Mod XO-1 Night Drifter

[millzee]

The day I received the roller I stripped out the traxxas plastic's and re-fitted with a aluminium servo mount, hitec 7955 servo, neu 1527 and a mamba monster speedo with external castle BEC. This set up ran well enough to end my 4 hour driving session with a cold tire 75mph "super" crash that was my PB for cartwheels by both number and speed resulting only with a broken rear lower a-arm, front splitter and plenty of scratches on the stock body. This was a nice lesson to learn early on......, I can't drive. I am happy to run 6s and gear it with a 25t pinion and 50t spur, 75% punch control, throttle curve and plenty of brake, this is a good fun set up that can still get you in heaps of trouble if your heavy on the trigger, I'm finding that if you drive like a dick, it'll cost you just as it would with a real sport's car, only on a scale ratio.


After the crash the carbon chassis and a couple of goodies arrived so it was build time anyway. I've found myself hopping up everything I buy, sometime before I've driven the model, this time I'm only going to up-grade things as needed. On the list so far is the A-arms, way to brittle (for my poor driving).

The first thing I needed was a safe home for the battery. I used a cabon fiber battery tray and made a side plate out of 2mm c/f sheet. The side plate act's as both a battery support and protection from the drive shaft and shaft support bearings. The tray is raised by c/f blocks so I can get the velcro straps under and around the battery and sticky back 5mm rubber foam added between the c/f and battery. The velcro strap's needed to be longer so I joined 2 by applying ca glue on the velcro's "hook" side, locking the velcro closed and then stitching with 80lb braid to reinforce it.

[millzee]

My first crash also taught me that my motor needed to be more secure in the event of a prang so I measured the gap between the 1527's aluminium (boat) rear support mount and the c/f side plate on the battery tray and made a spacer to suit and bolted it up, no more side movement!...


The aluminium cooling can on the motor is a water cooling can made for the motor, I cut and drilled to allow the air to be caught in the spaces and hopefully help cool the motor(I don't need any of this for 6s, it's just incase I decided to unleash 8s at some stage in the future). I applied thermal paste in the small gap where the water would normally be for heat transfer, gotta be better than nothing and it'll be a while before this motor see's any heat.

[millzee]

I played around with the shock mount's a little to gain some ride height but I think I'll need to re-adjust the front end as it's riding a little high. The white springs lasted about 3 minutes until I had them srewed so far down I figured I may as well put the red(green mark) springs back, a lot firmer.


I did my best to keep the weight dispersed evenly in both length and width, the battery forward of the motor along with the 2x 2500mah 3s LED batteries up front counteracts the weight of the motor side. The COG is just forward of center so the front wheel's stay on the ground a little better.




I was also able to keep the weight low with this set up, the 1717 add's weight at a higher point.


I have received a few set's of wheel's, ofna rim's in bright yellow for night and chrome for day with taped PL road rage tire's and extra mod firm rear foam's and firm front foams, I'm not sure how they'll go but if they last a few night's they'll be good for ripping around the street's, I'll keep you posted.