2016 - Traxxas Slash
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ALRIGHT ALRIGHT I GOT A SHORT COURSE TRUCK, JEEZ. Three years into this hobby and I finally ran out of excuses to avoid it.
Although I should clarify, when I say "I got a short course truck", what I mean is I bought an RTR and then replaced almost all the parts. I'm not kidding; the only stock parts left are the hubs, caster blocks, wheel hexes, front bulkhead, and two of the internal transmission gears. If I had it to do over again, I'd have just built it from parts, but as it happened I had no idea how many upgrades I would end up making by the time I was finished. I'm sure someone will come along and say "that's what you get for buying a Slash", and yeah, that *is* what I get. It came out well, though.
The Slash I started with was the F-150 Raptor version. Obviously, the body you see above is not the original body, but a Pro-Line F-150 Raptor with the front and rear "bumpers" trimmed to fit around the real chassis-mounted bumpers. To be honest, Pro-Line's F-150 Raptor body was the inspiration for this entire vehicle; even if it isn't "true scale" as advertised, I liked the way it looked so much I built a vehicle to put it on.
As mentioned, the Pro-Line body was trimmed to work with the chassis-mounted bumpers, which were replaced with RPM parts. Making it fit in the front involved cutting off the front skirt detail and trimming along the underside of the grille detail to provide enough clearance for the front bumper to fit.
Making the body fit in the rear involved cutting off the rear bumper detail, and then hollowing out a space for the rear bumper support to pass through. It would've been nice if I hadn't had to cut that big hole in the tailgate, but the RPM rear bumper obscures it enough that it still looks good to me.
The Slash came with the stock chassis, and after a single short run it was painfully obvious that the center of gravity was way too high. So I got the LCG chassis, which helped a lot, and I got a set of RPM adjustable body mounts so I could lower the body a bit. Unfortunately they weren't designed for use with the F-150 body that the truck came with, but I eventually figured out how to get the rear body mount to sit low enough to accommodate the flat "pickup-truck bed" that the original Slash body doesn't have. (no amazing feat of engineering involved; I just attached the rear mount lower than intended.) Conveniently, the Pro-Line body didn't require any readjustment of the body mounts.
I have several other vehicles that run ProTrac-offset wheels, so I decided to get the ProTrac suspension kit for the Slash too. As with my other Traxxas vehicles, the shocks use the stock internals with factory-upgrade TiN-coated shafts, and the bodies are aluminum made by STRC. I can't emphasize enough just how much better the stock shocks work with the STRC aluminum bodies; they're smooth like butter now, and have been on every vehicle I've installed them on. The stock progressive-rate springs were replaced with linear springs from the Telluride, which uses the same rear springs as the 4Pede but softer front springs which better-suits the rear weight bias of the Slash. The hubs and caster blocks are stock, but if I have any problems with the stock ones, I have a set of RPM hubs and STRC aluminum caster blocks that I can install in the future. I could've installed them immediately, but I ran out of motivation after getting the Pro-Line body to fit, because that was my ultimate goal anyway.
The awful servo-mounted servo-saver was replaced with the bellcrank-integrated servo-saver, and the servo was replaced with a Hitec HS-7955TG, which is overkill for this truck but it's my favorite steering servo, and I'll never break it, not on this truck. Heck, the 7955TG in my Wraith has no servo saver at all, and titanium steering links, and it's been run completely underwater many times, and it still works perfectly. Why change a formula that works?
Because I'm using a non-Traxxas ESC, I had to make a flat plate to attach the ESC to. A spare chunk of Lexan, trimmed to the right size and painted black on the underside to hide dirt buildup, took care of that. The ESC is nothing special, a Dynamite DYNS2210 that I've used on many other brushed vehicles, but it's a good reliable unit and I've only ever had 1 out of 8 go bad.
That's right, I said it's a brushed ESC. Why? Well...
There was something I wanted to try. I've never seen a brushed short-course truck that wasn't anemic, so I decided to see if I could make one. This is a Holmes Hobbies TorqueMaster Pro 550 motor, with a custom-wound 11t armature, silver brushes, and endbell cooling fan added by Yours Truly to help the commutator deal with the heat buildup from the LiPo battery's massive amperage. Yep, I said it's a 550 motor. Maybe there used to be high-speed rebuildable 550 motors available back in the day, I dunno, but I couldn't find any when I went looking, so I got Holmes to make me one. It's a great motor, it moves this truck with no problem, and easily pops wheelies when the tires can get enough traction. (the Badlands SC tires are great off-road, but don't have much contacting surface to provide traction on pavement.)
The stock gearbox case is long gone, replaced with a RPM gearbox case. The internals are stock, with the exception of the diff cup, which is an O-ring sealed unit made by Fast Lane Machining, and is filled with 200k oil. It's a great diff cup, I recommend it to anyone who wishes their Slash had a sealed diff.
So there's my take on the truck that launched a whole new racing class back in the day. It makes a good companion for my Losi Baja Rey.
A couple updates to this truck:
First of all, I finally got around to replacing the Traxxas slipper clutch with a Team Associated slipper clutch, with the assistance of a special top-shaft made by STRC:
I was actually fine with the operation of the Traxxas slipper clutch, but there are no 32-pitch spur gears available in the concave shape that the Slash requires to fit under its gear cover. Converting to the Team Associated slipper clutch allows me to use 32-pitch gearing for better durability if the gear mesh ever gets knocked slightly out-of-position, and as a side bonus this truck now uses the same slipper clutch parts as two other vehicles, so I only need one spare spur gear for all three of them. (my Arrma Raider also uses a Team Associated slipper clutch now, but it uses a smaller spur gear than the other 3 vehicles.)
While I was in there, I cleaned out the motor with CRC Electronics Cleaner spray. My god there was a lot of brush dust in there; the positive brush has significantly more wear on it than the negative brush, so I swapped the springs to see if I could even-out the wear a little.
Secondly, I took apart the steering assembly and replaced a couple plastic bits with aluminum bits from the STRC aluminum servo-saver kit:
The reason for not replacing the entire steering assembly, even though the STRC kit came with all the necessary parts, is that I HATE aluminum parts grinding against each other. Aluminum is a soft and sticky metal, and aluminum parts grinding against each other destroy each other in short order. With the "female" half of the servo-saver assembly replaced with aluminum, I get better durability because the V-shaped ramps won't stretch apart as the servo-saver ages, while the plastic "male" half won't grind against the aluminum part and damage it.
I still love this truck, even with its old-tech brushed motor. It handles really well and it's a pleasure to drive, even if it has a top speed of "only" 31mph.
After fighting with the new slipper-clutch setup for a few days, trying to get it to stop slipping quite so much, I decided to try something -- instead of the RC10 slipper plates and spring, which were originally prescribed for use in the conversion, I decided to try the SC10 slipper plates and spring. They never gave me any trouble in my SC10B, and sure enough, they fit STRC's top shaft for the Slash transmission as well. The larger stiffer spring used on the SC10 slipper clutch makes it possible to get the slipper tight enough without fully-compressing the spring, so it remains finely adjustable like it ought to be.
Also, while I was digging around in the truck, I decided to install a cooling fan on the Dynamite brushed ESC I've been using, because powering that large 550-size motor in a (relatively) heavy short-course truck makes the passively-cooled ESC a little hotter than I'm comfortable with. Conveniently, the same 25mm fans I use to cool the endbells on my brushed motors also fit on the Dynamite ESC, with a couple 3mm screws driven into the gaps between the heatsink fins. They hold the fan nice and securely.
Anyway, one last update to this build: I figured out how to add a front swaybar, or rather I found a discontinued Dynamite swaybar kit and I modified it slightly to work with the RPM bumper on my truck.
It wasn't a difficult installation, it just required drilling a couple holes in the front skidplate, countersinking the holes, and bending the swaybar a little to adapt it to the different mounting position. I just had to wrap my head around having to do a custom install instead of a bolt-on upgrade, which is a strangely difficult idea for me to accept in some cases, especially since I already do so much work to custom-fit parts onto my RCs.
It works pretty well, reducing body roll and creating a bias for understeer that makes the truck a little more controllable on grass. It was worth the half-hour I spent installing it.
I finally got around to installing lights on this thing so I can drive it at night.
The next thing I need to do is replace the body, because Pro-Line did a disappointingly bad job at making the paint stick to the pre-painted body I bought originally.
This truck got a new body a few days ago. This body was originally intended for a different build, but as it turns out the Ford Raptor body fit that one better, and the Dodge Ram body fit this one better. The main color is Spaz Stix Candy Golden Rootbeer backed with Tamiya Copper, to give the copper a little more of a brownish color.
Unlike the factory-painted bodies, the accent colors are under the Lexan instead of on top of it, so they won't get scraped off.
Masking the body to use two different accent colors (chrome and black), as well as masking details like the window trim, was a huge pain, but it came out well. (I wish I'd looked at the decal sheet more carefully beforehand, so I would've known it didn't come with any window trim decals. I'll have to buy some pinstripe decals to make my own.) I'm especially glad I did the chrome grille. Spaz Stix Mirror Chrome lives up to its name; I can actually see a (blurry) reflection of myself in the chrome grille. I've never seen chrome paint this good before. I've used it for headlight buckets in the past, but never a clearly-visible accent like this.
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