Mad Ax
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Posts posted by Mad Ax
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If my memory is correct, there should be a pushrod that connects the servo to the 5th wheel latch, so you can drive away from the trailer after you have extended the legs. The latch is on the 5th wheel, so the pushrod can have an effect on the angle of the 5th wheel - but I may be remembering it incorrectly, and my only truck with the Tamiya remote leg kit installed is buried away in its storage box so I can't check.
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This truck only has a single speed transmission and a 55 turn motor, so it's not exactly speedy. But that's OK because neither am I. I don't think I've run that long or fast since I left school nearly 30 years ago, especially not on top of a 6 mile walk. But we made it to the highest point just in time to catch the sun melting into the horizon.
Unfortunately I had only brought my phone (I've been using Scaletra recently and I don't think I can add photos later on the web like I can with Strava) and it doesn't have a sunset mode, so I couldn't get the best colours.
So, how was it?
In a word, fab. The truck drives like a dream considering it's made of leftovers from other builds, it could do with some stiffer rear springs to counter the weight of the trailer but it drives nice enough as it is. It wanders a little, but it held up to some fairly intense abuse as it was bounced over roots and rocks with a heavy trailer hanging off the back.
I do need to file some chamfers onto the trailer chassis, as it gets hung up over roots. A few times it got so stuck I had to pull it out. Some chamfers on the chassis rails should help it to slide up over the roots instead of catching on them.
Lack of traction could be an issue in some places - weight in the trailer is the problem but I don't want to add more weight in the truck to counter it, it's heavy enough and they are only FTX Outback 2.0 axles, so famously not the toughest on the market.
But, seriously, it is a joy to have around me, and the trailer makes everything so much easier. I'll be making a trailer for the Scania when I have time.
We did 6.2 miles in just under 2.5 hours, we saw 3 other human beings and 2 dogs, we climbed over 400 feet and we had a blast.
More to follow - I've spent every spare minute of the last few days trying to finish the lighting loom so I can demo the Arduino unit to the Scaletra team at the UK Scaler Nationals on Saturday. I've put nearly 3 hours into it tonight and it's still not done. I've got a dozen photos still to share but it's past my bedtime, so I'll continue this tomorrow
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We're back on the lane at last. Here I was lucky enough to sight 2 other human beings, making that a grand total of 3, which is pretty good going. Unfortunately a bank of cloud has rolled in to obscure the sunset.
You see where it says KEEP OUT? We're not allowed in there.
I diverted off the lane to do the final part of the walk on the fields, and it was at this point that the clouds moved and I could see the sun. That grey square to the right of the sun is the water tower where the van is parked, and it's the highest point around. Although it looks like the sun has already set, if I can make it to the van I might get one final glimpse of the sun and some awesome post-walk photos.
So, at this point, we ran.
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This lane leading down into a copse is hard work on foot - it's steeper than it looks and very rocky. All the soil here is clay, and when it's wet it's like walking on soap. The truck managed it without any problems, though.
At the far side of the copse there is a long gentle climb on a gravel path, and then we reach a long climb to take us back up to the lane on which the van is parked. It's hidden behind a hill from this angle, but the van is roughly underneath the sun.
It's looking like we might get a good sunset.
The view back down the hill to the old derelict barn reminds me of the game STALKER. I was taking photos here a couple of years ago when it was misty, and I was expecting to see an anomaly around the next corner. I made sure to drink some vodka just to be on the safe side.
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At the end of the lane we join an open field, and I was thinking I would have to stop to clear some dry grass from the trailer wheel. I took my eye off it for a brief moment and it dropped down into a rut and turned over. This was the first and only proper crass of the night. If I had a winch I would probably have used it with some posts to right the trailer (although a couple of burly 1:10 scale wrestlers could turn that trailer over by hand) but I have neither, so I invoked the Hand of God.
Disaster averted, we continue on our epic journey as the light begins to fade.
It was around here when I saw my first fellow human being of the evening. A jogger came the other way.
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We join up with another old lane, which I often do as part of the Whole 8. In fact the rest of tonight's route would make up the final segment of the Whole 8.
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We made it back out of the ravine, but after 15 minutes of trailfinding, we had to go back the way we came - there wasn't a way out of the forest that wasn't choked by leaves.
We took a different route onto one of the old access lanes.
From there, we were able to get into a woodland section with a good path. Normally I do this route in the opposite direction, as part of my favourite Whole 8 route.
Out of the woods and onto what I call The Ridge, we have a fantastic view down into the valley. It was a hazy night, lots of dust and possibly some fog in the air, which led to a feeling of wistful melancholy.
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Since I wasn't on my usual route, I could take some detours to try to find new trails. This narrow passage leads into a 1:10 scale forest.
Shot from the other side.
My plan of getting my entire way through the walk without having to carry the truck started to fall apart here. I drove down a steep ravine, but the truck doesn't have enough traction to get up the other side. It would probably be fine without the trailer, but there's too much weight hanging out the back.
I couldn't get back the way I came in, either. This is a job for the winch, but I haven't fitted one yet, so I had to use my tow strap.
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Once the truck was officially driveable, I could use my limited remaining time to hack in some lights really quickly. I didn't have time to make a full complete loom, so I just hacked in 2 wires for the headlights and 2 to connect to the red LEDs in the trailer, so at least I have some bear minimum lightage on the trails.
It was 17:20 hundred hours PM in the evening on Saturday afternoon by the time I was ready to set off on my walk. I was at my usual walking spot where I've run the Scania a lot before, but since it was late, I decided not to do the full 8 mile loop.
Trailer contains 3 batteries, a spare set of handset batteries, a portable toolkit, zipties, spare screws and nuts, and a towstrap made from a bootlace and an Asiatees carabiner just in case the truck needs towing home.
Not my usual route, but lovely short grass for the FJ to bounce along on. Even with no batteries in the car, the chassis is heavy and the springs are soft, so it pitches and rolls and wallows a lot, which makes it look so scale when it's driving.
There's a lot of weight in the trailer, which lifts the front slightly and takes some authority away from the front axle, so it does have a tendency to wander a little. I also forgot to adjust the steering rod length before I set off, so I had the trim cranked right over as far as it would go.
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Next, I started making the loom that will hook the breakout to the Arduino. As you can see, I was extremely cautious when I connected all 8 male pins to the wires. This is a fiddly operation, so I was somewhat annoyed when I had to give all 8 of them a gender reassignment.
Loom loomed.
At that point, I took a break from LEDs since I really needed to work on a battery hookup. The plan is to run 3 x 3S batteries in the trailer, like this.
I don't have a lot of battery cable left, but I kept these useful offcuts. They worked out just the right length.
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Saturday was another workshop day, so after a lazy start I got straight back onto converting the FJ into a hillwalking truck. Since the weather was nice, and I hadn't had a proper walk for a while, the plan was to get as much done on the truck as possible, then take it out for a test drive.
My first (and last) plan was to get the lights working. The Arduino can't handle the amperage of more than about 4 LEDs at a time, so for a full lighting set I need to trigger all the lights with transistors. This breakout board connects the Arduino pin for each of the different lights to the base of an NPN transistor, via a 2.7KOhm resistor to prevent over-currenting the Arduino pin. The collector of the transistor is connected to the negative side of the LED circuit, and the emitter is connected to ground. When +7.4V is passed through the positive side of the LED circuit, and a current is applied on the Arduino pin, the transistor completes the circuit and the LEDs come on.
I was running low on NPN transistors, I had to desolder these from a prototype of the Scania's breakout board with took extra time.
The back of the breakout board is messy, but it's the only way I could get into all the emitters to connect them to ground.
Looping the resistors over to connect to the base.
Now adding coloured wires the collectors. Each colour represents a different light circuit.
Now another set of pins to connect to all the LED circuits.
Added some hot glue to seal it all and prevent the bare metal shorting in the event the board gets crushed.
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Did you set the 5th wheel servo to neutral before you connected it to the 5th wheel? Did the servo horn line up neatly on the splines or did you have to rotate it slightly? It may be that you need to adjust the pushrod slightly to get the 5th wheel to sit flat. You want it so that when a trailer is installed (and the 5th wheel is flat), the locking latch is fully closed so the trailer can't slip off, and the tongue that operates the remote legs is fully retracted.
You could adjust the rod a little more so that the at-rest position is angled slightly downwards (towards the back) which would be more normal for a full size truck with no trailer attached, as long as when the 5th wheel is pushed flat it doesn't cause the latch to unlock or the tongue to extent.
However I would avoid doing any of this until the MFU is fully connected and switched on, so you can determine where the true at-rest position of the servo is.
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We had this issue with the control motors for Iconic Cup in M-chassis a few years back. Off the top of my head I can't recall what brand they were - the later Team Powers were fine, but the earlier ones had short shafts and it was hard to get a pinion on. Some of my pinions were quite wide, I had to replace them with narrower ones. It was pretty annoying that the motor chosen as the mandatory control motor for the class was so hard to fit in the class's most popular chassis.
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10 hours ago, alvinlwh said:
Then I got a ToolkitRC M4 Pocket. It offers storage charge, reverse charging and XT60 input.
I have one of these too - a very neat bit of kit, and it feels good to use the charge in a LiPo that would otherwise be wasted to top off my phone, charge my camera, or power any other USB device.
It is kinda finicky though - sometimes it won't charge anything and it's not clear why. It's probably due to one of the cells reaching a cutoff voltage, but since it doesn't explicitly state this anywhere on the screen, it's hard to know.
I like the look of the SkyRC one.
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3 hours ago, sosidge said:
They're also something you can use for other hobbies/holidays that might need an extra power source.
This is actually a great point. My 500W Awanfi is small enough to fit in my (admittedly large) laptop rucksack. My laptop battery only lasts around an hour with the screen turned down, but I can run it off the power bank for a few hours at full brightness. I spend a lot of time in hotel restaurants that don't always have wall plugs, but I can work all night with the power bank.
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I haven't noticed problems with brakes on my 1060s, although I have heard some racers say the brakes are more effective when the ESC is set to F/B than F/B/R - I'm not sure why this would be. F/B is mandatory for racing, as reverse it not allowed.
That said, I don't often use the 1060 in my race cars and I don't drive the 1060 back-to-back with other ESCs, so I might not notice if the brakes are weaker.
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Work out how many races you will be doing in a day, and how many races you get from a battery, and how many batteries you have.
Also work out what extra electrical equipment you need. Usually someone with a generator will have a kettle; pit lights can be battery operated.
Tyre warmers are a big drain on your power source and may dictate what sort of power you need.
I can generally get 2 races out of my batteries, so if I arrive at the track with 3 fully-charged batteries, I can do 4 heats and a final without needing a charger. However, since I'm often racing at 2-day events, I'll be topping up the batteries throughout Saturday. Once the first 2 heats are over on Sunday, I'll be rationing out what I have left so I can pack my charging equipment away early, and all my packs will be at least partially discharged, so I can wait until Monday to storage-charge them (I often don't get home until silly o'clock on Sunday evening and don't want to mess around unpacking chargers and batteries).
I've also always been a charge-the-night-before kind of racer. I know the more dedicated racers are arrive-early-charge-on-the-day-discharge-before-they-leave types, but my batteries seem to last me a good few years, so I'm not worried.
My experience from years of racing:
Car batteries - you will see a few people popping their bonnets and attaching crocodile clips to the starter battery. When you realise how little charging you may need for a single day's racing, this doesn't seem like a bad idea. However it's worth keeping some jump leads with you (somebody will need them someday, even if you don't) and this is a problem if your pitting area is not near your car.
Leisure battery - heavy, awkward to carry, but effective. Should get a few seasons out of a battery. I replace the leisure battery in my camper every 2 years or so, and I used to keep the old one for racing. There are some "smart" leisure batteries that have a built in monitor which sends the capacity and other data to an app on your phone. At some events I pit directly from my van - I sit under the tailgate and have banana ports installed under the seat for easy power, however at some tracks the parking area is a long way from the track / pitting area so there's lots of walking, can't hear the announcer, can't chat to other racers etc...
Power bank - these are really popular now, probably see more of these trackside than anything else. People oven bring them to indoor meets as they're easier than rolling out an extension lead to the venue power supply. I have a 500W Awanfi with a 24Ah capacity. It can run battery charger and tyre warmers for a 1 day event (practice, 4 heats, 1 final). Needs charging overnight before it can handle a 2nd day, which is a problem at camping events.
Generator - not as expensive as they were, in fact can be cheaper than a power bank, although how long the unbranded ones will last, I couldn't say. They are overkill unless a group of you are going to an event, and you can all share it; I feel a bit self-conscious firing up my generator just so I can run my tyre warmers. Mine is a decade-old Honda, it's smokey and runs rough but it's a living, breathing thing, which is so much more fun than a power bank. Requires maintenance, stinks your car out, needs fuel and is a theft-magnet. You'll need to drain the fuel and carb if you're not using it for a few months, as modern fuel is horrible.
Borrow someone else's power - as mentioned above, usually a few people will bring petrol generators to the site. They output waaaay more power than required, so generally people will let you plug in an extension lead. I always offer petrol money but the offer has never been accepted; likewise I have never accepted an offer of money to borrow my generator, although I do accept biscuits, cookies and cakes, and I will allow myself to be included in the club burger cook-off.
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Body on ready for a test drive.
Test-drive complete.
It all worked perfectly well, apart from the steering servo needing some adjustment. I'll do that tomorrow.
I've got a free day tomorrow, so my morning plan will be to charge some batteries, hook up some headlights, plum a reverse light into the trailer, and make an extension cable so I can put 3 batteries in the trailer.
Tomorrow afternoon will involve finding somewhere to go for a walk, and seeing how well the truck manages the terrain.
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Of course, no truck can go hillwalking without cruise control and all the other neat features on my Arduino controller unit, so my next plan was to rig up a prototype for testing. I grabbed a spare Arduino Mega, updated it with the latest version, and hooked it up with patch cables. I had to pull an FS-iA6B out of the MTX-1 because the iA6 in the FJ doesn't support PPM.
It all works as it should.
Next plan was to make a proper loom to plug into the Arduino, and also provide basic lighting. This truck doesn't have any winches installed, nor does it have a 2-speed transmission or and LEDs at all (yet), so I started with a simple loom just for ESC, steering, and radio, with a 2-pin plug to provide power to the LEDs later.
Loom fabricated and installed. Arduino held down with a cable tie.
Working on the bench.
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And there you have it. One vintage FJ with an F150 trailer.
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The trailer wants to sort of go about here, but the 1.9 wheels on the trailer look way too big.
I borrowed the 1.55s off the Budget Bruiser (which also hasn't been run in ages and would make a great walking truck if I could get this trailer on it) - it now looks way more scale.
Fabricated a tow hitch.
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It's never quite sat flush - probably my roll cage isn't perfectly straight - but this should help with that.
Made a bumper from aluminium bar.
Body still doesn't sit straight. I'll worry about that another time.
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Fixing the driveshaft on this truck a few weeks ago has renewed my interest in doing some trails with it, especially as my hillwalking truck is out of action waiting for a new propshaft. This truck would be the perfect donor for a second hillwalking conversion, except it's already heavy and undersprung, so it couldn't handle the extra battery packs and electronics needed for 8 miles plus. But that's OK - I have a perfectly good trailer which can handle the extra weight, I just need to make a tow hitch!
I finished work early today, so I got straight into the workshop to look at how this truck could be modified for trailer duties.
Obligatory pre-work shot.
Rear of the chassis has a flat section for a bumper to mount on.
I've long-wondered what to do with the lights. One option is to cut this entire strip off the body and attach it to my new bumper.
However, I went a different way. I just cut a section out of the body.
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So, how did it go?
Well, after 2.5 minutes of driving around the garden, the motor was pretty gosh-darned hot again. It seems to be a motor that likes to run hot. I experimented with a few different fan positions until I found one where the air was blowing directly down through the vent holes - I could feel the heat coming out of the vent underneath the motor - so that's probably as good as it can get. It doesn't look as good as having the fan angled out the back, but maybe I can move the motor around on the mount to improve the aesthetics later.
The first round of Club 380 is happening near Nottingham tomorrow, but I've decided that's just too far for me for a one-day event. The cheapest way would be on the Peugeot 3-wheeler, but a 7-hour round trip on a 400cc moped is a lot in one day.
So, looks like I won't be racing it until the end of May - but that's OK, it'll keep until then!
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FTX Outback 2.0 Land Cruiser Project
in Monster Trucks, 4x4, Wheelie Rigs and Crawlers
Posted
I've not seen the film for a few years, and I didn't get very far in the game either (I thought it would be a lot of sneaking around in solitude, but turned out to be a lot of shooty-shooty-bang-bang). But from what I remember, the colour palette and general scenery are very similar. Although the plot is quite different, the game clearly takes a lot of inspiration from the film.