It's been a few weeks since I last went crawling. During that time I did some upgrading. Picked up a replacement steering servo, a Cirrus CS704/MG. Huh? What? Basically a hi-torque metal gear servo. It outputs 181oz/in at 4.8v and 195oz/in at 6.0v. ...zzZzZZ... That means...More Power! (insert Home Improvement Tim Taylor grunts) And while getting the servo, I also picked up a new truck body: a Pro-Line Rockstar crawler body (energy drink not included).
I also upgraded to some diff locker kits. The Venom Creeper has front and rear diffs that are unlock-able. When rock crawling, you don't want any wheels just spinning in the air. You go no-where really fast. With the diffs locked, all wheels get the same amount of power all the time. The down side is when you make a turn on a flat-ish surface, you need a lot more room (or simply just make a 100 point U-turn). With unlocking the diffs, you can make a tighter turn, but you loose rock crawling and climbing power. And getting the kits allows me to work on the truck. That's always a plus.And now for a little show-off shot. If you look at most rock crawler pictures, they usually show off how much articulation there is. And here is mine:
After all the upgrading, I finally went crawling at the in-laws back yard again. Crawling there actually provides two sides of entertainment: 1) I have fun crawling on the rocks, and 2) my nephews are entertained and help out. They like to help it get unstuck, and this last time they even built a rock wall for it to try and knock down.
Here is the rock wall challenge:
And the crawler lost:
Don't worry, Ron, no landscape lights were harmed during this crawler session.So after the wall, I decided on a real challenge: to attempt to climb to the top of the large rock in the back yard.
Let's try this side:
That didn't work. How about this side:
Oh no! The crawler is in turtle mode:
Well for that day's adventure, the score is crawler 0, backyard 2. Until we meet again, backyard of the in-laws. Mwahahaha!
And here are a few fun pictures. Along with all the other gear installed, I also have a light installed. In the above pictures you can't really tell. It's either turned off or the flash provides too much light. So here is a picture of it:
Another annoying advertisement plug:the light kit used is an ElectriFly FlyLites kit by Great Planes.
As you may or may not know, I have taken all of the pictures you had seen so far. Now I'm not a camera pro, or even an amateur. I just take pictures. Sometimes I actually get a cool shot, like this one. It looks like a fake photo. Did I really drive on the rocks, or did I just paste in a shot of the truck?
In actuality, it was getting dark out and I used the flash on the camera. I might have even had it set on night mode. Either way, this is a one time cool shot that I most likely will never be able to replicate.So until next time, have a great crawling adventure out there.
