My Quad Conversion…
In my world, this is a QUAD. They sold these at Walmart for $20.00 and are not a bad “toy”. And they ARE actually a very good 1/6th scale which fits into my world very well too. They are made to run on 5 AA batteries and run rather well on a flat surface…even through very light snow.
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Our local hobby store claimed you could not upgrade these. That’s about all I needed to hear to give it a good try and they were wrong. I spoke with Derek about my idea and we disassembled one, ordered a receiver (3 channel Fly Sky FS-GR3F), transmitter (3 channel Fly Sky FS-GT3B) (as I had none at this point – not since the 70’s), a motor/speed controller combo(HobbyWing EZRUN Brushless Combo A2) and a decent servo(Corona 929MG).
The pinion gear, once removed from the original motor, slipped snugly onto the replacement brushless motor which fit the gearbox perfectly after elongating the original mounting holes about .030” each.
There is no working suspension on the front but this spring suspension on the rear axle works great and even flexes during acceleration.
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There was SO much room under the gas tank, I was able to easily mount the receiver with OFF/ON switch and the speed controller with some custom brackets and clamps made from some scrap PVC sheet I had laying around.
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The original steering was the typical ALL right or ALL left of most such “toys”. In order to maintain the quality appearance of this, even up close, I managed to mill out the plastic “fake motor” in order to hide the steering servo inside.
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I ended up making a servo arm from more scrap PVC sheet as there was nothing commercially made to fit what I had in mind. Once I had a workable servo arm, the linkage was simple enough with a swivel ball link, a threaded coupler and a section of the original wire steering linkage for each side
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These were originally set up to run on 5 rechargeable AA batteries, which actually worked quite well overall. The end product ran nearly twice as fast with massively more power. When they were stock, if you stopped with a wheel against a pebble you were probable stuck and it was totally lost if you ran into the grass. On the rechargeable batteries, using the original battery compartment, with the other upgrades you could easily venture into the grass and rough terrain and keep on going. With what I learned about how Lipo’s work on the blue and white boat I built from scratch, I took one of these Quads and gutted out the original battery compartment and installed an 800 mA Lipo and still had room for a low voltage alarm. I still have to get accurate speed capability from this set up but I can tell you they run at least twice as fast as the first upgrade and it is tricky to keep the clean side up and the dirty side down. That is why the gal is wearing a helmet. Safety first. I have yet to set off a low voltage alarm but hope to someday. These just draw so little juice.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3zQhSkV ... e=youtu.be
We hope you enjoy this brief sampling in three different environments. I ran off 23 minutes of video and barely put a dent in the batteries power.
