RCCrawler Forums

rocko76

Overall, the build has been pretty frustrating so far... while I'm just getting back into RC and new to crawlers in general, I come from the pre-RTR Tamiya era, so certainly not new kit building in general. In fact, it's always been one of the more enjoyable aspects for me - at least, until this kit.

1) Instructions are terrible. Too many things jammed into one step and in some cases just... wrong. As an early example, the section with the battery tray that is supposedly for Bag 3, still requires parts not used in Bag 2.
2) Why, oh why, if you are putting parts on sprues would you include the P/N in the instructions, but not part number on the sprue?
3) Screws are too close in sizes - most kits I've built in the past intentionally minimize the number of different types of hardware used presumably both for cost and ease of assembly. And when different HW is used, they are different enough to be visually noticeable - dunno about anyone else, but I have a hard time distinguishing between a 3x8mm vs. 3x10mm or 3x10mm and 3x12mm. I constantly need to compare to the 1:1 or pull out the calipers, making it a less than enjoyable experience.
4) Options are inconsistently called out in the primary instructions. Why does the primary instructions call out the different battery tray options... but the step for the transmission build doesn't even reference the options located in the appendix in the back? Yeah, I expect most that buy the kit know about the different overdrive options and will be looking for that, but still.

Anyway.... general rant over and back to my specific problem...

How the heck do they expect you to lay down the torque required for the drive gear with a 1.5mm hex head? I knew driving these was going to be a pain given the grease requirement, but I had zero luck getting them in. Grease wasn't really a help (in retrospect, wax/soap may have been better), it almost seems like the holes in the gear aren't finished properly.

Granted, my 1.5mm driver isn't the best.... I try to use MIP when possible, but didn't think they made a 1.5mm (just realized I was wrong) so have Wera in that size - but still not junk. It does, however, have a skinny handle - because one generally shouldn't be trying to use that much torque on a 1.5mm to require a large handle. I could only get them about halfway in with this driver, at which point I got frustrated and tried a no-name allen wrench to get more torque.... and of course promptly stripped the heads.

Overall, this just doesn't seem "right", but I can't see what I can possibly be doing wrong either.

Ideas?