LOSI LST XXL Conversion ideas

[mistercrash]

This is a slow build. Sifting through boxes to find my tools and then move boxes to set up an area to fabricate a part is time consuming. Nevertheless, I am slowly moving forward with this build. I am now figuring out a way to fit the Muggy steering bellcrank with minimal modification to the chassis rails.
I am trying to win an auction on an E-Revo tranny on ebay but I haven't been lucky yet. I plan on upgrading the slipper to the Hot Racing double slipper but I won't use stock pads. Instead I will make an aluminum disk like I did in the past with the E-Revo.
Running the E-Revo tranny means I will have to fabricate another motor plate. The one I have now has been very good at supporting the CC 2200 Kv but I fear that the heavier 1521 might need some more support so I'll be looking at making something to support the rear of the motor, something like this but probably less pretty.

[JThiessen]

Good luck with the ebay on those. I tried for months on them, and they sold for 40 to 50 every time, then were magically relisted the next day. I reported the crap out of them, but apparently the ebay rules have no teeth. I've got a new maxx tranny that I bought a couple months ago that I'd sell you for what I paid for it (I'd have to go back and look it up).

[mistercrash]

Thanks for wishing me luck JT, I just won an E-Revo tranny for $35 plus $6 for shipping

I think I have the Muggy steering almost figured out, I'll post pics tomorrow. In the mail today were the Losi sway bars, the Losi 17 mm hex adapters and RC Monster drive cups.

[JThiessen]

I do what I can for ya!!!!

[mistercrash]

jpoprock,

I'm going to have to check this forum out. Thanks for the link.

A few pics of what I've been doing. I made temporary plates out of Plexi, the top plate and the front skid plate. Being transparent, it makes it easier to see where to put everything and how well it works. Three things had to be trimmed a bit from the XXL components. The plastic ring that snaps on the chassis and in which the output of the diff slips into. It had to be trimmed on either side because the ball ends of the turnbuckles hit it preventing full steering throw. The front corners of the top plate have small notches done also to keep the turnbuckles' ball ends to hit it on the suspension's full compression. Last was the chassis rails, they had to be trimmed very slightly to allow the bellcranks to move freely.

The Muggy steering assembly had to be trimmed a bit also. The posts are now 40.5 mm high. Both the bellcranks had to be trimmed to fit the shorter posts. This means shorten them and bore the hole that houses the bushing a little deeper.

I fabricated one extra part which is the extra front skid plate that holds the bottom of the steering assembly. By going with two skid plates I was able to fit the steering without trimming off too much of it. So the stock skid plate will act as a shim basically and the extra one will hold the steering.

The steering posts are placed on the chassis 48.3 mm apart. I used a turnbuckle to join them together because I wanted to have something adjustable there. I didn't know what the length of this turnbuckle should be to achieve a good ackerman so it made it easy to play around with the length to get to the ackerman I think is acceptable. The turnbuckle ended up being 47.5 mm long from the center of the screws.

There's one thing that bugs me about this set up and that's the middle shaft going to the tranny. I don't know if the part of the bellcrank that attaches to the servo's turnbuckle will hit the shaft. It depends on how far the shaft will dip down to meet the tranny. If it dips down enough, it should be fine but if it ends up being parallel to the chassis top plate then I'll have to trim the bellcrank.

All in all, it looks like it's going to work very well but it was a lot of work to make fit. Just a little cutting and grinding but on many parts. Enough talking, here's the pics. Input is welcomed as usual.

[JThiessen]

Intersting info there MC. I can see right now that I might have an issue on mine if I use the Muggy steering. My center shaft is going to be angled towards the servo, and slightly up from center.

When you did the mod to shorten the post, are you certain you did it from the correct side? I seem to recall from reading about someone else who did this that they did not have to bore out the bushing hole....but I am not certain about that. I almost wonder if they didn't instead grind out the chassis rail.

[mistercrash]

Originally Posted by JThiessen

Intersting info there MC. I can see right now that I might have an issue on mine if I use the Muggy steering. My center shaft is going to be angled towards the servo, and slightly up from center.

Maybe you could flip the whole assembly the other way and have the lever on the other side, you would have the adjusting collar for the tension near the top plate instead of the bottom but IMHO, this collar is adjusted once for the desired tension and then you never touch it again. It is not an adjustment that you mess around with constantly. If your shafts are slightly off center that means you would have enough clearance since I found out that only a half mm more is needed for the lever not to touch the shaft.

Originally Posted by JThiessen

When you did the mod to shorten the post, are you certain you did it from the correct side? I seem to recall from reading about someone else who did this that they did not have to bore out the bushing hole

So what makes you think their way was the right way Seriously, there's more than one way of doing it, I did it my way and it works pretty darn good.

I did a lot of stuff today. So my fear of the bellcrank touching the shaft materialized today. I ended up shaving a tiny bit off the lever for clearance so that it would work in this plexi mock up. I will solve this little problem definitely when I make the CF top plate and the aluminum part that goes over the front skid plate by spacing the two bellcranks 2 mm more apart. 1 mm on each side which will take that lever away from the shaft just enough so that it doesn't touch.



I tried with the inverted servo set up and it just bugged me. Don't know why but it did so I flipped the servo right side up and I just like it better that way.

You will notice that this top plate looks kind of grungy and the openings are too large and the cuts look awful. This is only a mock up. The finished product should look a lot cleaner.

This middle skid is not exactly what I intend to do. I just duplicated the stock middle skid and added wings to it for the batteries. The final CF skid will be more refined and look more elegant than this.



But it does place the batteries nice and low. But not too low.



I had a couple of those alu plates that go under the shock towers so I took one. cut it, grinded it, sanded it, drilled and tapped it and made this.



It goes there in front of the rear shock tower to hold the Traxxas receiver box.



This will be the final layout. My original plan was to put the MMM in the front but with the size of the 1521 1Y, it looked a little cramped so I decided to place it just behind the tranny. I just think that it makes the layout look cleaner and it gives lots of room to work on anything.



I wanted the tranny to be in the absolute center but the XXL middle shafts were just a little too long so I had to off set the tranny 4 or 5 mm to the rear and use a LST2 middle shaft in the rear. With the XXL middle shaft in the front, it all went together very well. The drive train rolls very freely with no binding.

On a side note, I took the whole thing with the batteries on it in my hands and let it drop from 2 feet high and was amazed at the amount of damping these big shocks give the truck. This thing is a jumper for sure.