Amateurs journey to RC-cars – part 4

Recap (part 3)

Cars arrived, enjoyed how they handled, disappointed by battery runtime, decided to get spare batteries and a charger.

Delivery

Parts arrived on Thursday afternoon, picked up the package and started unwrapping and found a wrong battery for ION (800mAh) instead of the ordered one (1200mAh). Notified the seller who asked for a photograph and promised to figure out on Friday how I got a wrong model and how to solve the issue.

Wltoys battery was completely different looking from the one that arrived with the car – even though model(range) was the same. Box of the car said that original battery was Li-Ion, battery itself (by googling the model) revealed that type was LiFe and the 1100mAh replacement was LiPo, and physically the right size.

Charger

Decided to purchase “Thor 6A Mini balance” that supported wide range of different batteries, and was a good choice – since now suddenly there were NiMH, LiFe and LiPo batteries being handled.

Second impressions

Decided to take a run on tarmac, after charging the batteries – to figure out if that 1100mAh replacement makes a difference. In short: about the best upgrade ever – stopped speedruns after 10 minutes since engine was getting hot and I wasn’t sure what happens to the battery if I run it totally empty. Felt a bit like ION was being left in the dust on speed-front, but fortunately it still handled better on hard surface – until crashing.

First breakage

Full speed turn, roll and a crash to a tree. Back on wheels but something was off – on low speed, trim fixed the leaning to other side and felt okay – but on full throttle &/ brake and the car was all over the place.

Took a look at it and oh behold, 4WD had become 3WD, something was missing and a front wheel was spinning free. No wonder it was weird to drive.

Spares

Time to find out what was broken, and go thorough interestingly named spare part catalogues – luckily ION as great instruction manual with full list of parts and a picture where they are around the car. I was missing parts called a dogbone and a diff outdrive.

Decided to add those parts to the same order where a replacement battery (1200 was upgraded to 1600mAh version) was being delivered, with some other adapters that were also needed.

Part 3 <-> Part 5