Stage 6 - Controls

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> Steering

As with most of everything else on this truck, the steering system required some pondering. Thanks to the amount of space taken up by the 2 engines and the froward positioned tranny, there was not space left over for steering. I had initially hoped to use some sort of 1/8 buggy set-up, but there was simply not enough room for that. Nor did I really have any space for the servo itself on the chassis.

So I decided to mount the steering servo in front of the diff housing. However, I did not want to have the whole steering system "pointing forwards" with the knuckles pointing forward and links in front of the suspension arm. First I thought it looked a bit goofy, but worse it seemed that it would made the links very vulnerable to "dings" and such.

So, I intended to mount the servo up front, run a link over the diff housing back to a bellcrank mounted on the chassis itself. This would allow me to mount the knuckles and steering links in a "conventional" way, tucked behind the suspension arms.

Steering bellcrank

Steering linked up

The servo mount it self went through a few different versions, mainly for looks and strength. In one of the later versions it started looking like the grill of a truck, which inspired me when I started looking into making a brace for the steering.

Version #2 of the servo mount

To ensure a rigid steering set-up I needed to make sure that the servo mount was tied into the rest of the chassis and steering system. This would require a brace of sorts, and inspired by the grill-like servo mount I decided to fashion the brace as a "hood" of sorts; connecting the servo mount to the servo bellcrank mounts and ultimatly to the chassis itself. I made this is of the same 2mm silver carbon fiber as I had used on the tail section.

Mount installed w/ "hood" brace

> Throttle

With 2 engines the throttle also had to be a bit off the beaten track. I made a mount that would fit the servo inside the tail section of the truck, which also provided a mount for a 90 degree bellcrank. This bellcrank, which hooked up to the throttle servo, was then connected to a control rod that connected to the throttle control arm on each engine.

Servo mount inside tail section, and bellcrank

Throttle linkage

> Brakes

As mentioned in the engine mount description, I installed a set of Hyper 7 brakes inside the engine mount. These are to be activated with a "plunger" that pokes thru the rear end of the engine mount. As of right now, I have yet to figure out a functional linkage for the brakes, so as of right now I guess Mr Newtons in the driver seat - LOL!

The (disconnected) brakes