The Gee1 Rampage MT V3

[Gee]

Okay nothing special going on here yet. Just starting a thread for my MT V3 that is here (in town) but not at my house. Delivery was postponed a day for adverse weather. Beside looking out the window and shoveling snow today. I took some pictures and killed some time on some items I had waiting for the MT to show up.


I upgraded two SFL-10MG servos to full Metal Gear SFL-10MG2 servos. To install in the truck.





I couldn't find the screen mesh I had cut out for sealing up the motors prevoiusly. I looked all over the place and nope it gone. Not back in the screen I cut it out of either. I know there are a 100 different ways to keep the crap out of the flywheel through the pull start but this may be #101. I had an old 1/10th scale foam tire insert. I cut it so I could spread it out then cut a thin piece off the side of it. The natural curl it had made it fit almost perfect into the pull start area with the fins that need covered. I trimmed a little off the end and if was pretty tight. I ended up putting a little shoe glue on the bottom of the portion that the foam touched when pushed all the way down (on the outside of the circle the paw spins in). Let it dry and it looks like its gonna cut the mustard.





I had a Cy26 engine with a big bore kit installed on it. The motor lost some power and per the advice of some rampageforum members I orded a new piston ring instead of a new big bore kit. lol I was glad I asked before I started shopping. I got the new parts in and sure enough the engine has compression again. I put it back together with a WT-813 carb and a hpi filter setup. I will remove the stock motor from the MT and use this one on it.





You might have noticed all the pull starts in one of hte pictures. DDMs deal of the day was pull starts when I orded the piston ring and bearings. I have not had good luck fixing the ones I had so I got three more of them. Ironically later that day after I ordered I found a video on how to fix your pull start. It finally made sense to me and I was able to fix the one that was broken and got three new ones in the mail.


I connected up a Battle Switch to the Kill Switch and to the receiver. I like the way the one I have on the 5b works. Have it setup so all the LED on the baja light up when it okay to start it.


I sold the Mielke Side Mount Pipe I was going to try on the rampage. I will be ordering a CPI pipe for it tomorrow once paypal catches up. Will be a stock muffler until then.


Removed the grub screws and loc-tite d them in the spare cvds. Played around with some Dark Soul Proline extended adapters. But just wasn't the same with out an RC to actually put them on.





It feel like I am missing something...... Oh Yeah, it's a Rampage MT

 

[grfilipp]

good job i believe this is the right way to do things.


study and then shop whatever is needed to wait for the truck.

 

[chevy1]

You got some nice parts gee, can you explain the gaskets kit??

 

[Obeast44]

Gee, thats an impressive start. Great attention to detail, even before you have your truck. I think you will be pleasantly surprised when she arrives

 

[Gee]

Thanks. I tried to get what was needed or recommended here before the truck did. The CPI pipe was a last minute change, was going to use the Mielke to begin with.


This is the gasket set.


http://www.davesmotors.com/s.nl/c.885035/n.1/it.A/id.7721/.f


Heavy duty and cheaper then the other sets. I had some gaskets from the previous engine but thought I would add these to the price. No expereince running them but I can say watch the gasket when you are putting the head on. They have a stainless steel insert so the flywheel magnet likes to suck it out of place if you don't hold it down.


You know I will be pleasantly suprised when she arrive. The UPS fellows don't stick around more then two knocks on the door and they are behind due to the snow. Not letting them slip by when tomorrow is a holiday is crucial to me enjoying the holiday tomorrow. Well me and those around me. So it has been a rough couple of days. No shower, running low on nicotine, refiltering my coffee, and things are looking grim as far as butt wipe goes. The future Mrs. Gee will be here around 2:30 but if UPS arrives sooner. I am in the shower and off to the store first. Then I can drag it in the bathroom, sit down and open it up. lol Only kidding it probably will not fit into the bathroom until I get it out of the box.


Wait a minute. It sounds like the neighbors are home finally. They can sign for it while I am off to the store. The RC Gods are shinning on me today! Although it was -5 degree when I woke up on the couch this morning, but the sun is shinning!

 

[BTXpress]

You know I will be pleasantly suprised when she arrive. The UPS fellows don't stick around more then two knocks on the door and they are behind due to the snow. Not letting them slip by when tomorrow is a holiday is crucial to me enjoying the holiday tomorrow. Well me and those around me. So it has been a rough couple of days. No shower, running low on nicotine, refiltering my coffee, and things are looking grim as far as butt wipe goes. The future Mrs. Gee will be here around 2:30 but if UPS arrives sooner. I am in the shower and off to the store first. Then I can drag it in the bathroom, sit down and open it up. lol Only kidding it probably will not fit into the bathroom until I get it out of the box.


Wait a minute. It sounds like the neighbors are home finally. They can sign for it while I am off to the store. The RC Gods are shinning on me today! Although it was -5 degree when I woke up on the couch this morning, but the sun is shinning!

Its more or less officially PEAK season at UPS. Do you know where your delivery center is/ how far away? I am hoping to get my MT tonight... it would be sooo much better than waiting until Monday. I have ordered parts, etc. but I have not received them yet. I am still trying to decide on a pipe. You are definitely ahead of the game!


You had me laughing reading the last part of your post! Good Luck!

 

[Gee]

Crisis is over. Rampage has arrived, I've showered and stocked up on the essentials for the tear down and rebuild. The delivery center is only 5 miles away. I've tried picking up packages from UPS when they have been delayed but are sitting in there at their center. They are under contractual agreement to delivier the package. I was told they have to at least try to get the package to you one time before they will allow you to come and get it.


Okay, going to print off the checklist and go over it once or twice. I plan on taking a lot of pictures of the process. That's one thing I was looking for a lot of detailed pictures while I was researching and waiting. Found them but not all in one place.

 

[BTXpress]

Gee... take pics and post up quick... I am hoping to only be a couple steps behind you! (-;

 

[Gee]

Got the Rampage the day before Thanksgiving and spent most of the night just going over it. I swapped out the gear plate and plastic gears. The biggest pain was changing the steering servos out. The Stock servos have a rounded side to them so the brackets on the Rampage have that curve also. The HPI servos I used are square probably like everyone else. That made the placing of the brackets off a couple of mm which in turn just got passed right on down the line to everything else. The Throttle servo bracket was now too short to connect. I made a makeshift fix for it for the time being. Once I got that side all hooked up I moved to the other side. It looked like it was going to be easier but looks were deceiving. The holes that the radio box screwed down into were not off by the extra length of the HPI Servos. Now the radio box was back tight against the motor and had to shave some material off the radio box cover to get it all closed up. I made due for the time being. By just adding some holes to screw the box down onto the servo mount. It was too cold out in the garage to go and make new brackets that night. I will make something more permanent up for them soon. I have some 3/8" lexan that I plan on using ot make some better bracket holders. I had to remove material from the servo cases where the screw down and they are not as strong as I would like. I will get some new cases for them and get it fixed correctly. That night I was all about wanting to get this on the road.


Well the next morning I got to try it for about 1/2 hour before the holiday took over. Since that time it has been sitting mainly due to the snow. It was a**hole deep to a giraffe for a while. We still have 14-18" left in some places. Slow melt and a freeze coming up. I order the CPI pipe yesterday. The stock pipe is no good of course. No power from it. I stole the Mielke pipe off my 5b to use while I am waiting. Got it out and running today. It did much better then the first time with the stock pipe before. I have a routine that I take the dogs and an RC car for a walk. We head out for the other side of a park near my house. Back road/gravel most of the way there then cut through the park. As the crow flies it is about 1.5 miles to the place I bash at. The park is now a busy place due to the disc golfers but so far everyone but 2 people have been cool about my RC noise. Just passing through to the big piles of dirt on the other side I let them know. So got it tuned in and running fairly decent for the second time out. Except for that noise the steel gears make. I’ve pulled the cover a couple time just to make sure it all tight. It ran great with the M Side mount pipe on it. Then my rx battery gave up on me. I carry a waste bag full of parts and misc. items, zip times, nuts bolts, etc for when something breaks down. I do my best McGuiver impression to drive it back home. I have a tow rope that I hook on the front of the RC and drag the larger RC back home. After a mile even the 15lbs RC get heavy. My Rampage is at 38lbs when I put it on the scale when I got home. Still some snow stuck in the rims. I wasn’t looking forward to pulling it or lugging it back from the park. Wet slushy snow 10" at least. I saw a guy looking or aluminum cans and offered him 5 bucks to give me a ride home. Whew, dogs had to run but it was worth the 5 bucks. Would have been a long tow through the snow. Alright here some pictures and there are plenty more for anyone wanting to see the V3 rampage inside and out in the photobucket link.


http://s212.photobucket.com/albums/cc316/GuyJor/000001%20Redcat%20Rampage%20MT%20V3/


Out of the box Some pics before I started wrenching on it.

 

[Gee]

These pictures should be when I started taking it apart to replace the gear plate, plastic gears, steering and throttle servos.

 

[Gee]

Some pictures of the rampage MT next to a couple other Rc and tires for comparison





Ran into what seemed like gas tank venting problem while I was out running. Would start to bog down and when I pulled it in and opened the gas cap for a second it was all better. This is what I am going to try on my cap. See if it hold up.....





I don't know if you need a huge filter on the outside like that. The screen I pushed down in there should do fairly well and if I had another one would just have put it on and then screwed the red cap onto the nut. It would keep the dirt out which has to through the rubber bladder on the inside of the cap anyways. Hmmmm...

 

[Gee]

 

[Deluge1]

Nice build. I vented the gas cap by gutting it and drilling out the vent hole, then used some Seal-All to adhere left over air filter foam to the inside of the cap. Just another way of doing it.

 

[Gee]

Thanks. Since that picture I now have some fuel line coming out of that hole and away from the chassis. It was getting messy but it turned out i was more from the exhaust leak I had.


I've been wanting to get in here and add stuff as I go along but haven't been able to. I sat down and gathered up some photos and compiled some things. Hope you guys bored at work appreaciate me helping you kill some time today.


The collage maker I use to combine more photo into one doesn't let me choose which picture is first, second, etc. So if some seem out of place in order of what I did well they are out of place. lol


It’s hasn’t even been two month yet since the Rampage showed up on the door step. Considering the amount of time it usually takes a RTR RC to be built up and running the way you want it to. I am rather pleased it has gone so smoothly and fast with the MT. The Savage XL I bought took months to get it tuned in and tweaked to where it was fun to run. All RTR take some work to get them to that point were you have fun and not working on correcting the sloppy steering, lack of power, etc. etc… I finally got the engine tuned in with the CPI pipe. Have had some minor problems but that’s part of the hobby. I removed the stock steering servo and installed some HPI servos. I ran the truck in the snow and ended up toasting a SFL-10MG servo due to getting water in it. So I reinstalled the stock servos. I sealed them up pretty well but I lost one real fast. Could have been water also or it just died. I ran just one HPI servo until the replacement HPI came in the mail. When it came in I removed the cases and sealed them properly this time around. Packed the top with grease and sealed the joints with Liquid Tape. It has the two SFL-10MG servos with the MG upgrades installed know and haven’t had any issues and it’s been seeing action in the snow almost every day of the week.


Pictures of servo sealing were suppose to go here but I can't find them.


When I first got the rampage I didn’t have the patience to make some servo mounts. I just wanted to fire it up and get it going. After already swapping out the stock servos twice I decided it would be a good time to make new servo mounts. I cut out some basic servo mounts for the HPI servos. I just followed the same patter as the stock one. I made them out of 3/8 inch lexan which was wide enough to get a screw into from the existing mounting holes in the chassis. I have the HPI filter on this and it get in the way. I plan on getting a low profile servo for the steering and cutting a few mm off the hieght of the servo mounts. May do the trick for my setup.





I busted both upper rear arms threaded insert off. I was using a ¼” threaded rod to keep the rampage on the road, but they were not the right fit and after a few runs I could keep them from slipping out of the plastic ends. I just picked up a 8mm rod at a local True Value store. I tapped the plastic holes with and 8mm tap and ended up just tapping it all the way through on the upper inside arm. This way I had some room to play with and didn’t have to cut off some of the rod. The threaded 8mm rod was only 1.40 if it works out it I will keep a couple on had. Both of the stock insert that broke did so right where the thread ends on them.





Biggest upgrade or change since the previous post in here has been the CPI pipe. I was running the Meilke side mount while I waited on the CPI. It did well but the CPI is just a different pipe. Is a lot louder then the side mount was. It took me up until today to actually get the fuel setting right. It is running real well now. I tried previously to change the 25 and 35t gear but it was a dog on take off. I just got the 2 MCD 30t gears in the mail today. I plan on putting them on tomorrow and seeing how it performs. Now that I got the engine tuned better. I also have some lighter tires to run on it. Picked up a set of Proline Excavators but lately have been running Hostile MX with some screws installed.

 

[Gee]

Studded Studs in Tires stock and Hostile MX


Speaking of tires the stock tires are heavy but they would give me the ground clearance I needed when the snow was deeper. I ended up installed some screws in them for traction on the ice and compact snow. Big improvement on traction. Plenty of rubber on the stock tires to installed the screws. I bought a pack of screws at Lowes for $6 and it came with 250 screws. So far I have installed them in 4 stock tires and 4 Hostile MX. Both the tires have enough tread on them that when I remove the screws the rubber just seals the holes back up. I recommend getting some if you do any bashing in the snow and ice.

 

[Gee]

Throttle Linkage Freezing Ice Build up prevention


Snow and ice leads me right in the can cooler cover I made for the carb. I was having problems (some serious) with the throttle linkage on the carb freezing up on me. I cut up a can cooler and sized it to fit over the carb. Works great and just need to move it a little out of the way to stick a screw driver in and make adjustments. With the addition of that and a garbage sack on the front haven’t had any more issues with the snow and ice build up on the inside of the truck


Pictures of can cooler














I will have to finish up later with the rest of the items I have to add. I also dusted off an old video camera to make a video. Will post it up when I get all the cursing and prostitutes edited out.

 

[jacosj]

I will have to finish up later with the rest of the items I have to add. I also dusted off an old video camera to make a video. Will post it up when I get all the cursing and prostitutes edited out.

Why ruin a good thing?! haha

 

[Gee]

Keeping Snow out CPI Pipe Burning Body install


One word: Pre-nump


or is that 2 words?


lol


Back at it ...... The rain coat or garbage bags. Reminds me of the old days of having wonder bread bags over my shoes in the snow. Slick as hell but kept the shoes dry is what the folks must of thought.


The garbage sack on the front has worked out great. Just a couple of holes cut out for the front arms and slip it on the front and tie it down. It gets beat up and ripped so take a spare and watch for it getting too loose arount the front tires. It will get caught up and bind up the front. Happens on the gears too if you don’t have the cover over the gears.





The CPI pipe sticks up where it would burn the body of the truck bed. I ended up making a new roof for the roll cage out of lexan and then took the aluminum roof and installing it into the two back holes facing the rear of the truck. It fits right over the CPI pipe and protect the body. I lowered the body mounts from stock and moved them back a little so the truck would fit over the pipe with out being hacked up. You can see the space I made from 3/8” lexan in the pictures of the reserve tank below. In order for the body to fit on now I made some relief cut in the bed of the body so when I installed it and pressed it down onto the mounts it would give a little where the protective roof was I made. The rear of the body busted on Christmas after a failed snow back jump.

 

[Gee]

LED Lights Connected Battle Switch Fail Safe Remote Kill Switch


With the shortest day of the year just a week or two behind us. The days are getting longer but not long enough up here in the PNW. Was getting dark around 3:30pm and it back to after 4pm now. I often do my rc run in the late afternoon and it gets pretty dark on the way home. I made up some LED lights for the truck. Took some lexan and cut it to fit the bumpers and used it for a place to install the LEDs. I like to install the lights ans wires onto the chassis vs running wires in the body and putting the LED into the body. The wires and connections just get to be a pain. I got the LEDs hooked up to the Battle Switch. When I turn on my radio on the light are connected but will only come on it the kill switch is not activated. Having the lights indicate that the kill switch is not on make it a lot easier. Don’t spend all those pulls trying to start it then realize I still have the KS on. If the lights are on it okay to start. If the lights go out the kill switch is on or the fail safe kicked in.

 

[Gee]

Pull Cart Reserve Fuel Tank


I still golf on occasion (I still trip and fall too) so I couldn’t resist this Pull Cart for 20 at the thrift store. I wasn’t thinking about golfing when I found it but that’s the story I am sticking too. This is the right size to throw the baja or rampage on and haul it around on. It folds up nice and small to fit in the rig and then I can unload it and haul all my crap to the bash spot if I am driving out to one. I am working on accessories for it. Attachment for tools, fuel, etc. I can see a brace to it will sit level while it has an RC so I don't have to get dirty while I out with the fellows at church sunday morning.





I just added a reserve tank. My daily ritual is to take the dogs and an RC for a walk. We head out from the house and walk a mile or so to a bash spot that is on the other side of a park. It’s just a short distance out of the concrete jungle and onto some gravel then dirt road. Can walk the road or go down on trail by the creek. Then through a park where there are now a lot of disc golfer playing. Use to have the park to myself a few years back. Most everyone is pretty cool and ask question about the rcs. Only a few serious disc golfers made any negative comments about it. Explains why they were throwing alone. Anyway at the bash spot there are mounds of dirt the city piles there. Big oval area for circle racking. Series of mounds like speed bumps. Just a good large area to let the 5th scale rcs got wot. It’s off by itself no residential houses around. If I am going for a long time I will haul some extra gas with me or I drive over and stash a metal bottle full of it in the rocks. Then while I am there I can fill up and not have to have that grenade hooked to my hip on the walk there. Most of the time it’s just a walk over and 20-25 minutes at that bash spot then walk back. On occasion I have to hook my tow rope up to the front bumper of the rc I take and tow it home. These RC are just getting heaver as I go alone. They get tougher too. The 1/10th & 1/8th rcs I would be lugging back home every other trip for some reason. I try to jury rig the rc with what ever I have in the tool pack I carry along. Some people call them a fanny pack but this puppy is packed with tools, parts, a lighter, and a lot of zip ties. It gotten heavier so it is hang down of my ass not my fanny. Anyways….. Towing them back is not fun. I actually bribed a guy w/ $5 dollars to give me a ride back to my house. The battery ran out in the rampage and the snow was a foot deep and fresh. Would of taken a Clydesdale to tow the boy home through the snow. Sorry long lead into why I put the reserve tank on. It give me a few extra minutes to push the envelope on running out of fuel while I am out for a walk about. I got the line ran so I can put the end into the gas tank and blow through the fuel line from the reserve and empty it into the rampage tank. I plan on cycling the fuel that I carry in there.





I had a slide show that I was working on of the bash spot that I was going to use to convince some other guys last spring to bash at my spot vs theirs. I am thinking about finishing it off and will post if for those that are bored. Also have videos of us over there with the 5bs and some recent video fo the MT V3 being driven erotically with one hand or thumb I should say. Then some hill climbing. Stay tuned or awake.


Also


Coming soon....... I purchased the following items today. Will be installing the Zenoha G270RC with the kit below in the Rampage MT soon,


dd258 1 Team FastEddy Replacement Sealed Engine Bearing 7.00


dd269 1 Team FastEddy Ceramic RC/CY Engine Bearing Set 39.00


av522 1 Walbro WT-813 High-Performance Carburetor for Zenoah / CY Engines 30.00


cc286+dd308 1 ESP 4-Bolt 36mm Modified/ESP CHAMPIONSHIP PORTED Zenoah 30.5cc kit w/ 2mm crank 177.00


dd262 1 Oil Seal Set 6.00


I found these video that one of the guys posted. They are the bajas we were running but it shows some of the Bash spot. Got a huge jump and an area that has a bunch of back to back moguls in it we would rade around on.


http://www.youtube.com/user/aaronl24#p/u/22/hqQKJEVJsHY


http://www.youtube.com/user/aaronl24#p/u/25/TEd5AL6DV60