Kraton Adventures of a noob

[Slim64684]

This all started with buying a Latrax Teton for my 5 year old for his birthday(4/16). that quickly turned into getting a Kraton 6s for myself(4/23). And as with all new toys I couldn't wait to get it out and play. And play I did. In short time I built a makeshift ramp and started jumping. That led to building a more proper ramp and getting some air under it.

Well as you all can probably guess, that led to repairs needing to be done.

I'm not expert, far from it but I think one of these is messed up. I was pretty sure it wasn't the take off EXB towers i got from JRC( I think that is right, Jennysrc). Only the front was bent, but I went ahead and replaced front and rear. After the EXB towers and only running on 4s everything was good for about 2 weeks.

Then I bit the bullet and picked up two 3s batteries to run 6s, and wow this thing is a whole new animal. I will admit, air control is much improved on 6s and I can land better(most of the time).

That brings us to last weekend, Thursday night to be exact, and I had a bad landing from about 12-15 feet up and popped and steering turnbuckle end. Ordered some replacements and fixed. Also added some snap rings to servo saver to try to tighten steering up. Charged a 4s battery just to check steering and make sure everything and see if steering is improved. Test failed. Full right turn, barely and left. Throw the Kraton back on the bench and start to investigate. Even with servo disconnected, steering binds turning to the left. Started tearing things apart, checking as I go, nothing changes, I eventually pulled the ackerman plate off to see if it bent, and low and behold its slightly arched. To the internet we go and now a M2C ackerman is on the way to pair with a new amazon special servo. I straightened my original ackerman, just to get going, put everything back together and still binding on left turn. Upon closer inspection, my upper a arms don't look the same. Get ready to order some new ones and decided to look again. Dummy me put one on upside down. Flip it and all is good. Now just waiting for servo and new ackerman plate, but i know I'm gonna have to drive it before all that comes in.

And because everyone knows you can't have just one rc, a couple pics of the fleet.

 

[Slim64684]

Small update, servo should be here tomorrow and m2c ackerman on Thursday. I also picked up some e6000 last night to armor the Kraton and the Granite. Tonight it looked like rain so I decided to start on the Kraton. Man that is a messy process. Thought I would be smart on put a rubber glove on the hand I was going to use to smear it on with, no glove on the other hand. Big mistake. After I used 2 of the 3 tubes I bought on the Kraton, I decided to hold off on the Granite tonight and pick another tube up tomorrow.

Need to trim the tape after it dries but wanted to make sure everything was covered.

And my hand I thought was gonna stay clean. O well lesson learned.

 

[Woodentop]

Agreed. It's a horrible process, I used plastidip at the weekend.... in the house....let's just say I wasn't very popular with Mrs woodentop... good job on yours though

 

[Slim64684]

New servo showed up today and it finally stopped raining so I threw the servo in and charged some packs. After not running the Kraton for a week and only running the Granite, I forgot how much more of a beast the Kraton is.

And am I the only one who has no problems learning to do backflips and double backflips with the Granite, but doing the same with the Kraton scares me?

Agreed. It's a horrible process, I used plastidip at the weekend.... in the house....let's just say I wasn't very popular with Mrs woodentop... good job on yours though

Thanks, ran it today and it defiantly seems stronger. Much different sound when I inevitably land on the lid.

 

[Slim64684]

Good news bad news today. My M2C ackerman showed up today so I was able to get the steering completely today.

Bad news: Last night while doing my normal "bash in the yard to relax" I started to hear a funny noise coming from the car. It was an extra "click" when i was driving. Picked the car up, hit the throttle a bit no noise, back one the ground, noise again. Wanting to err on the safe side, I took it inside and parked her. Spent this afternoon tearing it apart and finally pinned the noise down to the front diff. Pulled the diff apart and found what I think is the issue.

3 teeth rounded off. Only thing I can think of what happened was one bad jump I did my best to save and I might have still been full throttle when I landed. Thought I was off but maybe not. LHS says they have some, so I guess I'm headed back there tomorrow.

 

[Slim64684]

Diff gear was a no go at the hobby store, but luckily I was able to get one ordered from amazon for delivery tomorrow with a whopping 12 mins to spare before delivery would have been Monday. Not all was lost though, my front and rear diff fluid did show up today, so I was able to get the rear diff fluid completely changed out to 30k and put back in the truck. Front diff is torn apart and drained just waiting on the new spur to show up tomorrow.

My Jennys order showed up also. We now have exb front and rear center braces and an exb aluminum servo mount.

And one last goody from todays deliveries, two new 3s Zeee batteries to share between the kraton and granite. I still need to change the connectors to ec5 but I really don't feel like doing it today so they just get a storage charge.

So just to recap, I currently have a partially torn apart kraton sittling on my kitchen counter. Some upgrades have been completed, some are still waiting on parts to be delivered. Hopefully by next weekend I will have all the upgrades completed. When we are done we will have

diff fluid 50k/200k/30k
m2c ackerman
m2c tower brace
m2c servo horn
exb towers
exb center braces
exb servo mount
DS3235 servo

Hopefully after that I'll be good to go for a bit. Wrenching is fun, but not quite as much as driving. And my "street bandit" is a completely different animal and fun in its own way, I cant really drive it at the house do to the road being crap here.

 

[BurninTrees]

Eesh, you'll want to put on some gloves when messing with E6000, shoegoo or any of these other extreme adhesives. You should checkout Gorilla Glue Contruction adhesives, ive done 2 bodies with it and it worked very well. It also comes in a fairly large tube and pretty easy to work with considering what we're doing with it lol.

https://www.gorillatough.com/product/gorilla-max-strength-construction-adhesive-clear/

 

[Slim64684]

Eesh, you'll want to put on some gloves when messing with E6000, shoegoo or any of these other extreme adhesives. You should checkout Gorilla Glue Contruction adhesives, ive done 2 bodies with it and it worked very well. It also comes in a fairly large tube and pretty easy to work with considering what we're doing with it lol.

https://www.gorillatough.com/product/gorilla-max-strength-construction-adhesive-clear/

I've learned my lesson on the e6000/ shoe goo. 2 gloves are needed. Just did my granite body with mesh and shoe goo last night. I have to say I prefer the shoe goo over e6000. Seems a bit easier to work with.

 

[Slim64684]

Small update, front diff reassembled with 50k oil. M2C rear tower brace and servo arm installed.

Got some new batteries. A couple Zeee 6s 5200mah 100c

I also was able to successfully backflip. All it took was a little more speed hitting my ramp and a little liquid encouragement. Only problem with hitting the ramp faster is that leads to more damage.

Fast forward a week of me running at least one pack a day through it on the repaired ramp and more breakage. Cracked the front rear upper hinge pin mount. No problem, we'll upgrade that to the exb version.

Fast forward a few more days and I broke the ramp again. So a new ramp was in order. Original was 40"wide by 16" tall. New one is 48" wide and 33" tall. Both have a launch angle on 45 deg.

I was procrastinating changing my center diff fluid because the car was in one piece and I didn't want to trade run time for wrench time. Tonight however, the rain came so no running was going to happen, so center diff time. Drained , shimmed and refilled with 300k fluid.

Its susposed to rain again tomorrow so hopefully I'll be able to trun it again Thursday.

 

[theekorr]

Which m2c servo horn did you use?

 

[Slim64684]

Which m2c servo horn did you use?

https://m2cracing.net/arrma-v5-notorious/361-m2c6723-tekno-steering-servo-wide-body-25-mm-long.html

 

[Slim64684]

I've been busy since I posted last. Couple small wrecks

But luckily I had all the spare parts I needed on hand to fix it. Bulkhead and shock rod end. The next day I had it looking like this.

In the middle of all that mayhem I upgraded the fan on the esc because I broke 2 of the blades and added a yeah heatsink and dual fan combo. Also switched to 15 tooth pinion upped punch to 6.

After the broken bulkhead crash I dropped back to the 12 tooth. That leads us to last Thursday when I did this

My m2c order showed up today along with the 13 and 14 tooth pinions I ordered.

So after 3 hours, 3 beers, and 2 smoke breaks I'm here

Also a thank you to @Lovestricken for the wing mount. Old one wasn't broken, but I had so much torn apart figured I'd go ahead and throw it on.

So just incase anyone is wondering, yes that is my kitchen counter, yes it's going to spend the night like that, and yes I made sure everything that needed loctite was done tonight. Also put on the 13 tooth pinion. We'll see how that works.

 

[3d-rc.myshopify.com]

So far coming along good. I have had many of those nights. Or the one more part nights and next thing you know the sun is coming up lol. Looks good.

 

[Slim64684]

So far coming along good. I have had many of those nights. Or the one more part nights and next thing you know the sun is coming up lol. Looks good.

I'm done for the night. Tomorrow I should be able to finish getting it put back together, set droop and bash.

 

[Slim64684]

All put back together, droop set and double checked I got servo and esc plugs back in correct. Charge a battery while I get some other stuff done, and the sky opens and a small river down the street. Still early though. Maybe it will dry out a bit before it gets too dark to run.