The Art of Trucking! Element RC Sendero HD looking smooth on the rocks

Рет қаралды 487

7 ай бұрын

The Element RC Sendero HD dances over the rocks in the fading light of dusk.
I went down to the river to film rocks and this truck kept getting in the frame. Just kidding. I wanted to slow it down for this one and provide a meditative experience. Slow motion, a locked off camera, and shallow focus all help. It’s like we are making art!
The Sendero HD, one of my favourite rock crawlers, got an overhaul this week, with several minor changes.
The first change was the reduction of the stiffness of the Reefs RC anti-sway bar spring. Reefs only provides a single spring and I have always known that it is too stiff for the weight of this truck. To tune the spring, I first spent a lot of time brushing up on my trigonometry and honing my knowledge of spring rates, torque, and torsion, etc. Then I made a jig and created a spreadsheet calculator to measure the anti-sway bar’s spring rate and it’s impact on articulation. Finally, I measured the articulation and traction of several other trucks (with and without anti-sway bars), to come up with a target balance between reducing body roll (mostly torque induced) and increasing traction. In the end, I decided that reducing the the stiffness of the torsion spring by 36% would net me a decent amount of traction while still mostly eliminating torque twist. To reduce the spring stiffness I filed a flat on the spring for 75% of its length, reducing the thickness from 2.3mm to 1.7mm. I did this gradually, filing a bit at a time and then measuring the deflection change with a known mass and an inclinometer. If you do this, don’t use a grinder or anything that gets the spring warm, because that will affect it’s annealing and (without further heat treatment) make it less springy.
The second major change was to (finally) add some brass to the front axle. I installed SSD brass steering knuckles which added about 135g of wheight. My testing has been limited, but as you can see in the video, the extra weight keeps the front end nice and planted.
Thirdly, the stock plastic pivot balls were in need of replacement, so I took off all the links and installed steel pivot balls. This also added a few grams of weight low down.
Finally, while I had everything apart, I inspected and re-greased the axles and transmission. The truck is running as smooth as a greased pig.
Truck: Element RC Enduro Sendero HD
Tires: Pit Bull Rock Beast 4.5x1.7
Wheels: Vanquish KMC XD229 Machete V2 Bronze beadlocks with SS scale hardware (225 hubs front, 350 hubs rear)
Foams: Crawler Innovations Lil’ Nova Comp Cut 4.25 Dual Stage (soft front, medium rear)
ESC/Motor: Hobbywing Fusion 1800kV
Servo: Reefs RC 422HD v2
Winch: Reefs RC 422HD v2
Camera: Canon EOS R6 Mark II with RF 24mm f/1.8 Macro IS STM, SmallRig microphone
Software: Adobe Premier Pro
Music provided by KZbin Studio Audio Library:
0:56 On the Delta by John Patitucci
5:00 Soothsayer by John Patitucci