nice buggy Brian! How fast is it going to go? What kind of runtimes are you expecting?

Thanks. I estimate around 35ish, which is more than enough for me.

Looking great Brian. I wish I could put more time into my battery and electronic mounts. Maybe on the next project I can paint up a body for you and you can make my battery trays - lol. Now I have to get some pictures of mine up - I also have some very short video I need to upload. Unfortunately the only cameraman I had available was my 7 year old son. Hopefully I'll get that posted later today. Looking forward to seeing yours run soon.

Thanks!

LOL, sounds like a deal. I hate painting bodies! I've actually thought about running an unpainted one. I usually wreck them far too fast to spend lots of time painting them. :)

Those mounts took a good 6 hours of work, not counting the painting. Cutting with a hacksaw, fine cutting with a nibbling tool, dremeling the corners, and filing the edges is very time consuming. And I absolutely HATE it when I make a mistake and am off by a couple of mm's and have to start over!

How funny - I'm just the opposite. I threw together my battery tray and for the time being velcro'd and ziptied my ESC to the diff top plate. My Rx is servo taped to the battery tray - As for the body I spent about 4 hours on it if you include the 3 coats of liquid mask and the 5 different applications. White, light blue, Translucent blue topped with pearl blue then Faskolor fascoat to seal and protect everything. I busted out my old Paasche VL airbrush that I used to do t-shirts and murals with and am finally trying my hand at rc paint. The whole backward layering thing is taking some getting used to. It's fun though - I do enjoy the painting more so than the metal fabrication. Here is one I did lately on a *cough* *cough* nitro GT2

http://members.cox.net/gluena/GT2a.JPG

Before cutting out the engine opening
http://members.cox.net/gluena/GT2b.JPG

http://members.cox.net/gluena/GT2c.JPG

That's nice (even though it's nitro)! A simple color fade from back to front (usually a solid color up front and black in the rear) is about as complex I ever do. And since I just use the spray can, it's not the prettiest. I then use stickers to cover the more unsightly areas. :)

Metal working for me is the fun part (when it isn't aggravating, lol). I just wish I had some proper tools to make it a little faster. It sucks to sped several hours on one piece just to throw it away because a bend didn't turn out perfect or it's a little off.

BTW: my battery tray is designed to hold 2s or 3s 5Ah cells, and even 6 NIMH cells. :)

What size pinion did you go with?

16T; it's the only hardened pinion Mike had available...

Maiden voyage
 

Well, I took the CRT.5 to the track tonight. Wow, it's in bad shape - like driving on bumpy concrete! lol. It almost needs more weight. However, the little truggy is quite fast and handles very well, better than I expected actually.

I put 3,000 wt oil in the CD and it seems just right. Doesn't diff out and yet doesn't wheelie (kinda wants to, but doesn't).

However, about 15 minutes into playing, the pinion grub screw fell out so I guess I have to use a little more locktite. :)

The motor and ESC were kinda warm for my liking though. But maybe it was because the pinion was too loose and the motor was spinning too fast relatively unloaded. It's GOTTA be something like that because the Jato runs cool as a cucumber and it's geared higher.

Overall, I'm pretty happy with the results and it'll be fun to play with this summer. :)

Good to hear the results. How did the pinion hold up?

Very well, except for loosening. :)

Looks great Brian! Wish I had the time to finish my current project let alone start new ones! LOL!

Any videos of the E-CRT.5 beast yet?

could be the 4wd that makes higher temps?

Yeah.. the track is bad right now. We are gettting ready to tear it up for a complete rebuild this weekend. It will be good then :)

Sounds great. Any pictures of it all dirty or at the track? Man, can't wait fro Mike to release the motor mount for it. I think I may actually go after this project. Not a lot of money and the perfect size as well. 1/18 scale is gettign a little annoying, lol.

No, no pictures of it at the track as I didn't have my camera with me.

However, I did get a short clip of it running in the driveway. I couldn't get to full speed because it's kinda short, and I didn't want to ruin the tires in the road, so this will have to do. I don't know who the kid is on the bike. My son makes an appearance at the end. You can tell he knows how I drive! ...You'll see what I mean. :)

Video (~15MB)