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1st gen Traxxas Rustler woes

5K views 4 replies 3 participants last post by  G-VWOW 
#1 ·
Well I got this thing as a gift quite a few years ago, about 6 years ago to be exact.

It's been in the box collecting dust for about 3 years now. Well yesterday I decided to pull it out to see if it still works. Charged the batteries up and tired to get it operational this morning.

The turning and such works fine, but the throttle was not working at all. The ESC picks up the signal but the car doesn't go anywhere.

I changed the transmitter batteries, set the trim to neutral to no avail. After I bit of research I worked out the motor was the problem.

Because I will need to change the motor I was wondering if I could upgrade the whole thing so it would be able to compete with the VXL. Or am I better off just getting a brand new VXL?

Thanks fellas
 
#3 ·
Could your motor be faulty perhaps? Have you tried a different motor with that ESC and that motor with a different ESC? those Traxxas motors are known to fail especially the 12 turn 550's... I have a spare 1 here if you want it which you're welcome to as long as you can be sure the ESC works.

The current model Rustler is essentially the same model as the original released in the 1990's except the material of the chassis and some of the parts have changed, and the battery tray has been modified to accept lipo batteries and the motor cover is slightly bigger to accept 550 size motors. also, the front hub carriers and the axle bearing size has been changed to 11x5 instead of 8x5 size bearings and updates of body shell and the metal gear transmissions. other than that, everything is interchangable between all models and earilier models can be upgraded to current spec without issues. i actually had a mid 1990's rustler which i stuck a hobbywing 5.5 brushless combo in it and have no issues whatsoever, plastic transmission and all.

if it's only 6 years old, it should be very close to the current model other than a brushed combo.
 
#4 ·
I don't think the motor was faulty it was just poorly taken care of. I got the rustler when I was only about 10, never bothered to clean the internals as I should of. I Haven't been able to test different ESCs and Motors as of yet.

Although, when I throttled once the car jumped about 10cm but then stopped again. As I never got into this nitty gritty stuff I don't really know too much about how I should go about making sure it's the motor that's the problem.

Could you possibly make a short list of the parts needed to upgrade my model to a decent standard? I leaning towards a brushless set up as brushless motors seem to be more reliable and quicker, from what I've read. And where would I get the adequate parts?

Thanks mate
 
#5 ·
You should be able to run it with a brushless as is and don't really need to worry about anything major to upgrade. Although, my habit is only upgrade when I break something. But having said that, if anything fails on your car you should check whether whether if there are any RPM parts to replace the stock part.
 
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