Quarantine Day 16

Getting out of the house has been a requirement for all of us nowadays. We try to get into the garden at least once a day unless the weather isn't cooperating. We're only going out for groceries now, and we're trying to make that once every two weeks.

So it goes without saying that I've been running the truck quite a bit. It's performed wonderfully. Since the initial servo horn issue, there have been no other problems with the Blazer. It's been a fantastic getaway for me, and my 3 year old loves playing with it. She likes to take it exploring in the backyard. We have large bushes running along the perimeter of the backyard, and she likes to climb around in them. I follow along in the truck as best as I can, although she's had me on more than one occasion dropping everything to pry her and the Blazer out of a jam. So we mostly stick to playing in the grass and along the track I've made up.

The Blazer can approach a brick face-on and climb over it. The angle of approach is just that good. Knowing that, I can use bricks as my measurement on other parts of the track to give the truck a handleable challenge.
I also want to keep as much of the course as natural as I can, so I'm not cluttering it up with a bunch of scrap wood. We have a wild side to our garden that has various natural weeds and things growing in it, and I've been driving a desire path through it. It's starting to look pretty good, and feels like a good challenge. It's very unstable terrain with an ivy bed and thick weed stalks sprouting up. It runs about three meters along the garden edge.

There's also a great stump in the ground, which I've now managed to clear at every approach angle I've tried. It just barely makes it, though. Super easy to get hung up. My wife keeps putting this clay pitcher on top of the stump, but my daughter takes it off every time we go in the garden. She knows we need to use it.

I'm so glad I got this truck. It's been a great inspiration to get me to go outside in these stressful times. It's making me have fun. It's working.

[Sorry, I don't have any pictures of recent fun. I took some video that I hope to have up on YouTube soon.]

A Week Later - Quarantine

I hadn't thought about writing anything about this, since I'm not a professional or anything. The Corona virus is upon us, and as of this writing we are on our 6th day of quarantine. We're locked up at home, with only grocery stores, pharmacies and gas stations available to us. It's a weird and tense time, so say the least. On top of that I just had my second root canal procedure in a month, and the left side of my face feels like it was hit by a truck.

Speaking of trucks, with exception of yesterday and today I've been out with the truck every day this week. I've gotten to the point where I'll take any weather except rain. But it's been great. Since we're staying home, we've got the backyard to play in, and my wife is cool with me building an RC course, as long as it isn't an eyesore.
So I've been working on some ideas. I've gathered scraps, strips, rocks, branches, bricks, stones...just about everything you can think of, and have started playing build-it. At first I made a small brick practice bump. That grew into a larger, more challenging surface. Then it got taller, and longer. It's looking pretty majestic.
I've been working out a lap of the circuit. I'm trying to keep it mostly out of the way of regular traffic, but still able to be seen. The lap works its way around the perimeter of the backyard, going around and through the back of things. Under the trampoline. Through the planter and right up against the neighbors fence. All-in-all a good few minutes run for a beginner. My plan is to keep it easy yet challenging, so anybody could come over, grab the controller and go. As I get better, I'll make tougher challenges.

What about the virus?

Well, thankfully RC car driving is one of those things you can do alone, in your yard, or even in an enclosed area. In a time like this, where people are being forced to stay home and have no experience how to do it, it's an absolute plus to have plenty of hobbies and things to do. It doesn't have to be RC cars, either. I'm just lucky to have one.
My family is here, my wife getting slowly used to the situation and accepting the predicament. My 3 year-old not knowing what's going on except lots of playing and mama and dada are both home all day. And the 18 year-old being terminally bored, so basically nothing new there.

I just thought of something, I haven't taken any pictures of what I've been doing lately. I took some video, and have been slowly assembling it, and we're going to have a nice couple days coming up. So maybe I'll set up a massive 3-camera shoot and see if we can get some quality action footage.

I've also decided that I'm going to turn my table back into a slot car table full time. The RC car can go practically anywhere, but the slot cars need to be on that table to operate. And if they're not up there, they're not operating. So I'll be taking a lot of the scrap wood I used to build my indoor course outside for the backyard course. If figure if I make that course look good, and not look like a bunch of scrap wood...spruce it up a little...maybe my wife will be okay with me leaving it up.

Truck's running great, by the way. No complaints. I noticed that Axial is just announcing the SCX10 III, which kind of explains why mine had a sale price. That's cool.

So if you have the stuff laying around that you always wanted to get out and play with, build, run or construct, now's the time. Don't just sit around on the internet stressing out. Make a puzzle. Paint a picture. Learn to cook. Climb with your RC car. Whatever will help you get through it.

But stay home. Be safe.

Lipo Cutoff for Axial SCX10 2

I had been a bit skittish waiting for the lipo cutoff to switch on on the Blazer. The first time I didn't wait for it to kick on, chickened-out and recharged it, but this time it happened. It kicked in as I was driving it this afternoon. This was the end of the 2nd complete battery charge since I bought the truck.
What happened was the truck started running at what felt like half power. I noticed it right away, gave a couple of throttle punches, then took it inside and charged the battery. I figured it would take about an hour and fifteen minutes to fully charge, and I was almost exactly right.

The truck also has acquired a name, coming from my 3 year-old. "Dadacar." So there you go. She loves it, by the way. She likes me to chase her around the backyard with it, and it's the perfect kind of thing to do that. Not too fast, not too spry. Tough enough for a kid to handle [within reason].

Here's Dadacar, ripping a mean line over the bricks.

It's also weird the things you'll get used to. It's been raining a lot, and I've been getting out whenever it hasn't been raining, which means lots of pretty wet conditions. Mostly surface stuff, but there's some mud, too. The truck surprisingly doesn't kick up that much mud into or on itself. I'm a bit surprised by that. The Pro Line tires G8 tires don't pick up that much mud either.

I've been looking at shocks, and it looks like I could outfit the truck with a pretty decent set for around 50 bucks or so. I think I want to get good ones, and not just mediocre replacements that aren't any better than the stock shocks. A nice set of aluminum shocks that won't leak.

No other breakages or weird anomalies to report. Dadacar has been running great.

Getting Some Backyard Time

Got some not rain today, so I went out in the backyard and tore it up a little bit. I notice I'm starting to carve out a natural path through the edges of the yard. I should probably knock that off, because if permanent tracks get carved into the grass my wife won't be too happy about it. So I'll have to vary my layout each lap a bit.

The other day I mentioned practicing driving at a high rate of speed. That was fun and all, but not long after I decided to do that at a low rate of speed, and have been practicing that ever since. I set up a small, ever-growing brick mountain to crawl over, and have been practicing doing it with no errant wheel spin or erratic movements.

Okay, more like Brick Hill, or Brick Berm, but you get the idea. A guy's gotta start somewhere.

It seems to me there's a way this thing likes to go up obstacles. It prefers you don't approach something with both wheels at the same time, but stagger them so the suspension has more to do. If you attack something straight on you risk tire spin, or at least that's something I noticed. I found it also easy to get an itchy trigger finger and punch-bloop it over stuff sometimes. Once I noticed myself doing that, it stopped.
So I think the key to driving one of these things is to be consistent, use care with the throttle, and be thoughtful in your approach and path you take over the obstacle.

My truck has way more capability than I give it credit for. It's breezing through everything.

Early on I mentioned that I would need to eventually find a throttle that I can use left-handed, but I don't think that's so important anymore. I've had enough time now that it feels pretty natural doing it this way, so I'm going to stick to it.
I also wanted to comment on the amazing battery life I've gotten so far. Being able to go a week on a charge with a 5000mAh 3S Lipo is really impressive. I absolutely expected 30 minute run times and 24 hour charge times before I bought the truck. But picking it up today knowing I had more than enough charge was a great feeling. But a week? That's averaging hour and-a-half long sessions just about every day. And the 4 AA's I put in my controller? Still working.

One Week Later - Was It Worth It?

So I've had the Axial SCX10 II Blazer for about a week or so now, and I've been picking at things here and there, but I haven't given my summary of how I feel about having purchased the truck now and what I found good/bad about it.

The Good

Everything I read about, everything I saw on YouTube, all said pretty much the same thing, and they all were right: this is a great RTR truck. Great looks, quality workmanship, everything about it has been top notch. I feel like I'm getting into the hobby on a good foot, and I'm glad I bought it.
I love being able to crawl over rocks and obstacles and look good doing it. And that I found this truck on sale, at a price significantly lower than other trucks in its range was a good thing. It made me feel much better about getting those immediate upgrades I wanted.

But out of the box the truck is great. You could take that sucker out on trails all day and have a great time with it. I'd love to do all the lights up with the light kit, and maybe I'll do that some day. Nice option to have, and it looks great from the ones I've seen.

There's lots of room for upgrading, but the stuff it comes with is pretty damn good on its own. I can see blowing loads of money to make this a sick crawler [not that it's not pretty sick already], or even just replacing failed parts with upgrades. Either way it's going to remain a great truck.


The Bad

Blazer with ProLine tires.

The first one I don't want to call truly bad, because I don't think that's fair. The Falken tires aren't bad, there's just better out there. I think the Falkens would be great tires to take out on a long trail run, going over everything and anything. They're perfectly capable of doing something like that. But they run into problems on the rocks. I think they're a bit too lively for the demands of rock crawling. They don't grab on like a tire should, and spin helplessly. I think if I was grading these tires in two categories, I'd say: trails, 8 - rocks, 4. I wish that wasn't the case with rocks, but I had a feeling it was going to be, and I'm really happy I went with the upgrade ProLine Hyrax G8 tires right away. So it's not all bad.

But this I don't understand, and maybe it's because I'm a noob at all this, or maybe not. Hopefully someone with knowledge will come by and read this some day and comment on why it is what it is. But it seems to me that the RC hobby has a thing where, no matter what vehicle you buy, there will always be that one weak spot. The one part that will break to end the first session. In the case of the Axial Blazer, it's the servo horn.
And this is going to be the last time I mention the servo horn here. But maybe I'm making a bigger deal out of this than I should be, and I'll probably look back at this and laugh in a couple years.
But I think the placement of the servo wasn't very well though out. It seems almost like an afterthought. I think they should have made it so the servo could be lowered if needed by maybe 5mm max. Something enough so that the servo horn can clear the frame rail. I mean, how do you set up such a sweet truck, then go and make a bonehead move like that? It's almost like two departments didn't talk to each other, the thing went to production and they discovered the problem there. I'm curious what other owners of this particular truck are doing about it. It's just weird that, sitting in all this sweet tech is just the dumbest thing. Makes me sad. Doesn't look like Axial has come up with a solution for replacement, either.

Summary

Servo horn issues aside, I think this was a great purchase. I'd do it all over again the same way I did before [although this time get tools]. I've been very impressed with how the truck has operated, and it's much more durable than I was expecting it to be. 3S Lipo capable, which gave me a much longer charge than I was expecting. If you're considering purchasing one, I would suggest ordering a 25T short servo horn. Install it while you're charging your first battery. Set the steering trim and you're good to go.

I wish I could take this everywhere.

Two Days Running

We got a slight break in the weather and I was finally able to spend some time outside. On Monday afternoon I got about an hour and a half of driving in, including working on and building a brick hill climb challenge. I think it'll be pretty cool once it's a little more figured out.

I tweaked the steering so it would go to the maximum without the long servo horn hitting the rail. I got okay steering out of it, but nothing great. I was still waiting on the delivery of my new, shorter servo horn. Didn't come Monday.

It came Tuesday. It was pretty much the same length as the original plastic servo horn that came with the truck, but was made of aluminum and a little thicker.

That silver aluminum object buried under all that hardware is the servo horn, or servo arm. It's one of the first adventures someone has with a ready-to-run truck. 

For the Axial SCX10 II Chevy Blazer I replaced the servo horn with one from Absima, 25 short alu servo horn [#2030038]. It was shorter than the previous horn, which was also from Absima, and it fit much better. While still hitting the frame rail, it does so after turning the wheels significantly more. In fact, it's at just about the same setting I had them at before all this occurred.

The problem with the setup is that the original plastic servo horn brushed up against the frame as well, which contributed to it going bad. If I thought I could get away with cutting or bending the frame rail so the horn wouldn't hit it, there's considerable amount of plastic mounting stuff going on in that spot. So that's not possible. Instead I had to dial in the steering just to the point before it would hit the frame rail.

Good turning radius, I think.

Granted, it's not the complete turning potential of the truck, but maybe 85%. It had an insane turning radius to begin with. If that frame rail was out of the way, or if there was a way to lower the servo a bit to give the arm a little clearance, that would help. But I can live with what I have now. The reason I rolled it back in the first place was because the tires would always rub on the body when I would turn all the way. It was almost comical the tight turn radius that could be driven.

On Tuesday I took it out for a couple of hours. It performed magnificently and made me believe again. I keep forgetting to take my camera out when we go, so there aren't pics. I have some video, but I need to work on that first.

I learned a lot with this first lesson in repair. If you don't have the part, it takes time to get it, and it might not be the right one, so you might have to get something else. Replacing a part isn't always as easy as replacing a wheel. Sometimes you have to take apart quite a few things to fix a thing. That's not a bad thing. It's just a thing. And it's important to pay attention to the tuning knobs and to make sure the settings are correct. I've gotten to checking the trim and throttle settings at the beginning of a session.

Great truck.

Sunday Cancelled Due To Weather

Nothing much to report here, except no new broken pieces. I was out for about 30 minutes today in the backyard, just running around. I think I'm finished with my speed practicing. Not that I'm worried about hurting the truck, but I'm a little worried about hurting the truck.

With that too-long servo arm installed right now, I don't have very good turning radius, so it's a bit of a pain to handle. Big loopy turns and everything. And since today is Sunday, I won't get much chance to go out again until the smaller servo arm arrives. Oh, it's been sunny with intermittent hailstorms. And cold and windy.



I'm a bit worried that I might have damaged my servo. I hope not. I won't be able to afford a new one for awhile. I stopped driving when I noticed the issue, so hopefully I caught it in time. Nothing weird is happening, but the steering does twitch occasionally. Either way I'll put in the new arm when it gets here and use it until the servo stops working.

But I gotta say this: this kind of RC truck isn't meant for ripping around and bashing. It just isn't. It's a trail and rock truck. And because of its size it's at a bit of a disadvantage, but that's what it is. So caution has to be used. It's a great truck that'll handle great, as long as you respect it for what it is.

I haven't started counting how many days I've had this first charge on my battery going. I thought the Lipo Cutoff would happen today, but I didn't get enough time. It started to rain and get nasty out.