CC-02 Crawler Build, Mod and Run

[eness76 41]

So I wanted to build a crawler, and I love Tamiya kits so I looked at the offerings.  I wanted to do something that was pretty scale in appearance, and wasn't keen on the CR-01 so I gravitated towards the CC-02.  I initially considered doing the CC02 with a shorter wheelbase and adding the bronco body, but I couldn't find one in stock and wanted to get to it.  I wasn't excited about the Gwagon as around here it's more of a high priced soccer mom wagon / grocery getter, so I started putting together a plan to make it look a bit tougher.  I went with a blacked out theme, on beadlocks and lifted a bit.  I widened the stance, added wheel weights and a 55T motor to slow it down, along with a 13T pinion.  I 3D printed a Knight Customs skid plate and I made up my own 3D printed spacers for the roof rack to make it removable with body clips using left over body posts.  The springs are too soft to allow use of the rack during crawling, but I have some stiffer springs on order to see how that changes things.  Here are some pics and videos of it running on the rocks for the first time this morning.  I must say it performed far better than I had guessed, especially for a maiden run.  I'm very pleased.  The steering with that chassis mounted servo is super vague when just driving around, but much less annoying on the rocks, but could really be improved.  I'm going to look into figuring out how to mount it to the axle housing.  I'm still waiting for some stainless control arms to add even more weight down low, and when I fit those I have some skids for the diff housings and metal drive shafts to add.  As is, though, I'm really pleased.

 

 

 

 

 

[Big Jon 684]

I finally got to drive one the other day, and it was perfect absolutely stock. We all had a bunch of fun with it, ran it on the rally course and clay oval. We're all crawlers and racers, and just loved it. It's "just right" with open diffs and stock tires. I think that a Panhard bar/3 link would fix the steering and would be easy enough to make. 

[eness76 41]

Well, it was designed to be a trail / cross country truck and would work fine in that role stock, as you tested.  Trying to adapt it to a rock crawler, it would be laughable in that condition in stock form (especially those small rock hard stock tires).  “Perfect” will probably have a different definition for everybody, as it should.  

[Big Jon 684]

6 hours ago, eness76 said:

Well, it was designed to be a trail / cross country truck and would work fine in that role stock, as you tested.  Trying to adapt it to a rock crawler, it would be laughable in that condition in stock form (especially those small rock hard stock tires).  “Perfect” will probably have a different definition for everybody, as it should.  

Yeah, it's most definitely not a crawler in stock trim, especially with open diffs. It would be easy to make it competent, as long as you could get about 45° of steering out of it. Lock the diffs, fix the bumpsteer, sort out the steering angle, gooey tires on aluminum or steel wheels, maybe some softer springs, and much lower gearing would make it decent for sure. 

As a cross-country rig, it's head and shoulders over the CC-01, and even more fun to drive.

Your build is really cool, and looks to be a ton of fun. What tires are those?

 

[eness76 41]

Thanks!  It’s budget all the way, they’re some 110mm 1.9s from Amazon, by a company called austar.  They say “super swamper rocks tire” on the sidewalk.  They seem to work pretty well for what they cost.  I had considered some dual stage foams but it honestly does well enough as is.  I took it out again this morning and it crawled through some rocky situations I would have given it little chance to make.  

Goolsky 4Pcs AUSTAR AX-4020 1.9... https://www.amazon.com/dp/B06XT1K378?ref=ppx_pop_mob_ap_share

 

[eness76 41]

Work continues on project CC02 crawler.  I decided this week to look into the steering slop and see what I can do about it.  

I designed and printed some Panhard mounts and switched to a 3 link but just could not keep it from binding at some point in the stroke, so I decided to go back to the 4 link and mount the servo on the axle.  After 4 prints and tweaks, I’m at a working prototype.  It’s almost back together for testing this weekend.  pictures below.

My stainless suspension arms came in as well, so I’m mounting those, some yeah racing diff skid plates and some YR drive shafts.  Should add a good bit of unspung weight as well as some strength.  The plastic driveshafts have about 2.5hrs of runtime on the rocks and the rear is already significantly twisted, and I’m only running 2s through a 55T motor in a pretty scale manner.

 

[eness76 41]

Incidentally, the stainless suspension links have about half of the total lateral axle slop of the stock pieces, at least before running them.  That alone would reduce some of the steering slop.

[taffer 948]

57 minutes ago, eness76 said:

The plastic driveshafts have about 2.5hrs of runtime on the rocks and the rear is already significantly twisted, and I’m only running 2s through a 55T motor in a pretty scale manner.

My driveshafts are still ok after 20+ hours, scratched up but still serviceable.....I'm using a 35t motor

[eness76 41]

Yes I was pretty surprised to see that it was twisted.  I’m running a 13 tooth pinion as well so my wheel speed is low🤷‍♂️.  I’m sure the brass wheel weights are playing a part.

[eness76 41]

The axle mounted servo turned out to be a complete success, couldn’t be happier with the steering performance at this point.  With the 25kg servo and the direct setup I could get it’s weight biased forward on the front tires stopped in the rocks and easily had the steering power swing the wheels in either direction.  Now that there is no slop there is more throw available at all times, really helped with line selection.

This week’s project is getting a scale looking rack setup that will work for running.  The metal eBay unit I started with was far to heavy and made the truck body roll like a weeblewobble.  So today I took a first crack at designing and printing a lightweight rack.  This first working proto was a super light success, but I’m going to make a few adjustments for the second proto.

One other change was I removed the axle extenders so I could lower the body, and I was able to bring it down 3 more notches. I haven’t cut the posts yet, as I will check all the handling this weekend at my usual spot.  I’m really enjoying this project, I ordered more filament tonight as I have lots of ideas for more modifications.  This truck is getting more and more fun to drive.

[Busdriver 6209]

On 8/23/2021 at 1:48 AM, eness76 said:

Thanks!  It’s budget all the way, they’re some 110mm 1.9s from Amazon, by a company called austar.  They say “super swamper rocks tire” on the sidewalk.  They seem to work pretty well for what they cost.  I had considered some dual stage foams but it honestly does well enough as is.  I took it out again this morning and it crawled through some rocky situations I would have given it little chance to make.  

Goolsky 4Pcs AUSTAR AX-4020 1.9... https://www.amazon.com/dp/B06XT1K378?ref=ppx_pop_mob_ap_share

 

Austar wheels and tyres are really good value for money. They punch way above their weight. I have the Swampers on my Unimog (6 of them) and it has really good grip. I’m amazed that Tamiya could not produce something like these for the CC02 and CC01. Instead you get ice hockey pucks!! I have 3 full sets of these sitting in a box if an Ice hockey team has lost theirs😂

[eness76 41]

While I’m waiting on more filament, I had just enough left to make a mounting plate for the spotlights. The next version of the rack will have these mounting points built in.

[eness76 41]

Running video from this morning, removing the axle extenders seemed to make it more precise when picking lines, didn't seem to lose any stability and moving the body lower really improved the looks.  Very minimal body rubbing so I trimmed the posts afterwards and called it good.  Really loving this truck, you'll really see in the vid how much better the steering is, now.  Several more designs/prints in the pipeline to improve the look and capability!

 

[eness76 41]

Also you’ll notice I came up with a simple way to keep the body from flopping back and forth from the weight of a real spare tire.  I’ll detail it in the next update.

[eness76 41]

This week's project has became 2 projects.  I noticed the Yeah Racing front skid was hanging up on rocks and reducing my approach angle, and while thinking about designing a new bumper and mount I was also thinking about weight bias and the CC02's tendency to stand up in a wheelie when climbing (See Last Video, the "Working For It" part).  Obviously I didn't do this tendency any favors by mounting a real spare, but I really like the scale look, so I didn't want to change that.  While thinking it over, I also considered that my crawling sessions usually last about an hour to an hour and a half and I have yet to use more than 30% of my 5kmah 2s packs.  I have a smaller 2200mah 2s pack that I use to power my Revo3.3's starter, so I began thinking about that.  I designed a bumper mount that incorporates a battery tray over the front axle.  This eliminates all that weight over the rear, and relocates a smaller amount over the front, plus a big increase in approach angle with the new bumper.  Below are the results.  As usual I'll test at my spot this weekend.

 

[eness76 41]

Test went great today, I ran for a little over an hour and still had 41% left in my 2,200mah 2S pack, so very pleased there.  Removal of the skid and addition of the high approach angle front bumper has been nearly as dramatic an improvement as the steering servo improvement.  As you can see in my videos, my spot is pretty much all large sharp rocks and in that environment it took about a minute to notice the truck was no longer bashing it's way though, a much smoother experience.  The forward battery really helped on walls, it would climb instead of tipping up on the spare.  This truck has really become a capable crawler. 

This thread doesn't seem very popular, either not many have/like the CC-02 or they're happy with it's original CrossCountry / Trail mission and performance, but at any rate it's serving as a nice development diary and all the parts will eventually be posted on Thingiverse as free downloads should anybody else want to either follow this path or improve upon my designs.  Couple short clips from today, no cameraman made it challenging to get decent footage as I can't drive any technical sections one handed.

 

[Frog Jumper 3661]

This is cool.  I love your driving spot.  Seems nice and chill.

Great vids.  Cool seeing that the CC can be made into a capable crawler.  Now I want one!  Dang it!

As for thread popularity, i didn’t get much response on my build thread. I guess people aren’t very talkative these days?

Terry

 

[Grumpy pants 4485]

Apologies I often like but don’t comment.

It is a great thread with lots of good information, thank you for sharing 👍

[TomTom93 0]

Great work! I sent you a MP!

[Busdriver 6209]

On 9/12/2021 at 9:18 AM, Grumpy pants said:

Apologies I often like but don’t comment.

It is a great thread with lots of good information, thank you for sharing 👍

Here here, great thread. I have a Unimog waiting for me to be well enough to start so following with interest

[Frog Jumper 3661]

 @eness76 I’ve ordered myself a CC02 so I’m interested in this thread more than ever.  Any updates on your thingverse files???

Terry

[1234tuba 2]

9 hours ago, Frog Jumper said:

 @eness76 I’ve ordered myself a CC02 so I’m interested in this thread more than ever.  Any updates on your thingverse files???

Terry

Same! New to this forum but have been watching this thread for a bit. Planning my Cc02 build and this is inspiration. These updates to the stock chassis seem next level. Cheers all

[eness76 41]

Hi Guys, let me know if this link doesn't work.  These should be the "final" versions of the servo mount, bumper mount and bumper that all go together. 

https://www.thingiverse.com/eness76/designs

 

[Frog Jumper 3661]

Thanks!!!

Terry

 

[eness76 41]

post remixes when you guys make improvements.  This truck has been so much fun.  I had big plans of getting a few different crawlers but with these few changes the CC02 became so capable I haven't wanted for more.  I eventually removed the rear spare tire & carrier as well as the load in the roof rack and the thing will do just about any line I can come up with at my humble little crawling spot.  I think a larger / more capable rig would leave me bored.  Making the cross-country platform into something that's truly capable of crawling has been very rewarding.  I have plans for rear bumpers / rock sliders/ better racks etc.  The cold weather has chilled my motivation currently, as tends to happen in the winter.