1/16 Mini E-Revo - Top Speed Build

[kazuaki]

Some of you may remember I have been wandering around here lately asking a lot of questions related to brushless motors and getting the most speed from my 1/16 Mini E-Revo. I had upgraded the stock ESC and motor to an EZRun 60A and Neu 1112/2D. This worked fairly well and got me up to 73 MPH. The truck felt pretty unstable at those speeds and I had to strap about 100+ grams of weight to the nose to keep it down. My next step was to go to a larger motor. Like many others, I bought the Tenbol big block mount. While the part seems nice and is very easy to install, I was unhappy with how high the motor sat and still had clearance issues with the motor I chose. At this point I decided to pursue a custom chassis. I wanted more space for a large motor and larger batteries. I also wanted a longer wheelbase for stability and to minimize wheelies.

I wanted to do a top-notch job and decided trying to cut the chassis out with the tools I had was not going to yield the results I was looking for. I downloaded a free CAD software package and taught myself how to use it . This is the first time I have done something like this, so I took careful measurements of the stock chassis, especially all the mounting hole locations. I then started designing the new chassis in the CAD software. I knew I wanted the wheelbase to be extended 40mm, all between the motor and the rear diff. I just designed what I thought would work well. I printed the design out on paper as I went, so I could see a scale representation of how things would fit. I made multiple revisions before I was happy. The final piece was to send the CAD files off to a place to have them cut on a waterjet. I chose 1/8" 6061-T6 aluminum for the material. In hindsight, this is overkill and I could have gone a bit thinner.

Here are the chassis plates after I received them from the waterjet. I did have to make a few small adjustments manually for things I overlooked. All the bolt holes lined up perfectly, but there were a few areas that needed additional clearance around the tranny and driveshafts. I also did all the countersinking for the bolts. I also did the front chassis "kick-up" and rear "kick-down" with an inexpensive vise metal break I bought.




The top and bottom chassis plates are connected using M3 screws and aluminum threaded standoffs. I am using 20mm standoffs, but can run anything from 15mm to 25+mm, depending on how much battery space I need. Only a couple of the top screws are installed in these photos.





More to come....