A top down view of a Nikko rc car with the body panal pulled off. Attached to the body is a victor 883 with it's fan pulled off. It is being driven by a pretty run of the mill R/C 2 channel controller. The motor in the rear is a FP motor, which required a great deal of dremling and work to fit. It just clears the wheel. The steering driver was replaced with a servo, although the linkage is pretty much stock. I was forced to use the stock 9.6 volt battery pack, which really hurt preformance.
All modifications were made in about 12 hours with things I had laying around. It lasted maybe 10 minutes of drive time before the transmission melted. It was a fun 10 minutes though. First RC car from Walmart that could power slide, I imagine.
Anyone want a slightly modified Nikko RC car? It's a fixer upper!
I’m feeling the setup. Too bad the transmission went to junk so fast.
(I’ll bet my dollars to your donuts that a tougher transmission (such as an E-Maxx tranny) could take that FP motor, but that kind of money defeats the purpose.)
Now for the other question…where’s the fan on the Victor?
I’m guessing that E-Maxx motors are already better than the FP motor. I believe by RC terms the FP would be considered 540 size and the E-Maxx motors would be considered 550 size. Now, if you could get a pair of Chias in an E-Maxx, oh, that would be one crazy truck.
I dont think the fan is really needed in this set up. Victors are designed for FRC bots where each motor can pull up to 40 amps at 12v. This motor is running at 9.6v and looking at the size and weight of the car, probably wont even come close to needing 15 amps. Thats just a random number but still proves my point.
i dunno about that toy car but my rc car pulls a lot more than 15 amps. easily. its all about the motor too. as the fp motor would have close to or less than the performance of a standard 540 closed endbell motor in rc terms, so is not that powerful and pulls fewer amps, but take a 5turn single, it will pull aloooooooot of amps. my speed controller is rated for a max 610 amps and a continuous (5min) of 90 amps for a reason. cheaper ones will fry in a couple seconds with a hot motor.
I’m guessing that E-Maxx motors are already better than the FP motor. I believe by RC terms the FP would be considered 540 size and the E-Maxx motors would be considered 550 size. Now, if you could get a pair of Chias in an E-Maxx, oh, that would be one crazy truck.
actually, i think it would be a slower truck. im not too into monster trucks, only 1/10 scale cars but at this size, everything is about weight/power ratios. the chias probably weigh too much for a good performance. maybe on some 1/5 cars it might be decent but definitly wont win anything even if it was legal. because rc motor makers design them specifically for rc.
I did this up for a friend, who was disappointed with the performance of the car and wasn’t really to attached to car. He won it. His only request was that I keep the body unmodified, because he thought it was spiffy.
So, using what I had around the house and some things from our workshop at Jame’s house, I put it together. The lack of a fan on the Victor is not an issue, really. I had to remove it for fitment reasons, since I was not allowed to modify the body. The fan, in this use was simply dead weight. The stock motor probably spun much faster then the FP motor, and so the transmission was geared down very low. The end result was that the car wasn’t actually faster then originally, it just had about 6 times the torque and full steering. Because the fp motor was never running at a fraction of it’s designed load, I didn’t think that the Victor would be passing more then 20 amps at the outside. The victor is in no danger at all. Honest. It still works.
Actually, the FP motor was the second motor I had swapped in. The first I had put in was a bit smaller but had much higher rpm. I acutally ran it in that version for a while, and it was working out all right. In retrospect, I should have stuck with it, because I think that the FP motor’s pinion gear didn’t mesh as well as needed, and that is what really killed the tranny. The extra preformance was nice though. I am still debating rehabilitating it and getting her running again.
Sounds like you ran into the same problems I did with the motor swap. By the time you’ve modified the tranny enough to accept such a massive motor, theres not much left to hold it in place. Even with everything I had done to hold it down, it would still torque it’s self out of alignment. Eventually, this was part of what killed it. Interestingly, the poor engagement between the pinion and first spur isn’t where the real failure accord in my project. The last gears in the reduction where the same size as the first few, and just were not strong enough to handle the massive torque the motor was putting out. Eventually every gear in that tranny had a few bald spots on it, before it just bound up and ‘melted’. I don’t think there is any safe way to put this much torque through a cheesy little rc car.
The problem is that these cars are as massproduced as possible. It doesn’t make any sense for Nikko (or who ever really makes these things) to make any part stronger then it absolutely has to be. So you end up with a transmission that uses the same 2 gears over and over again with out any regard for the increase in torque the gear teeth are dealing with, or a lack of even decent bushings. It’s fun to try, and my results where a ton of fun to watch, but I wouldn’t recommend putting the time in unless you are very very bored. I still think sometimes I could do it right, and have the ultimate ‘sleeper’ rc car when I show up at the race track.
Ruby (my Nikko) is in pieces spread over 2 or 3 different workshops. Development on project Ruby was officially ended awhile ago. The good news is that I keep finding uses for odd bits and pieces from her. James and I will probably be bringing a few examples of our most recent projects to Atlanta, if your interested in seeing it. I’d love to hear someone elses take on how to overcome some of the problems that crop up in this sort of thing.
I’ve considered modding my R/C stadium truck before, but since it is a nitro, its tranny can hande a FP. But I have a question: could you run a FP off a stock (15 turn+) R/C speed controller safely?
Andy A.
I had another project before the Dictator. It was a Nikko 1/10 scale 4x4 truck. First off the 4WD had to go (weak design and not very efficeint). I used the rear end out of a Nikko 1/14 scale Silverado. I chose this design because the Silverado has no differential. The rear axle is plastic, however there is a steel rod that runs through it. I modified the rear axle to accept a “sweeper belt”, built a custom tensioner, and mounted a 550 fanned motor from a Power Wheels jeep to it. The 550 runs best at 14.4 volts and couldnt benefit much from the 9.6 volt pack that the truck uses. I set it up so that the receiver and steering servo ran off a 9 volt battery, and using a mechanical speed control and servo (powered by the original motors’ power wires) I directed two 9.6 volt packs ran in series to power the motor. 19.2 volts makes the 550 scream and oddly enough really didnt heat the motor much. I never really got this truck running as I ran into numerous problems with the receiver/ steering setup. However I did get frustrated with the whole thing and hard-wired the (2) 9.6 volt packs directly to the motor via a switch - threw the switch and watched it take off across a parking lot with no plan how to stop or steer it! Luckily at about 25 mph it threw the rear tires off (which I ended up “gorilla glueing” on) and crashed. This project has been mothballed for the past 8 months - maybe this summer. I will post some pictures once I figure out how to upload them to this site!
sarbjr138
