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Thursday, December 25, 2008

Christmas mutterings

Well, it's Christmas morning and I'm thinking about sneaking out to the garage before the wife wakes up so I can experiment with a new Optima blue top battery I bought yesterday. After rewiring the motors with new 12 gauge wire and rewiring most of my electrical connections, the droid still was very sluggish. Especially climbing the driveway. So after trying everything I possibly could think of I went out and bought a new battery which I had on a charger for 8 hours yesterday.

Oh and another wonderful revelation. My motor mounts and foot shells need much more work. Actually It's going to be back to the drawing board once again. Very frustrating but it's just part of the process. And as I read other posts from other R2 builders, everyone does it over and over and over until they get it right. The test is if you still have your mind intact after it's finally done.

So the next plan is to shift the motors forward again (in the original position) and then cut the motormounts thinner so there is more room to pivot the shells. I may need to fabricate some new brackets for the shells though.

There's a new unexplained weirdness on the droid. I have a main power switch and also a power switch to the speed controller. That way I could leave the droid standing all lit up with the drive disabled. For some reason the other day after a test I touched the switch and it felt hot. It was an old 1950's switch I had so maybe it was bad. Since it wasn't critical, I removed the switch and wired the speed controller direct. But it still has me wondering .....

Merry Christmas everyone !

2 comments:

Calvin Thomas said...

Hey Jim,
Just wanted to mention a problem Jason had with his R2.
He thought the batteries were going dead too fast and his droid was sluggish.
Come to find out it was a compatability problem between the motor controller and the reciever.
He changed the reciever and all problems were solved.
He was using a Scorpion and Vex setup.
Hope the new batt. works.
Calvin

Jim said...

Ya know Calvin. I once fried the receiver (black smoke and all) but it still worked so I'm still using it. Maybe there was damage to the receiver. I use the RDFR23 Vantec controller and the Br6000 spectrum receiver.