DBXL DBXL Gasser to 8S Conversion

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jhunter

Member
Messages
8
This is a copy from a post I've made on another forum. Ill keep them both updated especially considering this is a more appropriate forum.

My Posts: (I'll continue updating)

#1
A few weeks back I picked up a couple of castle 2028 motors. I decided to turn one of my DBXLs into an electric. I grabbed a motor mount for a MTXL which I chucked in the milling machine and began sending chips flying.

I now had a motor mount that I could mate up to the castle 2028 and after drilling and tapping a few holes would also fit the existing engine holes in the DBXL chassis. The spur gear is 61T so I drilled the mount to allow me to run from a 13T to a 21T pinion. 13T was sad on 8s. Looking at the logs I was damn near pulling 25,796 rpm. Mind you at 8s x 800=26880. I moved up to a 15T pinion and acceleration and top end were a lot more to my liking. Rpm with the 15 were in the 24,4** range. I have 17, 19, and 21 left to go but im going to give this 15T a little more time.
Due to all of the wet weather and my strong aversion to mud, I haven't had an opportunity to run it in the grass yet. Temps on pavement were very very good. I ran the buggy from fully charged to lvc (3.5v) and could hold the motor all day.

I had to come up with a way to mount the batteries and hopefully balance out the buggy. If you don't know, the DBXL gassers are front heavyAf. I 3d printed some battery trays that required me to drill 6 new holes and enlarge one existing. The trays are mounted with 5mm hardware. One hole on each tray is mounted to the side skirt and the other 3 through the aluminum chassis. I used two straps per tray since the design of the tray prevents sliding length wise.

I'm not sure if or when I will go back. Im still playing for now. The weight is roughly the same but now the balance is great. It's about as fast, it just gets there quicker. The sound and sweet smell of methanol is something I'm missing.

Here's a video of her last run with gas (for now)
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#2
Went and found some suitable dry grass at a near by school. Ran 8s down to 3.69vpc. If these number are correct....I'm definitely going with a larger pinion gear. It's 50 degrees out. I'm more concerned about the driveline heating up than I am any of the electronics. The batteries were warmish at 94 degrees. Took me about 15 minutes to get home from where I ran and the driveline was a little warm. Center diff housing was warm. Not hot but something I'll keep tabs on while running to get a better idea of what's going on. I've got 30k in both the front and the rear and only 100k in the center. I may thicken that up to slow those gears down in there. This is typical of my type of running. Low cut grass or construction sites. I keep my jumps under 2 feet. I'm pretty impressed. Run time was sufficient. I kept wondering when I was going to hit LVC. Never did.
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#3

Took her back out this am and ran it down to lvc using a 21th pinion. Acceleration is down a tad but definitely acceptable. It's a wee bit faster but ill have to put it on pavement and wind her out one good time. Temperatures were higher as was amp draw and ripple. No cap pack just the MMX8S. So far so good.

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#4
Oops.
Made a few changes. 60k 500k 60k. New receiver just as a rule out. Ran twice today. Both good runs around the baseball field. Got a really really weird data log at first. Swapped recs, dropped voltage to 6.0 bec instead of 7.5. Ill throw up the logs in a bit. Was accelerating hard, loud bang, tire go boom. The beadlocks i made work. No denying that. Now for new tires.
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My goal with this was only 50, which I have achieved on tarmac with no additional changes. I've had this thing for quite some time and this was more of a project. I have two and they have both sat for a while. I've owned a machine shop for the better part of my life, and quite a bit of my garage is filled with it. I just recently gotten into 3D printers and my goal was to print everything I could that was strong enough not to break and would fit the batteries is had on hand. This was also a good way to familiarize myself with my new printers. I run a lot of 6S / 8S (speed runners and GTs) so I have a collection of 4S CNHL G Plus and Turnigy Panthers.

Working on the battery mounts is when I first discovered how front heavy it was. While looking for ideas of how to place my mounts and use the batteries to balance the truck, I stumbled a cross the some older conversions that were commercially available. They gave me a good starting point.

Now I just needed to work on a motor mount. That required work...and I just put it back on the shelf. I found a motor mount that said it would possibly fit this, but probably wouldn't, we just threw a bunch of tags lines in here so you'd buy it. It worked! Seventeen dollars later I had a motor mount. And indeed did fit...if wanted to use a 11 tooth pinion gear. At this point I was committed because I spent money instead of walking into the garage and snagging a piece of scrap. Chucked it in the vice, removed a little here and there, cut a moon shape into the far side, drilled some new holes (so I could use the existing space that is recessed on the DBXL chassis). Got everything mounted up and bam face of the mount hits the gear. I ended up removing .050" off the front of the mount and I'm happy with the clearance.

My trays were made, my mount worked, now I had to balance it. I used double sided tape to hold the trays, Velcro straps, esc and everything in place. Measured here and there and then drilled. I now had a working vehicle. It runs. I'm having fun with it. There are some issues which may either be related to the esc or my Savox 0236 servo when I set it to run at 7.5v. I haven't swapped the servo out yet. Ill probably get around to that this weekend. If I have no further issues, I'm going to drop back down to a 15-17 and call it a day. Run times were a lot better.

It's weird. Its just as fast, however it gets there significantly faster...but there is no noise (comparatively).....I never envisioned doing forward flips with a 1/5 scale vehicle. This will be my novelty car. This was something to do to pass the Rona-Time. It will most likely sit as spring is coming up and it'll be GT season.
 
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Sounds like you got it under control (y). Ps about 99% of us are gas powered on here not much "e" word cars on the site :LOL:. But still cool you converted something and it works well
 
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