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Cuiken

XV-01 Lancia Delta Build

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Riffed a bit on the theme and went for one of the last bottles of the Pro-line clear laquer I could find in the UK (designed specifically for lexan). There's an obvious chance it won't play with the acrylics but I've not found that issue with Tamiya PS clear coat and I'll test first. Worth a shot.

Thanks for all the thoughts on this.

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I used TS pearl Clear spray on topp of X-Black on my Subaru Impreza 1-24 model, worked very well. Its a bit dusty here (yes i still have not done the Decal job, it also do not have all the Antennas and Lights, so it is not finished)

 

 5A548331-5CCE-4A68-93EA-2DD9F9AD5103.thumb.jpeg.68bb0cb4862264bb29520ae626bf9b14.jpeg5B1DA338-8314-4CF3-9130-96B542B31DEE.thumb.jpeg.6cf2f6991c13355dcdfb01a9d057ed74.jpeg clear on top of my 1-24 

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Weekend update:

Finished the paint and the decals. Things I've learned:

The acrylic paint is basically falling off the shell. Ultimately, use a proper polycorbonate paint or use decals. I may be able to save mine with a coat of polycarbonate friendly laquer but I'm coming round to just applying the decals over the paint. Firstly because it turns out the front and rear window decals were easy and secondly because I realised I can cut them down a bit. Part of the reason I went for paint was to go with a more minimal side window surround. If I'm careful, I can trim the decals down to get the same finish.

To try to describe what I mean, the actual car came with two versions of the window surrounds. I think they may simply have changed between the EVO1 and EVO2 versions:

EVO1?:

w1rL5Mx.png

EVO2:

K8MD0QL.png

In a nutshell, I prefer the minimal approach on the EVO2 so that is what I'm aiming for.

Anyway, all that aside, I got the rest of the decals on, mounted the interior and set about choosing the wheels. I have two sets of tyres, rally block and pirelli. I need to choose rims for both:

3AIl8sa.png

yXqF0TT.png

pheMLuq.png

aEx6A6L.png

My thinking is to put the Pirellis on the white rims (pic 4) and the rally blocks on the black rims (pic 3). That would leave me a spare set of garish yellow ones for which I might try to find a set of semi slicks. Can anyone recommend a decent set of semi slicks?

Overall, pretty pleased with the shell. Looking forward to starting the chassis.

Just one last observation. All this fancy interior etc has made the shell quite a bit heavier. I think I'd really like to get a set of sway bars/stabilizers for the car as a result but don't seem to be able to find them in stock anywhere (Tamiya 54514). Anyone seem them in stock or have a spare set for sale?

 

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Looks good, and I agree with your tyre/wheel choices. If you were thinking where are you most likely to see a car with bright yellow wheels, then a trackday would be it 😂

 

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Build update.

So I started the actual chassis last night. Got as far as building the first diff and then stopped for a beer :)

When a came back to it I noticed I'd not got a great seal on the diff case (weeping oil). I also noted that the diff was very 'open'. After a bit of reading of 'the internet' I gathered that many people like to bump up the diff oils from the 900 weight that the kit comes with to somewhere in the low 10,000's to get some level of limitted slip. While reading about the diffs generally I also found that quite a few people report blowing the rear diff when running 4 pole motors (aww crap).

So, three things:

1. I'm going to try running ~20k oil in the front and maybe 5k in the rear.

2. I've ordered some Tamiya 42259 TRF O-Rings (just in case) and will rebuild with these and just a dab of silicone gasket compound.

3. I've ordered some metal gears for the rear diff (this may be total overkill but I'd rather not have to rebuild the diffs too often).

So, on hold waiting for parts :(

 

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Parts arrived!

Red o-rings (I gather silicone rather than rubber?). Either way, apparently they are very good. Installed with a bit of green slime.

NcXDf25.png

 

Then I used just a tiny amount of this on either side of the sealing gasket:

36lH0Y8.png

 

Lastly, a bit of 20k diff oil and sealed it up:

ntZ5HJs.png

 

The diff now feels a bit less 'open' but I don't think too much. You still get nice free and smooth movement on either side of the diff.

Also, while I've hardly stress tested it, it seems not to be leaking. So, happy days and I can get on with the next bit of the build :)

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Utterly superfluous update but I've built the rear diff now. Metal gears and axles inside with the lovely red o-rings, green slime and silicone gasket sealent.

xjw8E61.png

 

I keep forgetting to take pics of the silicone sealent being applied but basically the process is this:

1. Get the diff cup built up and filled (as above). 

2. Build up the diff cap as below and then add shim, retaining pin and bevel gear:

NcXDf25.png

 

3. Next use a knife to spread about a single 'teardrop' sized bead of silicone sealet around the outer diameter of the diff cap (where the gasket will sit).

4. Add the standard paper gasket.

5. Smear another 'drop' of sealnt over the top of the gasket.

6. assemble the two halves of the diff and carefully screw it together. Don't overtighten.

7. You should end up with somehting that looks like this and which runs freely. Note how little sealant has been squeezed out. You really don't need to use much.

wbyg0T8.png

 

In this case I used a blend of 1k and 20k oil to get something ~4k. I have no idea if I managed to hit that viscosity but I have a diff that is just a smidge less open than when I test built with the included 900cst oil.

So, two diffs:

Front - Plastic gears and 20k oil. It's quite tight but hopefully not too much. It will certainly help pull the car straight out of corners.

Rear - Steel gears and ~4k oil. Super smooth and only a little less 'open' than with stock oil.

No reason at all not to use the steel gears in the front but they are expensive so I thought I'd see how the plastic ones hold up.

 

Lastly, got the front gearbox built up with the newly assembled diff and slipper clutch:

z3Pkep9.png

It was nice to build. Couple of tiny fiddly parts, and the usual terror of accidentally firing the sprung 'c clip' across the room when installing it, but it all went together fine in the end. I like the plastics. Quite a mixture in there, clearly chosen to have different properties depending on function.

No idea how to set the slipper clutch. Anyone have any tips?

Working late tonight so not likey to manage much more until the weekend.

 

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I haven’t run mine with the slipper yet, but the instructions do give a guide of where to set it. 

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Hi, interested in this thread as building up an xv01 Lancia ATM. Did you paint the outside of the body? It looks like it, but instructions say inside. 

Is there a good prep for painting, like isopropyl or something? 

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14 hours ago, Lucero said:

Hi, interested in this thread as building up an xv01 Lancia ATM. Did you paint the outside of the body? It looks like it, but instructions say inside. 

Is there a good prep for painting, like isopropyl or something? 

The main colour is paited inside the shell. Neon red, white then black. Only the window details were painted on the outside. For the reasons highlighted, I'd advise against this. 

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Well, what a weekend it was.... So much building, so many mistakes.....

Friday evening I madea ton of progress on the chassis. Got it to this point:

XVN8660.png

The only significant thing I encountered outside of the standard build was my plan to route the battery lead up and out of the battery tray:

Xn0zWxi.png

 

The hole looks a bit jagged but it's not sharp so should not hurt the cables. You can also see the shiny blue hop up suspension parts below.

Basically, a really nice build to this point. All running smoothly with no real head scratching required.

Then came the motor install and it all got a bit tricky. Unfortunately, while the motor can fits perfectly, the power leads to the motor effectively exit the motor on the side via some large solder tabs. These tabs foul against the curved plastic bar that encloses the motor bay. As a result, the only angle that the motor fits at all is with the solder tabs tucked in below/behind the motor. In that case though, the B and C tabs nearly foul against the aluminium suspension mount and threaten to short them out. This was with a 28T pinion too so not much scope to increase the pinion size and sp move the motor further forward (and away from the suspension mount).

zCXhFpm.png

 

Ultimately, the only thing I could come up with was to reduce the size of the suspension mount..... So, I removed it from the chassis and ground it down on my trusty budget bench grinder:

 

kg2eGSt.png

 

Removal of this material basically opened up the gap between the motor terminals and the suspension mount:

0rSGba0.png

 

I actually went on to remove a bit more than this but you get the idea.

Here is a shot showing how I managed to get the power leads out (soldered as a fan out form the motor at ~45 degrees:

NHUdjVk.png

 

After this I was back to relative plain sailing so here are a few gratuitous chassis photos. It really is a nice chassis to build. Beautifully engineered:

XBVBGZ9.png

 

7LsGQ2M.png

 

fJFc0KU.png

yb3YR8q.png

 

I then failed to photo document a couple of steps and got to this point:

Bn1l58x.png

 

Key points:

1. The ESC is mounted at the back of the electronics bay. All power wiring exits via a slot cut in the dust shield. This was I was able to keep the fan mounted on the ESC. I'll pack the space around the wires with some of the foam that comes with the kit. Aside from having to run the motor wires back along the middle of the car. I think this is a pretty neat solution. Nothing is left flapping about and nothing has to be 'crammed in' to the electronics bay. Using this method you'd probably get away with a 250mm sensor wire rather than the 300mm one I used here.

2. Battery wires exit easily enough through the hole I cut and connect to the ESC over the top of the belt guard without fouling the interior of the bodyshell.

 

At this time I decided to try it out. Horrible dissapointment. The car barely had enough power to roll around the kitchen floor. I'm gutted, what's wrong? I check everything, friction in the drive train, ESC calibration, ESC setting via castle link. Feels like it's barely even running on 1 phase. Have I failed to address the possible short of the motor tabs?

All in I spend two hours tearing the thing apart to figure it out.

The, the penny drops. Remember I'm using the Mamba X ESC? It has an aux channel that I have programmed to control max power level. I pretty much randomly connected it to channel 5 on my GT5 controller. I've never used that channel before. I wonder what the dial is set to? Yeah, pretty much zero. So, zero power.

Another hour is spent rebuilding in order to test it out again (this time with channel 5 turned up). It works beautifully. What a chump.

 

At this point I hurridely throw the shell on and take it out to the road. It's okay. Moves beautifully, corners like its on rails but.. slipper clutch is way way to loose and it grounds out constantly even on a tarmac road. This tends to throw it around a lot. Then, randomly a stray/lost dog turned up and I spent the rest of the night trying to find it's owner (happy to report I succeeded).

So today I managed the following:

1. Tightened the slipper clutch. It can now spin it's wheels and deliver full power. Might still be a fraction loose but I'll probably use it as is for now.

2. I swapped the shock rod ends from the short ones to the 5mm longer ones that come with the kit (but which you are not meant to use). This raises the car to the point where it only just grounds out at maximum compression but also makes it sit a bit too high and causes the steering turnbuckles to foul the chassis. This is fairly easily fixed though by adding some 10mm screws to the droop screw locations in the wishbones and dialing the droop back a bit. By doing this, you theoretically lose some of the suspension travel but, overall you still have more overall travel than when using the smaller rod ends because you use the whole travel of the shock before the car gorunds out.

Quick blast at lunchtime and it's now really starting to work. The clutch is doing what it should and the car doesn't crash into the ground on every undulation in the road surface. Sure, it corners a little less 'on rails' and I did managed one traction roll, but, overall, it works far better for me. I'm still hunting for a set of sway bars that I think would probably cure most of this issue anyway.

In my hurry to try it out I did fail to take any of those 'pristine' photos of the car before I drive/crash it. I'll try to get a couple of shots before I totally wreck it and post those later.

So, a lot of stuff in that update. If anything is unclear feel free to give me a shout.

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Few finished pictures including initial road rash (spot the mirror).

I really need to decide what height I want to mount the body so I can trim down the body posts....

KWB2WGQ.png

 

pSSTu1l.png

 

CuNYrzp.png

LsZ8Hu0.png

 

dS58Rdr.png

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Could you not have just reclocked the motor bell housing?  there are so many options for mounting brushless motors.

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20 hours ago, Sweatpants said:

Could you not have just reclocked the motor bell housing?  there are so many options for mounting brushless motors.

I'm not quite sure what you mean (not familiar with re-clocking)? If you're suggesting rotating the bell housing to reposition the motor tabs that would not have changed anything. I could have rotated the whole motor by using one of the other pairs of mounting holes. The issue is that the motor tabs themseves only fit in the space I've highlighted in the photos (albeit very close to the suspension mount).

The tabs extend too far down the can (as below) so foul against the curved brace that runs over the top of the motor:

 

ANVNPd5.png 

SWXibpC.png

Alternatives to solve the issue would be:

1. Remove some of each motor tab

2. Shim the whole motor back from the motor mount

3. Remove some of the motor brace

4. Buy a 1410 motor. Because it's longer, the motor tabs won't foul against the brace.

On balance it was far easier to quickly grind down the aluminium suspension mount. 2 minute job once I'd figured out what I wanted to do.

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Setting the slipper clutch has been a fairly iterative process so I decided to make it a bit easier by drilling a hole in the gear guard so I can access the screw more easily (without having to remove the guard each time). I just cover it with tape once I'm done.

 

adqD1CB.png

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I'm in the process of building mine now and was wondering about adjusting the slipper clutch.   Can you grip the slipper nut with a small spanner and push the car forwards or backwards to tighten/loosen the clutch?

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17 minutes ago, davidwj95 said:

I'm in the process of building mine now and was wondering about adjusting the slipper clutch.   Can you grip the slipper nut with a small spanner and push the car forwards or backwards to tighten/loosen the clutch?

I guess so, but it didn't work out when I tried it. The gearing doesn't help you out, you have to push the car quite hard so it gets a bit inaccurate. You don't know how many 'turns' you have tightenend or loosened it.

In theory it would work, you'd probably have to take a few iterations to get it right though.

By using a spanner on one side and a screw driver on the other (through the wee hole I drilled) I can preciesely add/remove 1/2 turn of adjustment at a time. The sweet spot seems to be very narrow (between tons of slip and none) so the precision really helped me tune it where I wanted it to be.

Your mielage may vary but this is a simple mod and allows for easier accurate adjustment if you find that useful. Irritatingly you do still need to pop the shock off to get access to the screw hole but you can't have everything.... 

 

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On 2/25/2021 at 8:57 PM, Cuiken said:

Utterly superfluous update but I've built the rear diff now. Metal gears and axles inside with the lovely red o-rings, green slime and silicone gasket sealent.

xjw8E61.png

 

I keep forgetting to take pics of the silicone sealent being applied but basically the process is this:

1. Get the diff cup built up and filled (as above). 

2. Build up the diff cap as below and then add shim, retaining pin and bevel gear:

NcXDf25.png

 

3. Next use a knife to spread about a single 'teardrop' sized bead of silicone sealet around the outer diameter of the diff cap (where the gasket will sit).

4. Add the standard paper gasket.

5. Smear another 'drop' of sealnt over the top of the gasket.

6. assemble the two halves of the diff and carefully screw it together. Don't overtighten.

7. You should end up with somehting that looks like this and which runs freely. Note how little sealant has been squeezed out. You really don't need to use much.

wbyg0T8.png

 

In this case I used a blend of 1k and 20k oil to get something ~4k. I have no idea if I managed to hit that viscosity but I have a diff that is just a smidge less open than when I test built with the included 900cst oil.

So, two diffs:

Front - Plastic gears and 20k oil. It's quite tight but hopefully not too much. It will certainly help pull the car straight out of corners.

Rear - Steel gears and ~4k oil. Super smooth and only a little less 'open' than with stock oil.

No reason at all not to use the steel gears in the front but they are expensive so I thought I'd see how the plastic ones hold up.

FYI: It is more important to use the steel gears up front rather in the back diff. Also I don't understand why you didn't use the gasket that came with the diff and used silicon gasket sealant instead of the supplied stock gasket. If properly built, the stock gasket should work with it well and won't leak out. Diff oil leaks from the o-rings when not properly sealed with grease and not from the gasket. 

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19 minutes ago, Nicadraus said:

FYI: It is more important to use the steel gears up front rather in the back diff. Also I don't understand why you didn't use the gasket that came with the diff and used silicon gasket sealant instead of the supplied stock gasket. If properly built, the stock gasket should work with it well and won't leak out. Diff oil leaks from the o-rings when not properly sealed with grease and not from the gasket. 

I refer you to point 4 :)

4. Add the standard paper gasket.

If the front diff fails I'll upgrade to steel. I simply scoured the web for comments on the diffs and most seemed to relate to rear diff failure. Possibly not representative but seemed like a reasonable data point at the time.

Why do you say the front diff is the most important for steel gears? I guess it has direct motor drive (rather than belt) but then I do have the slipper clutch.

 

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3 hours ago, Cuiken said:

I guess so, but it didn't work out when I tried it. The gearing doesn't help you out, you have to push the car quite hard so it gets a bit inaccurate. You don't know how many 'turns' you have tightenend or loosened it.

In theory it would work, you'd probably have to take a few iterations to get it right though.

By using a spanner on one side and a screw driver on the other (through the wee hole I drilled) I can preciesely add/remove 1/2 turn of adjustment at a time. The sweet spot seems to be very narrow (between tons of slip and none) so the precision really helped me tune it where I wanted it to be.

Your mielage may vary but this is a simple mod and allows for easier accurate adjustment if you find that useful. Irritatingly you do still need to pop the shock off to get access to the screw hole but you can't have everything.... 

 

Thanks for the reply, I'll see how I get on when its built.  I've come to a halt at the moment, the servo I was going to use is too big so I'm waiting for a low profile servo to be delivered.  

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3 minutes ago, Cuiken said:

I refer you to point 4 :)

4. Add the standard paper gasket.

If the front diff fails I'll upgrade to steel. I simply scoured the web for comments on the diffs and most seemed to relate to rear diff failure. Possibly not representative but seemed like a reasonable data point at the time.

Why do you say the front diff is the most important for steel gears? I guess it has direct motor drive (rather than belt) but then I do have the slipper clutch.

 

Remember that the front diff has more differential movement/action than the rear. The slipper won't help the diff in any case. They are totally different sections of movement. I have my XV-01 with steel gears in front and stock plastic for the rear. 30k oil in front and 10k oil at the back. No slipper clutch. I run 21t currently and go 17t  once in a while. So slipper has no use for my set up.

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40 minutes ago, davidwj95 said:

Thanks for the reply, I'll see how I get on when its built.  I've come to a halt at the moment, the servo I was going to use is too big so I'm waiting for a low profile servo to be delivered.  

Yeah, I think I mentioned (maybe not) that I had the same issue. I'd intended using a standard servo that I have spare but it didn't fit. I don't think the XV01 needs a low profile per se but it does seem to at least need a smallish standard sized one (if that makes sense).

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38 minutes ago, Nicadraus said:

Remember that the front diff has more differential movement/action than the rear. The slipper won't help the diff in any case. They are totally different sections of movement. I have my XV-01 with steel gears in front and stock plastic for the rear. 30k oil in front and 10k oil at the back. No slipper clutch. I run 21t currently and go 17t  once in a while. So slipper has no use for my set up.

Sure, but the diff failures I've been reading about related to smashed rather than worn gears. These seemed to be happening more often in the rear than the front but also related to cars that were a bit opverpowered and probably heavily bashed. If you're running 21T I bet that is not an issue at all.

I was just a bit mindful that I've used a powerful 4 pole brushless motor and so have a lot of torque. I guessed that, under acceleratioon, most of the load is going to th rear.

I'll report back on how I actually get on.

30k/10k sounds like a good mix for the diffs BTW. I've read some people running the stock 900cst all round and others swearing by 1million cst in the front with stock in the rear diff so there's no apparent concensus. I though t my 20k in the front might be too heavy but it's really not bad at all and my rear diff with the stock 900cst feels completely undamped.

 

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