T-maxx

The Traxxas T-maxx
      This is the T-maxx, and it's one incredible RC truck! My first impression of this truck was "WOW". Other then issues from learning how to tune and opperate the truck it has worked well. The first thing I noticed when I opened the box was its size. The tires are huge, the transmission box is big, and the motor was larger then I had guessed. This was the first nitro RC I had gotten a real good look at up close. Other then pictures I had only seen some .12 motors in a shop display and a handfull of nitro stadium trucks. After removing it from its box and giving it a once over I was pleasantly surprised to see everything was in good shape. The only thing I had any concern for was the slight wobble that the spur gear had during spinning. I put some batteries in the radio and reciever and gave it a check. I played with those servos and watched them move for longer then I would like to admit.

The entries below are in order, from bottom to top.
Does the T-maxx get cold feet?
      Whether or not the maxx can get a chill down its springs I bought a set of shock socks for it. The claims being that they almost eliminate the need to clean your shocks after every run to keep the grit and mud out of them. After a few runs with them I am very pleased. Shock socks are well worth the investment, and I think they look really good too.

Bounce, Pop!
      The stock shocks just don't cut it. They are cheap, the caps pop off, and they feel like someone dumped grit in them when freshly cleaned. With fifty weight oil the things lossed their caps after any good jump. In addition the aluminium bug bit. Some chassi braces would help to strengthen the chassi and keep it more rigid. I also wanted to pick up a servo cage after seeing some pictures of a truck that had been run over by a van. The server cage had actually saved the servo! While the stock servo may not be so great, one of the very next things I want happens to be a much better steering servo. As an impulse buy to go with it, I also wanted to aquire some metal skid plates. I figured they would offer better protection on those nose dives that occur during a jump gone wrong. Either way, after this latest phase of hop ups the truck is looking beautiful! I'll have some pictures up to show case it as soon as I get it nice and clean.

Uh, it's not supposed to screech like that!

After tuning my motor to the best of my ability the truck still didn't want to shift into second gear. It would eventually get there but I'm the impatient sort. So I figure it'll be a simple adjustment to go in an twist a little screw to lower the shift point just a tiny bit. I read the directions and start making adjustments. First I put it back at factory settings to make sure it was set propperly to begin with. (6.5 to 7 turns out.) I try it that way and find it will no longer shift at all. So I go back in and lower it one eight turn and get no improvement. Now this is interesting I think. Perhaps a mistake was made and I had over turned it out. Instead of making a one eighth turn I turn it one quarter. If one eight had no effect then one quarter should produce noticable results if nothing more right? Just as I line the maxx up for a high throttle pass a neighbor comes by to check it out. I'm giving him the sales pitch for this truck so he decides to watch. I rev the motor and notice it feels sluggish now. I give it gas, not really hard but at a healthy clip. It suddenly stops moving and starts making this hideous noise something like a small child runing a heavy power sander on an old kitchen stew pot. I cut the engine ASAP and examined the remains of a spur gear that just sagged in place. Lesson learned, never take adjustments to your shift point lightly.

RPM vs Aluminium, the winner is... both?

I drive my truck hard. Jumping is my favorite thing to do, and it takes a lot of abuse during the course of an afternoon of driving. After seeing the RPM a-arm take a big hit with nothing more then a minor scuff to show for it I wanted to get all the RPM stuff I could find. I have to admit I that the looks did play a part, I like the style RPM uses better then the stock parts. The body mounts also had a major problem, they bend to easily. After pricing aluminium parts I found RPM to be a better value for a driving truck. RPM is lighter, bounces back after bending, and if it ever breaks they will replace it free of charge. Aluminium does look better, but it costs a lot more in many cases. Cheap metal parts will bend and then they are ruined while RPM holds its shape. Now RPM only makes some things, and compatibility is an issue if you don't have stock stuff. High quallity aluminium costs to much to run unless your goal is a show truck.

Drat, another fowled glow plug!
      We had been having a lot of problems with glow plugs fowling up on us. The second truck got worse and worse after breaking it in. On the seventh tank it we couldn't even get it to run. By this time I had used up the last of the Wildcat fuel we had bought. When we purchased the first Maxx I had wanted to get the fuel with the highest oil content the shop sold. It was Wildcat Quickfire Eliminator plus 20% fuel. We had bought the second maxx from a new hobby shop after switching LHS. They had some Blue Thunder in stock and we bought it. This all but fixed our glow plug problem. Since switching fuels we have almost finished this gallon and have yet to see another fowled plug. Performance increased and tempetures went down too. This trip also saw another improvement. I was so tired of changing out alkaline batteries I bought some good quality 1800 mah nimh batteries for the recievers. Boy do these make a huge difference. Since getting them I haven't had to swap out reciever batteries on the fly. They also seemed to have gotten rid of the finickiness of the race guards. Lesson learned, check out a fuel before you try it and avoid anything other people have never heard of. And make sure you get some high quality rechargable reciever batteries.
Mmmm, fire....
      I made a make shift ramp in the yard by taking a 4x4 peice of house paneling and propping it up about two and a half feet. This gave me some excellent air for free! Now it must be said, jumping is a weakness of mine. If I have an RC you can bet I will find a way to get it into the air. The more it flips the better it looks when you set it down on all four wheels. With the healthy attitude like this I jumped my max for a while and got a feel for it in the air. With the weather changing to the warm side, it needed some minor tuning changes. Being the impatient type that I am, after I was finished tuning her up I didn't put the body back on before I resumed my jumping.

Noticing a good performance boost I just had to see what it could do. I drove it down the street, got to full speed and hit the ramp. I got about six feet in the air and flipped it twice in the air. I was in awe at the beauty of my flying maxx when I saw it slam into the mailbox post. The gas tank hit and the top shattered off. Half of a tank of fuel gushed all over the motor and everything else. There was a lot of smoke as it evaporated. For a split second I wondered if the motor itself could be hot enough to start a fire. Fortunately that didn't happen. I cleaned it up and fully assessed the damage. The carb got knocked loose from the motor, but no other damage to the motor could be found. I would have replaced the O ring if one could have been found, but no one had any replacements that would work in stock. The gass tank was gone. No other damage could be seen at the time. One minor thing could be lumped in with this. The next time I took her out after a slight bump in the yard an axle broke. It could have been cracked during this collision with the mail box. The lesson learned from all of this, always jump with the body on. I still except no responcibility for this accident, that mailbox jumped out in front of me without provocation! :)

Curbs are your enemy!
      While driving up and down my street trouble shooting a problem my maxx had with second gear I noticed I had a mixture problem. I adjusted the tune on the motor and got it back into the groove if you will. (I'm still just not sure how to get it to have all the power to pull those kicking wheellies like they say it can.) During a high speed run I had to avoid a parked car that just came out of no where. Stearing to the right I miss-judged the space I had and clipped the curb going at full tilt. The result was almost humorous, the T-maxx would still try to stear, but it wobbled to the left in a funny oblong circle. The servo saver must have worked since it was undamaged. The same could not be sade for the skid plate. The front bulkhead had a huge crack running down the center and the skrew mounts were broken off. One of the skrew heads was missing leaving the shaft stuck in the bulkhead permanently.

T-Maxx + New T-Maxx = A broken Spur Gear?
      We bought the second truck and began breaking it in. While my dad was breaking in his truck in the parking lot I decided I would try to climb curbs with mine. (I know the instructions say not to do it. But I couldn't help it. Those curbs were insulting the monsterliness of my truck.) It is a monster truck right? Up and down it went over curbs one after the other. As long as I took the curb with a bit of speed and at a slight angle it would jump over them just fine. The curb climbing did take its toll on the spur gear, chewing off several of the teeth. End result, my truck was down and out for the rest of the afternoon. The other truck went on and off. For some reason we were having a lot of trouble keeping it from stalling out. It was also fouling a lot of glow plugs and after its fifth plug during the third tank we had had enough for the day. A trip to the hobby shop and a few spare parts later my truck was up and running again and we continued on. The lesson learned, always pack a spare spur gear or two!

The very first crank of the engine!       I wish I could claim that break in was without problems, at least problems caused by operator error, but I did hit some snags. Hopefully this can help some folks that are new and scratching their collective heads about anything that I went through. The first start up was a thrill. After doing all the basics I put fuel into the tank and put a fresh 7.2 into the easy start. The first time I hit the button it ran a bit, so I held my finger over the exhaust nossle and promptly flooded the engine. After clearing it I let it run without priming and it flooded a second time. The third time I let it run, it went for much longer then the first two times but it started to ignite the fuel. It seemed slow, but it finally started right up! There she was, a new T-Maxx idling for the first time. I only let it idle for a moment before I began the break in procedure. I followed it as closely as I could. The manual was very strait forward and spells things out well. The car did well during break in, but it fowled plugs about one per tank. The first accident it ever had was during the third tank. I had it going at 50% throttle or so and it was going at a high speed right at a median on a parking lot. I turned the steering control full right and slammed the brakes, but it was to late. The truck hit the curb at speed at a bad angle. The front left a-arm took the hit, breaking the lower part in half and taking a shock with it. I felt bad at this point, I hadn't made it through break in and I had already wracked up a $32 repair. After replacing the shock and the a-arm, it was good as new and I was back out. While the picture doesn't show it, the bent shock had popped its cap, and the threads were damaged to the point of uselessness.