Can't use mechanical brakes???
 

So, I now have everything for my Muggy conversion except the eternally backordered batteries (see my next post!), and I'm chipping away at it every night. I planned on using mech brakes, but I can't seem to make it fit! I'm using a Tekno Neu 1515, RCM motor mount, AND the RCM Neu spacer (adds 4mm), and no good. In fact, I can just make my 18T pinion touch the spur, but not mesh. I even messed around with some of the brake hardware, but still no good. I was thinking of busting out the dremel, but I dunno.

Am I missing something here? Are mech. brakes THAT much better? Or is there some sort of secret here that I'm unaware of? :neutral:

Whats hitting and preventing you from gettingthe gears to mesh? Got any pictures? Makes it easier to understand whats up and make sugestions.

I like to make things as simple as possible and since I dont race having great brakes really isnt much of an issue the motor braking of the MMM is very good better than I thought it would be

I have heard of a few guys here changing their minds on mechanical brakes after using the MMM. These are racers and I believe chapito was one of them. You can find his posts under the CC section.

I have run both set-ups in my 8ight buggy. Motor brakes/pinion and mechanical brakes/clutch.

I really like the clutch/mechanical brakes set-up more for racing. It gives me an edge in performance and tuning ability. It is NOT a big trouble having the addition of the extra parts. Troublesome brakes/clutches are not why most of us are converting to brushless. I think it is the nasty NITRO ENGINES.

People drop out of our hobby every day because they are fed up with unreliable nitro engines. Now that they have an alternative to chose from in the 1/8th (popular racing segment) scale field, they will not leave as frustrated as before.

I get frustrated seeing posts bashing the added brakes/clutch set-ups. They provide many useful features that enable you to tune the most important part of the car, it's drivability. Driving my car right now on pinion/motor brakes gives me so much less "feel" of the cars speed, especially around corners. It's much less predictable over jumps as well, giving me less confidence to go FAST.

As for the added maintenance... Since converting to electric, I am left with almost NOTHING to do in between races (besides charging a battery). I really appreciate being able to actually do some proactive tuning to the car between heats to give me a better racing advantage as well as keep me from going out of my mind from boredom. I have no more of a mechanical failure rate when running the clutch/brakes set-up V.S. running the pinion/motor brake set-up.

Just my experiences.

I think jeff was able to do it by modding the neu front plate to gain clearance of the brake disks.

I just realized I can't do pics, because I got fed up with it last night, and just ripped all the mech. brake stuff out, and mounted everything up for e brakes. :whistle:

Basically though, it appears as though (and I could be wrong) the tekno neu motors are slightly thicker than the originals, and this is a problem in the muggy. However, with the 18T pinion, the RCM motor spacer still touches the brake calipers to prevent a useable mesh, and the motor can hits the screw that holds the calipers in place anyway.

This is what I did to get to this point: removed the soft pads that you stick on the brake calipers, swapped the screws to shorter button head screws (from socket cap; allows a hair more clearance), removed the screw spacers, and finally, tightened the screws so that I BARELY had any space for the diff to turn freely. Still, after all this, I can't reach a mesh with 18T. I'm guessing 20 may work, but I don't want to go that high, and certainly not all the time. I actually got an 18 and a 12; 18 for bashing/ speed, and 12 for track (not racing).

I wanted to use mech brakes for the alleged better feel, and for the possibility of longer run times, as well as less wear on the motor and esc.