Monday, May 18, 2009

Maxx Wheel Conversion from 12MM

Maxx Wheel Conversion
Fitting Maxx or 40 Series Sized wheels to your Rustler or Stampede

Let's first begin by saying this is a waste of your money, time, and effort. The project will net a overweight and underpowered R/C that will handle like a large turd. Even with a 6-Cell powered torquey 550 series Trinity Monster Maxx motor and later using a brushless Mamba Max 4600 both geared 12/87 it was still severely over geared and performance and speed suffered greatly. You simply cannot gear low enough for this to really work using the Stampede/Rustler gearbox. The other problem I saw was that the wheels are just too freaking big for the steering, chassis and suspension components to cope with and stressed everything to the max (no pun intended). All this for the low low price of about $60 in wheels, tires, Maxx hubs and parts - that is IF you have already done a Wide Conversion. Still want to do it? OK here's how.

First you will need to do a "Wide" conversion (see this) to get the room to even mount the wheels on the front.

The next step is to either purchase hub adapters (for the life of me I have see them, but am unable to find them again for your reference) or make axel shims so the stock Maxx hub adapter will work. I fabricated my axel shims from about $4 worth of brass tube from the hobby shop so they sit on the axel (as shown below) with a hole drilled through for the stock Stampede/Rustler axel pin. I ended up splitting the brass tube so it would slip around the axel. With the shim in place the Maxx wheels and hubs will fit. Yes, I know it won't be as tight a fit as on an actual Maxx based machine, but honestly the carriers on the Stampede/Rustler are only going to hold out so long from the stress anyway so might as well make this as easy as possible so you can convert back after you realize it sucks. This is the shim setup I used on my Tri-Pede but also re-drilled the hubs to fit a Maxx sized axel pin for much improved fit. Although re-drilling the axels worked, I would again advise against this, because you you will have to replace all the axels when you convert back. I also found that shrinking a small bit of wire shrink wrap righted up the front wheels considerably tightened the fit.

That's pretty much it, bolt the wheels on and gear as low as you possibly can which still will not be enough and here is the final result.




Yes... I know the left rear tire tread is backwards.

Really, although it looks cool, not the best project I have tackled.

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