of creating some mounts for the tranny. let me know how you end up securing it.

Alright. So plans have changed. My tax refund was larger than expected, and so I finished ordering my parts. Problem is, I was already knee deep in the part-by-part build, so buying a roller would have been less cost effective than just getting the rest of my parts. The total came out to about $450 to build the roller....... which is more than I had hoped to spend, but in the end I'm VERY happy with the build. I love how the Revo is assembled.

With that in mind, I went with the stock Revo radio system rather than the Spektrum kit. The Spektrum kit will come some time in the summer when I'm actually making money.

I ordered a 4S2P 8000mAh pack from TrueRC, and just won an auction for a Quark 80B on ebay at $112, shipped. Hell of a deal, I think... because I spent less on this 80B/9XL combo than I did on the MambaMax 5700 combo, and now I can jump to 6s whenever I want (most likely before summer is over). :P Just received my 0606i charger/balancer and Feigao 9XL (which is freaking HUGE).

The truck is almost complete. I'm still waiting on a few parts, and unfortunately the earliest it could be finished is Wednesday of next week. Chances are it won't be running until Friday. I'll have photos up after track practice today... assuming I find my camera.

Thanks for all the help, by the way, but not just the stuff in this thread, also all the information in the other threads. I'm glad I registered here!

Finally found my camera and tripod. That said, here are the promised photos!
http://img517.imageshack.us/img517/3487/dscn3491xw4.jpg
http://img249.imageshack.us/img249/5...n3481edkx6.jpg
http://img412.imageshack.us/img412/828/dscn3490us7.jpg
http://img165.imageshack.us/img165/563/dscn3492on2.jpg
http://img297.imageshack.us/img297/9822/dscn3493oc3.jpg
http://img260.imageshack.us/img260/7334/dscn3482qz9.jpg
http://img260.imageshack.us/img260/4113/dscn3483lp4.jpg
http://img87.imageshack.us/img87/4886/dscn3484eg4.jpg
http://img84.imageshack.us/img84/4676/dscn3485er9.jpg
My sketchy, but sturdy transmission mounting job. I need to drill out the other 4th hole in the chassis, but I'll wait and see if I have any problems without it first.
http://img84.imageshack.us/img84/5180/dscn3486wi1.jpg

The shiny dust is aluminum shavings from when I was grinding/cutting. My can of canned air just decided to die on me, so I need to grab a new one.

Too excited to leave the hub carriers off... so I put them on without the dust boots, which are in the mail. I'll run it without the boots until it becomes a problem, then I'll put them on. :P

I was going to go with a purple only color scheme, but I liked the purple arms with blue accents elsewhere. So I bought the blue battery ties that'll tie down the purple TrueRC pack.

It looks like the item that will determine when this is running will be the 4mm bullet connectors I bought for the motor/esc... but I'm not sure 4mm will be large enough for the amount of electricity going through this... I might just hit up Radioshack (if they have them) for some larger diameter plugs.

Still trying to decide where I'll mount the Quark. I might mount it in front of the battery, since that would be the easiest place to put it... but I might also be underestimating the size. I don't want to wait for a set of standoffs to do a mount like Stumblin's, so I might just temporarily put the Quark on top of the receiver box.

Good job on the conversion!
I noticed you were thinking about using the quark 80b on 6s but I hear that they have a hard time running on 6s. If anyone else uses a quark 80b on 6s then I too would like to know.
So just to be safe I would recommend only going up to 5s on the quark.

I run a quark 65 on 6s lipo in a hyper8 buggy, and it does fine. Gearing is important when running electronics at the rated limit. If you gear for 40mph you should be fine with the 80b on 6s.

Thanks for the heads up. 4s will be sufficient for now... but I may get the speed bug by the end of summer. We'll see.

I've been spending some time with some smaller aspects of the build... like an ESC mount and putting together a CC BEC adapter. Here are some photos:
ESC mount. I used my Rustler's stock mount. Hopefully it's sitting high enough to clear the shocks, and hopefully it's large and sturdy enough to accommodate the 80B. I may order a purple RPM mount for the Rustler to keep with the color scheme.
http://img363.imageshack.us/img363/1553/dscn3494tg5.jpg
I used some extras that came with my toe-links as pseudo-standoffs:
http://img384.imageshack.us/img384/6016/dscn3495hf4.jpg

Here's the adapter for the CC BEC. I want to be able to use it with different ESCs or if I ever want to switch. I wrapped it in electrical tape to hide my shrink wrapping mistakes. :P
http://img99.imageshack.us/img99/3290/dscn3496hf3.jpg

Lastly, here's the body I'll be using temporarily:
http://img515.imageshack.us/img515/7799/dscn3487jg4.jpg
http://img144.imageshack.us/img144/8112/dscn3488gz8.jpg


I have a Parma Ford Expedition waiting to be painted in a basic black to purple fade... and I'll be having team3six paint up a HotBodies F350 body with blue ghost flames overlain with purple ghost flames in the future... hopefully.

More photos! I got the HX5s and the TrueRC 4S2P 8000mAh while I was at track practice... HOLY COW they're both huge! I looked at the box the HX5s came in. It was bigger than the box my Expedition body was in... I thought "why would they ship tires in such a large box?"... Now I know why. I put them on (lacking the axle pins, they were shipped today) to get an idea of what it'll look like. Then I started playing with the stance, and I found what I wanted.

http://img132.imageshack.us/img132/7046/dscn3497nf7.jpg

Unfortunately it was dark when I took these... so the lighting isn't natural. :(

http://img120.imageshack.us/img120/3677/dscn3516hn6.jpg
http://img175.imageshack.us/img175/2502/dscn3517tw4.jpg
The battery pack... HUGE!
http://img175.imageshack.us/img175/6504/dscn3518ki3.jpg
The prospective stance. Hopefully these Progressive-2 rockers will allow it. I wouldn't mind if it were even a little lower.
http://img74.imageshack.us/img74/4238/dscn3519it6.jpg
With body:
http://img73.imageshack.us/img73/6513/dscn3520ei9.jpg
Artsy fartsy:
http://img178.imageshack.us/img178/6984/dscn3521qz0.jpg
http://img139.imageshack.us/img139/9257/dscn3522cl4.jpg

Soooo with the exception of the shocks and axle pins, this baby is rollin'! Once the Quark gets here, I'll start soldering up the motor connections, and we'll see if I can't get her running! I'm very excited to see how this works out.

Is it too early to tell if that monster battery is going to throw off the balance of the truck? Is it obviously heavier on the right side or does it seem ok?

That battery has made it to my 'short list' so im curious just how much its effecting balance.

Thanks

It's actually pretty well balanced with the 9XL hanging over the left side. It's not absolutely perfect, as far as I can tell, but it's not obviously out of balance. We'll see when I get the shocks in how out of balance it really is.

Had this baby up and running! But not even a pack through and I went and did this:
http://img262.imageshack.us/img262/6421/dscn3523kc5.jpg
http://img72.imageshack.us/img72/3541/dscn3524rz4.jpg

No photos of it in running form. Sorry. :(

Also busted one of the shock-side shock mounts. Sooooo... naturally I was a tad disappointed. I've got all the replacement parts ordered, which include 6 GTR shocks. Also took the fall and grabbed a TeknoRC sway bar kit to help with rollovers.

The good news is this gave me a reason to do a complete teardown and throw in my 3.3 chassis. So... after a few drinks... I deanodized it, and it looked rather sloppy, so I busted out my stainless steel detailing brush, and gave the sucker a nice brushed look:

http://img177.imageshack.us/img177/7834/dscn3525gz1.jpg
http://img89.imageshack.us/img89/7295/dscn3526xz6.jpg
http://img440.imageshack.us/img440/821/dscn3527lo7.jpg

BTW... regarding the balance: It's really well balanced. It wasn't noticeably lower on either side, and the rockers looked perfectly even when it was sitting.

Got some parts in yesterday, and it was enough to get the Revo up and running on the 3.3 chassis. So today I took her out for a quick bash, and I swear it's running faster with the Quark than it was with the MM. Anyway, here are some shots after the fact:

http://img385.imageshack.us/img385/3577/dscn3528ew2.jpg
Almost no cutting required to fit the E-Maxx 3905 transmission in. But you'll notice my motor is mounted in an uncommon way as a result. It really helps with balance, though, which you'll see in a later photo. The ONLY cutting I did was to make room for the spur gear. I had to do the usual grinding to make room for the driveshafts, and had to drill holes for the screws on the right side of the shot, but that's it.
http://img516.imageshack.us/img516/7644/dscn3529nq4.jpg
Here's a shot of the balance. This is right after I dropped the truck onto the floor. The difference on each side is nearly negligible.
http://img167.imageshack.us/img167/6595/dscn3531ys2.jpg
Here's one of the bodies I plan to rotate. It's a Ford Expedition from Parma. I'm not finished trimming it yet, and the paint is on it's way. It will sit MUCH lower when I'm finished trimming. Looking at a simple purple to black fade for this one, and team3six is taking care of the other body. Props, dude!
http://img166.imageshack.us/img166/3068/dscn3533ot3.jpg
http://img393.imageshack.us/img393/8868/dscn3534za9.jpg
http://img385.imageshack.us/img385/3300/dscn3535ke1.jpg
http://img385.imageshack.us/img385/3756/dscn3532nd3.jpg

Still haven't run an entire pack through it yet. I'm having trouble with the clutch. I can't get it tight, so I've just been supergluing it locked. I have another slipper kit on the way. Does anyone know which spurs work best with the E-Maxx 3905 transmission?

Man when I am done painting your body, Im gonna be afraid to give it to you because youll wreck it,:cry:. Oh well. it will look pretty for a couple of weeks :whistle:

Haha. Yeah... I won't bash with it too much, but it will have seen better days. :P As long as you take some serious photos, the memory will be there!

News: Got the slipper sorted out... broke another pushrod and both top and bottom arms on the right side... again. They're only cracked, though, so I'll run them until they break completely. One of the bearings in the rear diff case decided to lose one of its balls, and that ball single handedly exploded the diff cup. The gasket got shredded, and there was a load of black gunk inside of the diff cup when I opened it. Two of the screws holding the ring gear were sheared off. None of the gears are damaged, though. I ordered a couple of RD Logics aluminum diff cups to replace the one that died, and a new set of bearings.

The good news is I finished painting my first body! It's so pretty I'm afraid to put it on the truck, but I'll have to use it for bashing when the team3six body gets here. No camera, though... it got trashed after a game of 166 cup beer pong (166 cups between 4 people per side). Soooooo... :(

Figured I'd unload a small update on you guys. I got a new body painted, and threw it on for a little bash after an afternoon drizzle.

Here's what mine looks like on its best behavior... after some fun in the mud:
http://img255.imageshack.us/img255/9248/p5210386al1.jpg
http://img60.imageshack.us/img60/7623/p5210399hd2.jpg
http://img389.imageshack.us/img389/9100/p5210416gk6.jpg
http://img237.imageshack.us/img237/4770/p5210402qf6.jpg
http://img146.imageshack.us/img146/765/p5210403nz0.jpg
http://img394.imageshack.us/img394/5451/p5210411ld5.jpg

Lastly, but not least:
http://img234.imageshack.us/img234/7154/p5210397xd0.jpg

Still haven't run an entire pack through it all at once. This session ended when the pillow balls popped out of the knuckle.

I'm a tad disappointed with the Quark. It's rated at 6s, but I'm inclined to believe that it's reaching the thermal shutdown after about 10 minutes of running WITH a BEC on 4s. Either that or the 9XL is thermaling. No smoke, just a lack of throttle response. I'm tempted to take it out of the shell and run it like that, or even shrink wrapped to help with airflow, as the "heatsinked case" doesn't appear to be very efficient at all. Looks like there's a MMM in my near future.

It's running on two broken right arms. The initial cracks formed pretty easily, but they're holding up really well despite being broken. I did a LOT of cartwheeling on this last session, and the left side knuckle popped off before I fully broke the right arms. I'll get a photo up soon.

Also, I got the body in from Norm at team3six. It is GODLY. I'm really pretty impressed with it. I haven't mounted it yet, as I'm going to do a tear-down of the Revo beforehand, and get it cleaned up for a potential photo shoot.

HOLY CRAP! you scared the bejesus outta me when I got the email about this thread. I had to look rightaway thing it was the new shell I:lol: did for ya.

lol. Sorry to disappoint. I have to tear the chassis down and clean it so I can bring it in for a presentation in a week or two, so I'll try to get the body mounted soon. I really want to see it mounted, too!

EDIT:
Here are the photos of the breaks. They're pretty hardcore, but the arms are holding up fine. No sense in changing them out until one breaks entirely.
http://img364.imageshack.us/img364/384/p5220388pg3.jpg
http://img355.imageshack.us/img355/3761/p5220390ws8.jpg

You could always setup like this.. it is flawless weight distribution and makes for the best racer I've ever owned/built :)

http://i172.photobucket.com/albums/w...h/IMG_4100.jpghttp://i172.photobucket.com/albums/w...h/IMG_4097.jpg
http://i172.photobucket.com/albums/w...h/IMG_4188.jpghttp://i172.photobucket.com/albums/w...h/IMG_4184.jpg

Yeah. I love the weight distribution.

A little update on the body for Norm: The Savage size bodies aren't quite wide enough to clear the various components of the chassis. I'm still looking for ways to mount it, though, because it's just so bad ass. I could mount it higher so that it doesn't need to clear anything, but not so sure about the actual monster truck look.