jonUF02
Active Member
Thought I would start my own thread for this since there was some initial discussion hijacking another gearing thread. I wanted a slow RC for my 3.5yr old girl to play with. She keeps asking me if I got her a race car yet. I was on the fence between a crawler like TRX4 or Gen8 vs. a Granite 4x4 and make it very slow somehow.
I decided on the Granite route, and I wanted the 3s platform rather than the Mega for the extra durability upgrades, and room for future skills growth.
Today I picked up a Granite 3s BLX slightly used for $200. It's the latest model, guy said he had it only a week, but he's a crawler guy. Exactly what I did with an SCX10 that I bought once on a great sale. Ran it once in the yard and decided slow sucks. This came with the box and everything original, except he put in some Futaba servo which he said was power hungry, and probably needed a stronger voltage BEC, and changed the battery connection to Deans, which is fine with me because the 2s battery I'm going to use already had Deans on it.
I will likely check the Futaba servo and see if it has some value, because I have the ADS-15 from my 4s Outcast that I never used due to immediate swap to a Savox I had, so that should be fine for this slow runner project.
I played with the truck very shortly on 2s and changing the radio settings to 75 and 50%. It's still a bit too fast on 50%. I don't know what the complaints are with this Spektrum radio, because it all seemed to function normally for me.
Thoughts to make it slower - first thought was to put in an 11T pinion and adjustable motor mount, maybe on 50% remote that would be slow enough. Pro- easy to change it to 75 or 100% when bigger kids want to play.
Second thought - I have a Castle Sidewinder SV3 ESC in one of my other cars. I know I can go in with the Castle Link software and tune this pretty much any way I want. Set a max power % from the ESC rather than radio. I also think drag brake would be good for learning, it will stop if she just lets go of the throttle. I'll probably start with a pretty high drag brake setting, also minimal reverse power. This is the route I'm going to try first, as it will only cost me a few bucks to wire in the SV3 with the rest of the car stock. If I like it, looks like buying another Sidewinder SCT or SV3 esc will be about even money with the value of the BLX100 ESC. (Anyone want to trade???) I've always been a fan of Castle exactly for this reason of infinite software tuning. I don't know of any other option that has such flexible software.
Once I get the speed and handling where I like it, I'm probably buying the body from Proline for the Stampede. My LHS has the new Z71 body in stock. For paint, I'm thinking a bit of the Spazz Stix Amethyst Purple Pearl for some sparkle backed with a hot pink and white with blacked out windows and bed.
I decided on the Granite route, and I wanted the 3s platform rather than the Mega for the extra durability upgrades, and room for future skills growth.
Today I picked up a Granite 3s BLX slightly used for $200. It's the latest model, guy said he had it only a week, but he's a crawler guy. Exactly what I did with an SCX10 that I bought once on a great sale. Ran it once in the yard and decided slow sucks. This came with the box and everything original, except he put in some Futaba servo which he said was power hungry, and probably needed a stronger voltage BEC, and changed the battery connection to Deans, which is fine with me because the 2s battery I'm going to use already had Deans on it.
I will likely check the Futaba servo and see if it has some value, because I have the ADS-15 from my 4s Outcast that I never used due to immediate swap to a Savox I had, so that should be fine for this slow runner project.
I played with the truck very shortly on 2s and changing the radio settings to 75 and 50%. It's still a bit too fast on 50%. I don't know what the complaints are with this Spektrum radio, because it all seemed to function normally for me.
Thoughts to make it slower - first thought was to put in an 11T pinion and adjustable motor mount, maybe on 50% remote that would be slow enough. Pro- easy to change it to 75 or 100% when bigger kids want to play.
Second thought - I have a Castle Sidewinder SV3 ESC in one of my other cars. I know I can go in with the Castle Link software and tune this pretty much any way I want. Set a max power % from the ESC rather than radio. I also think drag brake would be good for learning, it will stop if she just lets go of the throttle. I'll probably start with a pretty high drag brake setting, also minimal reverse power. This is the route I'm going to try first, as it will only cost me a few bucks to wire in the SV3 with the rest of the car stock. If I like it, looks like buying another Sidewinder SCT or SV3 esc will be about even money with the value of the BLX100 ESC. (Anyone want to trade???) I've always been a fan of Castle exactly for this reason of infinite software tuning. I don't know of any other option that has such flexible software.
Once I get the speed and handling where I like it, I'm probably buying the body from Proline for the Stampede. My LHS has the new Z71 body in stock. For paint, I'm thinking a bit of the Spazz Stix Amethyst Purple Pearl for some sparkle backed with a hot pink and white with blacked out windows and bed.
