Maxx Bling - Brushless E-maxx

 
 

 
 

I first built this truck in 2004, its undergone many changes over the years. What started out as a shiney shelf queen quickly turned into a quest for the most powerful, best handling emaxx.

 
 
March 04
After finally getting enough power in the truck the rear diff has decided to leave the building so I have ordered (reluctantly) the unlimited engineering 8 spider diff kit, the biggest they do. Sadly UE was a little un helpful in that they wouldn't let me order from them as Im outside the USA, so I had to deal with HSNJ. The gear ratio is now a little lower than before, I was running 21/70, ive gone up to 24/70, but I think I will have to change the spur for a 66 I have as it lifts the front a little to easily in 2nd gear and at that speed you have to be quick to catch it before the wind gets under the truck and flips it.
17th April 04
Ive managed to get a 60 tooth RC10GT spur gear on using two sets of slipper pegs and the standard traxxas slipper plates. Looks ok, I think it'll hold up ok, gonna use a 23 pinion which will be the same as 25/66, ish. Also I had spaced one of the plates on the ally transmission case with a washer on each screw as it seemed a little tight to me, but I have now made a proper gasket out of plastic (pvc) only 1mm thick but enough to make it run free.
21st April 04 Got the idlers in and rebuilt the truck, just waiting on the pinion, although I can test run it with my 21t, just be a bit undergeared.
18th May 04
Better weather here now, ive been running the truck quite a bit and its been ok, except for today, geared it 24/60 (very high) and did some high speed passes. As it gets up to speed the tyres ballon and increases the speed still further making it nearly uncontrollable, on slowing down the massive weight transfer is too much and truck starts to spin. This may be solved by suspension changes at the front end (thicker oil most likely) but not really an issue as we wont be going this quick again. On the 4th or 5th pass the speed controller decided it had had enough and poped, fizzed, smoked and then caught fire. I would have hoped it'd thermalled before that but there you go. So ive sent it back to schulze and ordered another, this will be conservatively geared on 60/22 - 66/24 which seems to be ok, but forgive me if i give it a cooling down period every 3 minutes.
7th June 04
Well I got the new speedo through and put it back on the 24/66 gearing, a safe bet me thinks, Gave it a quick blast up the road, god its quick, no smoke either so a successful test run all in all. I will be changing some elements of the truck soon in the shape of UE suspension and GA bulkheads, which means the old stuff will be up for grabs!
23rd June 04
Got another new speedo through and also the old one looking a little worst for wear. Needless to say schulze laughed at me when I mentioned the word "warranty" claiming that de-soldering the battery plugs was wrong and the motor conection was too wobbly. Not much I could do about this really and to be honest it had been in a couple of major crashes so I bit the bullet and bought a new one. Ran the truck and managed to break a UE diff outdrive, hmm.... so waiting on a new one of them now, not a lot, about £10. Changed the arms for UE and also GA bulkheads, should be a bit stronger, pics soon!
11th July 04 The plastic pinion gear has decided to break up on me, so ive changed gearing to 21/60 as the 21 is a metal pinion.
25th July 04 It seems landing of jumps puts a lot of strain on bits, one of the wheels rounded out in the week but I think this was general wear and tear. I was jumping the truck 4-5 feet in the air today and after the 8th or so landing the spur gear left the building. I think this is half due to the shock and half to the heat of the motor, the pinion gear was really hot, seems like it'd melted the spur gear! So im now looking for a small metal spur gear or possibly the mod 1 gears as that has a metal spur.
30th July 04 Added some more video's, my clutch is the new weakest link next to the wheels, ive rounded out 2 of the rear wheels now but they last ages and are pretty cheap. The clutch on the other hand has to be done up real tight as with any slip it seems to get too hot and starts to melt stuff. The motor get so hot after a continous run (7-8 minutes) that the pinion starts to melt the spur, its not good to push it this hard so I tend to let it cool for a minute or so half way through my run. The other alterrnative would be to gear down a bit, but thats just too boring! Ive decided to try the Strobe slipper with the mod 1 gears, wont stop the hot pinion problem but it will allow for a little bit of slip without the thing melting.
24th Augt 04 The truck has been running well, I have a new servo and some UE Racer X suspension to go on, then I need to strengthen the wheelie bar as its taken a bit of a pounding recently, a bit like my shocks!
22nd Sept 04 Havn't driven it much but I have got a fantastic little device!!! No more need for a receiver battery pack! just put between 6.5 and 40volts into this and it gives you 6v @ 3 amps out! is that cool or what, its called a UBEC and you can get them from www.koolflightsystems.com

14th Oct 04

The UBEC thingy does its job very well, the servo's are getting a good 6volts under load unlike the AA's I was using so my Airtronics servo is working much better. The only thing is I had it mounted under the receiver at first, like touching it, and the "noise" from it was creating major interference. So ive moved it to up by the speedo and now it works flawlessly. Ive now got 4 UE racer shocks on with 80wt in to reduce weight on the truck, I was worried about them not coping with jumps in this heavy truck but they work better than the 8 integy ones if anything.
25th Oct 04 Happy with the 4 shock setup, just tuning the suspension to work a bit better. I broke another wheel the other day!!! The hex hub spins in the wheel and rounds the hex shaped hole out. So I bought new wheels and drilled through the side where the hub hex sits and the tap the whole and screw through the wheel and metal hex hub...... clear as mud, here are the pics 1 2 3.
3rd Dec 04 The Weather is bad, trying to drive it at much as I can but its sooooo wet out there. I bought some "show off" wheels that i'll probably never run, 40 series alloys! mmmmmmm lovely!
8th Dec 04 I put on a set of 40 series bow ties and my god does it handle, I no longer look like im just hanging on to the transmitter! It goes just where you point it, plus they are 100 grams lighter each, as a result they dont baloon and throw the ratio out when you get to high speeds. Its quicker too due to less rotating mass. Im gonna get some new video up this weekend.
5th Mar 05 After speaking with my friend Rene, I have decided to try and do away with the transmission and run with a single gear. To be honest I can go 2 or 3 runs without using first gear so I dont think I will miss it, I bought this ofna centre section this also gives the option of running a mechanical break and taking load off the speedo. I can also achieve exactly the same 2nd gear ratio by using a 65 spur and a 13T pinion, of course in Mod 1 pitch.
26th Mar 05 I've done some major work on the center of the truck, I got hold of an ofna dominator slipper unit and mounted it in the middle of the truck. It was fairly straight forward, only needed to make 5/6 plates up out of 6061 and then polish it to death! Im waiting on pinion gears and driveshafts then it will be ready to roll. The performance increase will im sure be noticable. If this proves solid after testing I will be selling my transmission and ultra gears etc. The motor mount I have made is also bolted to the centre section and has less flex than the gorilla mount it replaces. Worth noting also that so long as you use a 51t spur with a 10T pinion the need be NO permanent modification to the chassis, it can be put back to stock at any time, this is a bolt on upgrade. all pictures are below (10, 12, 13 T pinions in mod 1 are available here)
9th Apr 05 Driveshafts are here, installed and test run seems fine, more testing to follow with videos and then the old transmission will be for sale.
20th Apr 05 Transmission is SOLD, sorry to everyone who missed out. This is a sign that the new system is working ok, a slight f*ck up with the clutch too tight, oh yeh and i had a bit of a crash too! no major damage, just a skid plate and my pride! Was running 10/51 gearing but this was giving slightly under what it was so now trying 12/56
30th April 05 Finally painted the new shell, came out just fine, went for the same design, its almost a trade mark now! running 12/56 gearing, still ok.
20th May 05 The new transmission is running well, 56/12 gearing is good, the 56 spur is from ofna's 2 speed kit and is not a direct fit onto the dominator slipper. The holes are slightly out of line, but the main problem is mounting the gear close enough to the motor, I had to turn the slipper assembly round and make a spacer for the gear so it sits flat against the slipper assembly. Ive made a section below with pics just of this.
7th Aug 05 The new transmission is solid, managed to strip a spur gear when the screws came loose, my fault. New gear and superglued screws seem solid now. Had another wheel buckle at the hub, going to switch to 23mm hub wheels and see how they hold up. New video is below!
10th Nov 05 Some fairly big changes are going to take place on the truck, Ive ditched the GA bulkheads and UE shock towers in favour of the very sexy VBS setup. Also, im sick of my speedo being stuck on the top of the trucklike an after thought so im gonna be moving stuff round and redesigning a lot of the single speed transmission so I can fit it under the rear propshaft.
21st Nov 05 Got the speedo mounted under the rear prop eventually. had the old UBEC unit sitting under the motor which looked odd, so I now have a smaller UBEC from here, all mounted now, just need to trim the top deck.
November 2008 Im still here! Now running 18 cells for huge power, added a fan to stop the speedo thermaling and swapped the airtronics servo for a hitec titanium geared version, 333 oz/in of torque compared to the Airtronics 200 oz/in. Also redesigning the lower chassis plate to take all 18 cells flat.
April 2009 Finally making the switch to a center diff, the slipper unit is proving to be unreliable, its either too tight or too loose, the extra powe has highlighted this. I made an adaptor to allow the 56 and 60t spur to fit the centre diff, this will let me gear it a bit easier.
May 2009 Finally made a new chassis of my own design, got the motor much lower and nearer the middle of the truck
July 2009 Got sick of the schulze overheating all the time and got my self a Mamba monster pro, unfourtunatly due to it not thermalling I didnt notice the motor getting waaaay too hot. So the bigmaxximum is no more, it demagnetised, i have turned it into a heatsink for the new motor. The bigmaxx was 2150kv, this is a bit high, for my gearing 12/56 was high but any lower and the teeth tear of the spur. The Neu replacement is a 1515 2.5d, this is 1650kv and allows me more scope to gear it.
Aug 2009 Initial test runs are good, started geared 12/56 now up to 14/56 for 42mph. Motor getting a bit hot in there so cut some vents in the front "grill" might have to fit a fan somewhere, dont want anither cooked motor!
Feb 2011 Just finished the latest chassis for ultra low CG and lipo fitment.
 
 

Development

 

 

 
 

Center Slipper Conversion

 

2011 Chassis

 

 

 
     
 

Videos

Emaxx - Gravel

Plettenberg

April 04

10.7mb
11.6mb

Emaxx - loving the grass

Plettenberg

August 04

14.7mb

Emaxx - Jumping at the park

Plettenberg

December 04

10.8mb
10.4mb
10.9mb

Emaxx - Grass and Tarmac

Plettenberg - new tranny

April 05

15.3mb

Emaxx - Ashridge

Plettenberg - new tranny

May 05

11.6mb
9.4mb

Emaxx - School

Plettenberg - new tranny

Aug 05

16.1mb

Emaxx - Ashridge

Plettenberg - VBS

June 06

30.5mb

Emaxx - Office

Plettenberg - VBS

July 06

57.0mb

Emaxx - Park

Plettenberg - VBS - 18 cells

Oct 08

23mb

Emaxx - Park

Plettenberg - VBS - 18 cells

Nov 08

26mb

Emaxx - Park

Neu 1515 2.5D - VBS - 18 cells geared 12/56

Aug 09

you tube

Emaxx - Park

Neu 1515 2.5D - VBS - 18 cells geared 14/56

Aug 09

you tube
 
2011
   
 

Emaxx - Park

Neu 1515 2.5D - New Chassis - 6s LIPO

June 2011

you tube