The following webpage, done by Anthony Arnold, was sent to us. It has been edited for size. For all of you RC sports car fans that want to view the full page with graphics and other great RC sports car information, please visit his website at:

 http://www.aarnold.com/Traxxas/Traxxas_Stampede_projects_hopups_Durability.html

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So you are at that point where you want to replace that stock motor but don't want to buy a new ESC on top of buying a new motor. This is a very low cost upgrade that will not only bump up the performance and power delivery of a stock Traxxas XL-1 ESC, but will greatly reduce the heat the ESC generates. This upgrade is also good insurance to take out if you just want to run a 16T or 17T modified motor on the stock Taxxas XL-1 ESC, and don't want to have to buy a new ESC. How much will it improve performance? If you upgrade the entire electrical path starting from the battery connection all the way to the motor to 12 gauge wire it will improve your cars performance about as much as moving from the stock Tamiya and bullet connector to Deans plugs or the difference of going from stock bushings to 5x11 bearings in the wheels. Most people approximate either of these as a 10%-20% improvement. I am continuing to test how much the XL-1 can actually take and how low a motor limit it will handle.

One thing I noticed right away was that the XL-1 really heats up even with the stock motor and normal driving and really had to be watched with the 17T Trinity Pro Amber modified motor. But all this can be fixed easily and cheaply.

A little electrical resistance 101 lesson - Mechanical friction = stress on motor = resistance = motor load = heat = more resistance load = more currant draw = more resistance= more motor load = more heat...etc. Kind a perpetual circle. The same goes true for the ESC, the more current that the ESC has to manage the hotter its going to get. The idea is to remove or reduce as many of the components creating resistance on the electronics. Would you rather push a car an a perfectly flat road or up an off road trail with lots of big boulders to push the car over. Looking at this logically, aside from the RPM 5x11 wheel bearing upgrade, and making sure the motor is lubed, the gears are not binding and properly lubed, the mechanical friction elimination part is pretty much taken care of. For the electrical part, upgrading to a motor like one of the Trinity Speed Gems with bearings instead of bushings will reduce resistance at the motor. A good upgrade at this point is to move completely to Deans connectors (about $3 per connection point.) The ultra low resistance Deans connectors will be one of the best overall electrical upgrades you can make to a stock Stampede and will make a very noticeable difference in power delivery. Also sooner or later you will melt the Tamiya plugs anyway (by the way batteries don't like to be shorted). A 12 gauge wire has about 1/3 the resistance of the stock 14 gauge wires so upgrading to 12 gauge power wires from the motor with gold or soldered connectors will decrease the resistance significantly (i.e. heat that the ESC and motor will generate).

So what about this XL-1 Electrical upgrade part? I also noticed that the wire on the ESC were getting warm after a good hard run even after all the above upgrades (a good indication the wire gauge is to small for the current draw), so I decided that I should also upgrade the incoming and outgoing power wires on the XL-1 ESC to 12 gauge. It may seem like overkill, but the 12 gauge wire transmits those "get going quick" current spikes to your motor a lot better. If you are doing the upgrade and are using 10 gauge wire to your motor, you might as well do it right and use 12 gauge on the ESC.

The thermodynamics game: set up some boundaries around a "system" that separate "system" from its surroundings, with the following definitions

isolated system = no exchange of matter or energy with surroundings

closed system = no exchange of matter but some exchange of energy

open system = exchange of matter and energy with surroundings

Thermodynamics - Another part of the upgrade was laying down the ESC in a more traditional style on a RPM ESC mount. This accomplished a couple of things - it shortened the wire runs to the battery and motor, cleaned up those levitating power switch and receiver power wires, and most importantly greatly improved air circulation around the ESC. Heat rises, so by laying down the ESC the heat sinks naturally allow air to flow through them and up. The stock orientation creates a heat wall with heat sink fins that run horizontally and 90 degrees from optimum. I'm sure design limitations and cost prohibited the heat sinks from pointing the correct direction, but the stock horizontal heat sink orientation does not allow for natural airflow and thereby creates a "thermodynamic closed system". The new orientation shanges the ESC to a open system, allows for both forced air cooling (while the truck is moving) and natural air circulation (i.e. cool air in and hot air out the top of the fins.)

Final performance - I noticed a huge decrease in heat generation on the ESC and coincidently a cooler running motor (I guess the motor wasn't getting all the juice is needed either.) Even at it's worst with 15/87 gearing and a Trinity 17T Pro Amber motor, the ESC was at worst warm. Although I didn't do any lab testing, the old "eyeball Dyno" looked like about a 15%-20% increase in get up and go on from the ESC after the upgrade. The difference was really noticeable after about 5 minutes or at the point the stock ESC and motor would be really hot (remember the hotter the electronics, the more resistance and less efficient everything is.) In the end, I think I spent $10.00 on 1 ft. each black and red 10 gauge power wire and some extra Deans connectors. Although it doesn't convert the XL-1 into a Novac Super Rooster, the conversion does add a lot of durability and make the the stock ESC a much better performer.

The How To - Traxxas XL-1 ESC Electrical Upgrade

Its pretty simple just go slow. Note that you do need to have some soldering experience. It should go without saying, but make sure you let everything cool down in between soldering steps and care should be taken not to overheat and de-solder the other components on the ESC circuit board.

First disconnect everything from the ESC and remove it from the truck.

Unscrew the two screws holding on the heat sinks and and remove the heat sinks. Unscrew the four screws on the back of the ESC and remove the cover.

CAREFULLY remove the ESC guts from the shell.

De-solder and remove both the positive/red power wires.

Re-gauge the ESC end of the 10 gauge leads to 14 gauge as shown and then tin the wires. If you tin the wire end properly and seat the "stepped" lead fully into the ESC board as shown, this will be a very strong low-resistance connection.

Prepare and tin your +/- power leads and terminate with Deans plugs. (it can be tough to solder the plugs after you have soldered everything up to the ESC, so it good to get the Deans plugs installed first.) Slide on the shrink warp and shrink to cover the exposed wire and plug pin.

Carefully heat the inner power hole on the board with the tip of the soldering iron and slide in and seat the appropriate power wire. Once the wire is seated, heat the tip of the wire sticking through the other side of the ESC circuit board to solder the wire in place. You should have enough residual solder from tinning the wire end and the solder left on the board that do additional solder should be needed.

Repeat with the the other power wire.

Now remove the negative/black power wires and run through the above steps and get them soldered in place.

Re-route the thinner BEC and power switch wires in between the positive. These should be at the bottom of the "wire pile" closest to the circuit board.

Trim about 2mm off the crescent shaped wire holder off the the back cover.

Extend the top cover wire inset by about 1/8" or as needed, just to the point that all the wires are snuggly held in place.

Trim off the ESC side mounting tabs.

Re-assemble.

Cover the setting/tuning holes with black electrical tape to seal out dust and moisture.

Mount with double stick tape or Velcro. I use the "heavy duty Velcro", it has no positive and negative stripes. This Velcro is made of all hard plastic interlocking balls and is much cleaner and tougher.

Done - You now have a cooler running ESC with a lot less resistance and about a 15%-20% performance increase.

Testing Criteria and Warnings for the Upgraded XL-1

I have spent the better part of a month moving from a very conservative 13/87 gearing to and 18/87 gearing again using the Amber 17T motor. The 18/87 gearing using a 17T motor is about the limit for my testing for this phase, it runs about as hot as is did in completely stock ESC/motor configuration during my testing. That said, I think the ESC has demonstrated the ability to handle enough stress for me to test a 15T, 16T, or maybe a P94 16T. My hope is that I will be able to dependably and cool-ly run a 15T motor – we’ll see.

Warning – Don’t just pop a 17T with 18/87 gearing in your car, I'm not going to listen to you bitch after you blow your ESC. I am using a very methodical controlled testing process and have very very slowly moved up to that gearing over a period of a month or so. If you run the car slow or use it to rock climb at that gearing, you will probably blow the ESC.

Max recommended gearing - You should have no overheating problems (after the XL-1 upgrade) when geared from 13/87 –16/87 with the Trinity 17T pro Amber.

Goals - My goals in this experiment were to primarily define the stress limit of the XL-1 after going through the electrical and orientation/cooling upgrade on the ESC. Secondly, develop a low cost/no cost method for everyone out there stuck with XL-1's to safely run hotter motors such as the Trinity 17T Pro Amber.

Testing criteria:

Gearing: From 13/87 – 18/87 (6.69 – 4.83)

Body: Attached – stock position.

Ambient Temp: 30-50 Degrees F

Runs/Time: 2 at about 10-15 Min. each

Batteries: 6-Cell 3000Mh

Track: Urban - 50% Road – 30% Lawn – 20% Rock (landscaping)

Throttle Control: Top 50% of throttle range

Braking: Hard and controlled braking.

ESC: XL-1 Modified See Above

Other: All power wires upgrade to 12 gauge wire

RPM Bearing carrier and bearing upgrade

All power connectors upgraded to Deans Plugs

The final review and post for the Project Stampede upgraded XL-1 ESC

Sadly, the upgraded XL-1 time’s came after I got a little cocky and did not properly winterize my upgraded Project Stampede XL-1 ESC before going out in some really wet slushy snow in Omaha’s one again –off again weather patterns. Yep, you bet I fried that sucker like a well-done piece of bacon, but I was able to complete my testing before it’s untimely demise.

As you will see in the above posts, I did some upgrades to the stock Traxxas XL-1 ESC to see if it could safely handle the more extreme modified motors without melting down.

It can and it will do it very well. First let me lay down this warning – “Although I was able to run the Xl-1 with a both a 17T Trinity Pro Amber and a 15T Trinity Titanite motor without blowing anything up. I only recommend going with the 17T Pro Amber and only if the upgrade is completed” The reason is that when running the 15T motor the upgraded Project Stampede ESC runs at about it’s stock hot temperature and I really think this is too hot to expect any really long-term durability. Using the 15T is definitely not something you want to do a lot of very slow maneuvering with as the ESC is very close to it’s limit with a 15T motor.

The 15T motor was geared up to 13/87 with no adverse effects during higher speed maneuvering (no rock crawling). However, I very carefully worked up to this gearing starting at 12/90 with initial testing only on the road at full throttle (the easiest on the ESC).

So there you have it, I have sacrificed my XL-1 for the sake of experimentation and for the enjoyment and education of all.

Good Luck!

RPM Wide Bumper - (REQUIRED ITEM) What ever model you chose MSC or ESC, buy the freaking $5 RPM wide bumper. The RPM bumper will save you a lot of money. Even in stock form the Stampede is a little faster than you would think and despite your best efforts you WILL hammer the front of the Stampede into poles, the garage, the curb, the wall, your friends, your car,...your get the idea. When this happens without that huge RPM bumper you could crack or break the body, the front shock tower, camber links, stripe servo gears,... again you get the picture. A very wise investment indeed that will pay for itself over and over. While you are at it also pick up some of the shock spring retainers, they will not break like the stock ones.

Traxxas Aluminum Shock Caps for Rustler/Stampede - Everyone says the stock plastic ones pop off and blow silicon shock oil every where (you don't want to have to clean this stuff up), having swapped them out the the aluminum versions before even a first run, I have never had a problem. (See Mis-Behaving-RC in Useful Links for the how to). Note pick up a roll of Teflon tape form the hardware store and some Trinity Buggy Blast and some 50wt Silicon Oil from your hobby shop while you are at it. If you follow the directions on Mis-behaving-RC you will have a shock almost as strong as aluminum model at far less the price. You will thank me for telling you this the first 2-3 foot jump the Stampede makes un-eventfully. From a long term perspective, I see no reason for me upgrade to better shock, the rebuild takes the best plastic shock in the industry and makes it handle anything I've been able to throw at it.

RPM Gear Cover for Rustler/Stampede - The reason for this upgrade is that the stock gear cover leaves this small gap near the axel and allows debris to get into the gear box., The $5 RPM gear cover one provides complete coverage. If you are all about color, your can get the RPM cover in a rainbow of colors. The first time you pull a small twig or leaf into your gear box and shred a spur gear you will wish you had bought one.

Floppy Antenna Fix - After flipping your Stampede a couple of times you will start to notice that the extra 2-4" of antenna wire flopping around and hanging out of the antenna rod is taking quite a beating. Sooner or later if you don't secure it it will get ground off and you will have to replace your antenna. One easy fix is to spiral it down the rod and use a piece of electrical heat shrink to secure it and top it off back off with the rubber antenna cap.

Lubrication Made Easy - I have been trying different lubricants (keep you mind out of the gutter), with the purpose of finding better motor and chassis lubes that 3N1 oil. Here is what I have found so far.

Chassis - I really like are Sentry Solutions Tuff-Glide. The Sentry Solutions was developed for the Navy Seal teams firearms and equipment. The nice thing is that because it dries and bonds at a molecular level with the metal, it does not have a flash point, thereby will not catch on fire and unlikely to cause carbon deposits if used on the motor.

Motor - The best thing I have found is Turbine oil. I found it at Ace hardware next to the 3N1 oil. Again its wax based, and is actually designed specifically for electrical motors, bushing, and bearings, and is designed for high heat environments. The best part its $2. Oddly enough it does not have a name at all, I could find on it was ZipSpout. Clear container with weird looking spout.

How to replace the stock cheap servo gears when your break them. - Sooner or later you will hammer the gears in the stock servo enough that they will eventually fail. The optimum solution is to buy a new super durable metal gear high torque servo like a $55 Hitec -5625MG (metal gears, high torque, watertight and dustproof). That said, the $4 bag of replacement gears will probably be your next best option instead of picking up lesser quality servo. No hobby shop I have every been to carries Traxxas servo replacement gears, but as luck would have it, the Futaba FS-3003 replacement gears, available just about anywhere, are direct replacements for the stock Stampede servo gears. The only gear in the bag that is not a direct fit is the black gear, so in the unlikely event that you manage to stripe the larger gear on the servo you may want to consider a new servo. When you make the replacement, replace all the gears (expect the large one mentioned earlier) and toss the old ones. Chances are even if you can't see anything wrong with the gears, you may have a slightly bent tooth that will cause another trip to the hobby store. Make sure you clean the gear box cavity well to assure that no chipped gear teeth could cause future problems. Re-assemble all the gears and pack the cavity with white lithium or silicon grease (increases lubrication and waterproofing) and re-install the servo.

Heavy Duty Metal Gear Servo- The optimum servo solution is to buy a new super durable metal gear high torque servo like a $55 Hitec -5625MG (metal gears, high torque, watertight and dustproof). See MisBehavin-RC.com in the links are for his comprehensive overview of servos.

Nitor Rustler Front Shock Tower - A little modification I have been intending to do. Buy the Traxxas #4439 Nitro Rustler Front Shock Tower and required only a modification. This think is nearly as tough as my Lexan version below and is currently what I am running. Great deal if your can find one.

Lexan Front Shock Tower - Ok, so I got tired of replacing the front shock tower. It never gave out completely as long as the front body post holder was mounted, but I found it would crack from once incident or another every other month or so.

As you all may know a router can do some pretty amazing things. However I needed one the other day and realized that I gave all my less used tools to my father during our last house move.

So I was cruising the local hardware store and picked up $20 simple router attachment for the Dremel tool and a couple cutter and mini-router bits to see how it worked on Lexan. Holly cow (G-rating), you can do some amazing milling and routing with this set-up. It has depth adjustment settings... yep you can mill your own custom battery tray in Lexan. ( I did it and it looks good.)

Along with some chassis configurations, I went nuts on a sheet of Lexan and made a couple front shock towers. Not a quite project, but pretty easy tracing and cutting project. If you are interested in making pieces out of Lexan, this is a pretty cheap way to go.

What I came up with was this:

I used 1/4" gray Lexan and simply traced the shape of the original shock tower but left the top connected with a 1/4" stripe. This worked alot better than a screw on brace because it provides a lot of side to side strength and obviously the Lexan is much stronger than the stock plastic tower. There is obviously a performance advantage in that the shock tower now is much more rigid, but I did this because I hate replacing parts more than once. To mount the shocks I used some of the spare shock parts that came with the Traxxas. I used a 3 hole shock plunger for a spacer, a stepped shock mounting piece, and a double worm bolt. I later, went to the slightly lighter Rustler Nitro shock tower and haven't had a problem.

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Skid Plate - Wheelie Bar on the Cheap

Get a piece of ABS Plastic from the hobby shop.

Cut to width. Use the brace as a template and make the counter sunk holes in the plastic. Bolt it to the chassis using the existing stock screws.

Use a torch carefully to make the bends in the plastic to mold around the chassis. The back potion of the plate I folds over and is doubled for strength and folds back to just under the tranny housing. I made it just long enough so that it acts as not only as a wheelie bar but also a springy rear bumper (which I need). I was actually attempting to fit a RPM front bumper on the back when I engineered this instead. It has worked great and has taken a real beating and has saved I am sure countless part replacements.

Another side benefit has been that it works great in the taller grass, and fields where there are lots of tings for the x brace to hang or get caught on. It also adds "some" floatation during snow outings, but not enough to actually support the Pede.

I later cut off the very rear portion of the plate and removed the second layer (really un-needed) and bolted on the stock front bumper for a less ghetto and more finished look. Also added an extra margin of protection.

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Front and Rear Shock Tower Braces

This was a pretty funny innovation. I was seeing what I could do with all the left over turnbuckles in my toolbox. I put it up to the shocks and called myself a genius. I never liked the way those shocks hung out there on the mounting posts without additional support. In fact most of the breakages I saw and have seem on other Stampedes and Rustlers are due to weakness in this area.

An easy way to significantly strengthen up the front shock tower is to add thse Project Stampede Exclusive Shock Tower Braces. Although this was part of my Ultra-Pede conversion, this is something I should have done much earlier and recommend to everyone. I was going through shock towers like crazy until I moved over to the Nitro Shock tower, however this has strengthened it even more.

This is basically a cut down 54mm Traxxas Turnbuckles previously used for the Front camber links #1937 and reused rod ends. Also need either grub screws or longer bolts. The Rear turnbuckles is my old steering tie rod (I think) left from the front end after the Ultra-Pede conversion.

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Dual Front Camber Links

Part of Project Stampede Ultra-Pede Build - See this

Another accidental innovation.

Originally, I installed the double sided pivot balls because, I thought it would make things a lot more flexible in the long run. You could mount/position the camber however you wanted on the fly and could have multiple preset camber lengths to snap on for different camber and suspension set ups.

Also I thought for testing it would make things easier without tearing apart the front end just to move the placement of the camber link placement from the front to rear mount. I though the dual cambers would be cool looking and fun to post for everyone enjoyment, but I never really intended to leave them on. After using this set up, they are not coming off - they are a permanent addition to the Ultra-Pede, it is insanely solid and durable.

What's really sick is that I can also use dual Jato Camber links like the single one I am running on the rear.

I tried the Dual Jato's but though that was complete and utter overkill.

You look at that setup and think, that's overkill. But then you get it installed and notice immediately the torquing at the attachment of the caster block and the shock tower has been eliminated. Also you are not able to wiggle the caster at all and is as solid as the attachment at the A-Arm. Running the camber links more equally distributed the load on both sides of the caster blocks and shock tower and should greatly reduce the probably of damage to the front suspension.

All of a sudden you really start to think that it should have been that way to begin with to handle what we are subjecting our Pede's to. In the end dual camber links are still overkill, I ended up going with single Jato camber links all around that I have been all but completely happy with.

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Traxxas Jato Turnbuckles on Rear and Front for Camber Links

A direct fit are the Traxxas Jato Camber links turnbuckles 58mm #5539 - also a direct fit for front camber links on the Stampede after the wide-pede conversion. You will need some of the Traxxas Shim Set Jato balls #5529 and replace all the shorter balls with these longer balls to provide the clearance required on the front. Don't think I am going to bust these.

Make sure you use the captured ball ends and Traxxas washer machine head screws otherwise there will be to much play if you use the stock shoulder bolts.

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Motor Heat Sink - Associated Motor Heat Sink TC4 #31048

This was more of an adventure than simply snapping the thing on the motor can.

First off, as expected and stated on Misbehavin-Rc's site, the transmission housing requires modification (i.e. removal of some of the motor housing. This was no big deal, grab the Dremel with a cut off bit and make three linear cuts - done.

Second, the heat sink doesn't fit with the lower fins so those needed to be removed, more grinding with the Dremel.

Third and possibly the most frustrating part of the project was locating and positioning the heatsink so that the motor could be bolted up on the motor plate. The stickers needed to be removed from the can (the can has a permanent mark indicating 0 for timing), and sliding the heatsink on to the shaft end. What I finally ended up doing was installing the motor as normal without the heatsink and then marking which fin lined up with the timing mark and then removed the motor, attached the heat sink and then re-installed the motor.

The heatsink works great, I have yet to hit the 5 second touch test limit and the motor runs much much cooler. Would I do the project again? In a heartbeat, however I would recommend buying a Integy heatsink such as the one pictured without lower heat fins or one of their fan assisted models (see note below.) I think in reality if you are gearing everything correctly you really don't need a heatsink, however everyone always overgears and/or does some high stress bashing with stock gearing when it should be geared even lower, so in my opinion this optional accessory give you motor some extra stay cool insurance.

Long-Term Update: I definitely would not go for the fan assisted model on an off road vehicle. These is just way too much junk that ends up in the fins. I have been exceptionally happy with the heat sink and have yet to get the motor to it's previous flesh searing temps.