thanks again mark and neil.
i just got back in from about 15 minutes of bashing around with her. i ended up taking the MM settings back to factory specs, except i put punch control at 60%.
i'm amazed and confused at the same time.
this thing handles like a dream. it blew me away. it's now so long and flat that i took some turns that i thought for sure would put it into a horizontal barrel roll. i had the proline steering rack for so long that i never realized how good steering could be - the UE gen IV servo saver is worth it's weight in gold. and
wow do those mulchers bite! they're definitely my favorite tires so far.
now, the perplexing part. the MM definitely heats up when farting around at slow speeds, which i knew would happen. it actually cooled off after doing a few speed runs. but it doesn't have the speed i thought it would. i didn't have my GPS attached, but i would guess it was going roughly high 20's in grass. no where near the calculator's specs of 40 at that gearing. but... there was absolutely zero cogging.
i have a feeling the custom rear driveshaft is rubbing on the bottom of the chassis - i'll have to pull it out and grind it down. after about 15 minutes of speed runs, the MM temps hovered at about 135, lehner temps were at about 105, and the batteries (matched ni-mh) were around 110. from a glance, that's telling me (barring the driveshaft problem) that i'm just a bit overgeared...which doesn't make sense. 51/15 should be conservative. but it's probably just that the MM isn't designed to handle the motor, the number of cells, and the size/weight of this truck. i may have to invest in a higher powered esc... darn it.
the batts weren't fresh, so i'm letting them cool down and will recharge them for a run later. i'll also pull the rear shaft out to grind some material down.
so, overall the first real run with this has mixed results. once the esc bugs are worked out i'd looooove to get this on a track - the handling just blew me away!