I was feeling bored and came across this while I was looking around local classified ads for something to tinker with.
The stock ORV stickers had been removed (but not the nasty residue!) and some other stickers had been placed on the sides so I removed them and cleaned it up a bit. It came with a NiMh battery but the ESC can take a LiPo by setting the jumper and I found a great deal on Amazon for a couple of 4500 mAh 2S LiPos so I grabbed them. It also had 3 sets of LEDs, white headlights, red tail-lights in the rear bumper and blue headlights in the front bumper. I didn’t think the blue lights were very scale so I removed them and then I didn’t really like having the tail-lights in the bumper but one of the housings for the LEDs in the body was missing. It didn’t take long to draw up a housing in Onshape CAD by copying the one that was left, so then I 3D printed it and hot glued it in place – bingo tail lights in the body! The headlights were hardly dazzling when I took it in the back yard one night so I ordered a little 55mm light bar from Amazon and installed it on the front bumper, much better.
The turning radius seemed quite large and it seemed to turn right more than it would turn left?? After a bit of research and remembering that the previous owner told me he had replaced the steering servo, I found that the steering servo was mounted too far forward. I moved it back so that the drag link is now parallel with the steering link and the steering is much improved. I looked at moving the battery to the front but it will require a bit of design and 3D printing of a new battery tray and it’s not causing any problems yet anyway. I also felt that there was too much preload on the shocks but I couldn’t find any information on what the stock setting should be which I found to be weird since the manual shows how to assemble the shocks and specifies what oil and springs to use but doesn’t mention anything about a preload setting?? So I backed them off to something that looked similar to what the pictures in the manual and on the Carisma website shows. Then I took it for a quick test round the back yard.
Seems pretty good so far, quite keen to try some more challenging terrain and maybe design and print some accessories – one of the windscreen wipers is missing as is the spare wheel on the back.
