We hope you enjoy "Project Rock Ripper". We started this project as rock crawling newbies and still have a lot to learn. Throughout the project pages, you will see what we did with our truck and we will also try to list some alternatives to get the job done. Our hope is that by providing some alternate methods to acheive the same end goal, more people will tackle a project like this and get into crawling!

SETTING UP THE AXLES
Before getting too far along, we thought it would be best to get the axles setup and ready to rock (sorry for the pun...it was too hard to resist). That means tearing down the axles, cleaning them, installing bearings, locking the differentials, regreasing and reasselbing them.


CLEANING & AXLE BEARING UPGRADE
As we purchased a used truck, the axles were used and we wanted to give them a good tear down, inspection and cleaning before we did anything else. We took them apart, cleaned out all the old grease (see picture to the left...YUK!) and installed brand new, rubber sealed bearings from FullForce RC (part number CB070). They are the pretty blue sealed ones in the "AFTER" picture to the left.

FFRC offers a complete bearing set for the Clod which was a few more bearings than we actually needed however for a few extra bucks, it is always nice to have extra bearings on the shelf for other projects (many of the Clod bearings are the same size as T-Maxx bearings). The bearings are a much needed upgrade as the stock axles contain bushings. After the upgrade, the axles spun as smooth as silk. The reduced resistance gains by the bearing upgrade means more run time with our rubble traversing beast!

Before reapplying grease and reassembling the axles, you will want to read and perform the steps described in the next section, LOCK THE AXLES.

LOCK THE DIFFERENTIALS
To gain maximum traction, we wanted to lock the differentials, front and rear. This will keep all four wheels spinning no matter what and will certainly add to our trucks crawling ability.

Having locked differentials will reduce the turning ability of the truck and if you choose to lock both the front and rear diff's, you should add four wheel steering.

You can also choose to lock the rear diff only and see how that works for you. By only locking the rear axle, you can avoid doing the rear steering modification however in most cases, a 4-wheel steering, front and rear locked differential setup will give you max crawling ability.

Instead of reinventing the wheel and writing up the diff locking procedure, we will give you a link to an excellent writeup by a BYT Forum member: Click here to check it out! Once you have completed the locking procedure, make sure the gears are lubed and reassemble. Thanks to Unruley of the BYT Forum for his great writeup on this procedure.

Click here to check out STAGE 3 of Project Rock Ripper....Wheels and Tires.

PROJECT UPDATE (1-20-2006)!

After many battery packs and hours of crawling, we ended up wedging a rear tire into some rocks, in a bad way! Of course, we gave it full throttle (dumb move) and tried to free to stuck truck. No deal. Instead, we heard a loud SNAP and then noticed our truck had become a 3-wheel drive. Back to the shop!

After a quick teardown and inspection of the rear axle, we found a plastic output gear (one of the small gears that we JB Welded in the procedure above) had snapped. We could have gone for some new stock pieces however it is a pain to tear down the axles and we wanted to upgrade to something that would not fail again.

We picked up two TracGear locking differential gear sets to get us crawling again. These are some really nice pieces. The fit of the splined axle hubs is SUPER tight into the TracGears. In order to get them to fit, we ended up sanding a very light amount of material off of the axle hubs. The final fit was tighter than a Speedo on a fat guy and we were pleased. They are also light in weight and are not at all as heavy as they look. We applied a light layer of synthetic grease to the gears to reduce any plastic to metal wear.

After we get some time on them, we will report back and let you know how they perform!

We picked these up at www.rc4wd.com for about $70 with shipping.