Here is *RockCrusher's* updated axle gearing system I designed this winter. Please be patient with the posting of my pics. The url tags can take a little time for me to work right...so hang-on!













It is now geared to approximately 90-100:1 range. I will need to calculate the gear diameters instead of the teeth method, since there is a change in the pitch type of the extra gears I shoehorned in. These other gears were from a tank/track rc toy I bought from a second hand store for a couple of bucks, even came with a 9.6v battery pack with the wired plug. Can't complain about the price.

I am using the stock NB motors and gears which have plenty of power with this gearing system. The RadioShack 1600mAh batteries last a long time. Even when the batteries are fairly dead it still crawls strong....just really slow, eventually the receiver starts tweaking-out the steering. That's the sign to replace the battery.

I made a "relatively" simple universal motor mount out of 90° aluminum channel, easy to find at most hardware stores. The motor gets turned 90° and is bolted to the mount, via the motors front shaft end mounting holes. One of the mounting holes on the bracket is elongated, as well as the motor shaft hole. This allows the motor to have an adjustable pivot to accommodate setting up the motor pinion to mesh nice to the driven ring gear. The aluminum motor bracket bolts to the lower plastic axle housing with two bolts, from the underside.

The pinion gear mounted to my motor has a larger gear too (it's not a true pinion gear, it's just a standard drive gear). The larger gear is not used on this installation. I did not need to cut it off since I had room. The gear mounted on the motor had a larger hole than the motor shaft. To work around this loose problem I slipped a short & small diameter piece of heat-shrink onto the motor shaft, heated it slightly, and snugly pressed the plastic gear (pinion) onto the shaft. It has held up very well, and not slipped at all. I can easily remove the pinion if needed. I just replace the heat-shrink tubing "bushing" with a new piece, and finger press the pinion gear slowly onto the motor shaft, that's it.

Using this mounting system allows many different styles of gears to be used, just make sure you have the identical gears to match each axle. This design is fairly simple, but it took quite a while for me to design it. It is very stable, and locks into the plastic axle housing ribs. The pain in the @$$ part is the need to cut and grind some of the axle housing inner shells. It took time to figure what I needed to remove from the first axle. Once I nailed it down, the second axle housing was modified in about an hour.

I plan to eventually have all the gear shafts mounted to just the lower axle shell with some simple axle shaft end mounts. This way the upper shell is mostly a cover, while providing the lower shell with strength around the perimeter edges. I don't really care for the OEM sandwich method of the two halves of the axle shells to hold things in place. Wires to the axles will be with quick disconnects for fast removal.

I will probably need to do this again for the grandkids crawlers too, so I plan to create a simple CAD drawing of the motor/gear bracket to make my parts faster to produce. I will probably need to find another rc rig to strip some gears. If I get around to doing it (the motor/gear bracket drawing), I plan to post the drawing (as a JPEG) for others here who might want to try it for themselves. I am not interested in making these things for money, but I don't mind providing the how-to data/steps for our forum.

Your system is practically similar with my system. . (WAR-TANK) 120/1… 4 GEARs per differential. CONGRATULATION






.... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQ8C-eMH6Fc

Dang man! Nice going! Gears were never my specialty at all and I'm not even sure I could pull this off even though I've got your pics for reference! I can't wait to see some climbing vids though, especially if you stick with the stock motors too.

Loulou,

Yes it is VERY similar to your 'Wartank' concept, which I liked. You gave me the idea to go this route. I just went about it a little differently by designing a mounting bracket system to make it a little easier to reproduce and install. It was a fairly involved process to achieve, but the outcome was well worth it. I would still like to make some drop in gears someday. But if New Bright does not care to make anymore of these 1:10 units then I might not bother, and stick with this more complex upgrade for just a few other custom jeeps.

A few more pics...

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Mr Dean,