It's kind of a review? If you haven't heard of Artful Dodgers, and haven't seen any of their products, I recommend checking them out: artfuldodgersdesign.com This isn't an ad, I didn't get anything for free. IG: crawlercanyon
I had a similar experience when I did a motor drop and went to a stubby outrunner on my TF2 Blazer. Even with the big heavy hard body, side hill and descending performance improved amazingly.
As I was completing my Gatekeeper I thought of this fox belly. But after eyeballing the gearbox and rotating it in the chassis to mimic this kit etc... I was on the fence. Lift the skid to make it flat bottom which inturn raises the transmission so this bracket lowers it back to somewhere in the realm of stock is how it appears, It's a great looking kit and it may well be lower, definitely heard people say it is.. The flat skid is an awesome performance improvement so even if the cg stayed stock-ish, having that extra belly clearance is where this kit wins for me. It looks very well designed and put together with all the hardware. It was cool to get feedback from you driving and installing it... nice. Cheers mate 👍
After having it in there for a little bit, I got to thinking about why I think it had such a perceptible improvement, and I don't think it has anything specifically to do with moving weight around-- mind you, this is just me guessing. By rotating the gearbox, the output shaft, spur shaft, and motor shaft are all basically in-line with one another, so I think there's a bit of torque-cancelling going on-- the motor is one one side turning clockwise, and and outputs are on the other turning counter-clockwise. Next step is carving up the side plates so I can get the 4mm spacers out of there.
I have yet to invest in this kit but run a 3D printed lcg motor plate and skid like this in my element comp truck. I think I will look into this in the near future because of the solid construction.
I found this out much later, but it turned out I needed them to space the trans up to clear the aluminum chassis wings on that rig. So it worked out in the end.
It's me again. Quick question with the fox belly, Artfull dodgers state that they offer 3d prints to make mounts to move your upper links higher so they are not in the same plane as the bottom links. I would like to know is there any disadvantage to losing the stock geometry and having the upper and lower links in the same horizontal plane at the skid plates? thanks again for all the information, its proving to be very informative.
That would make your rear axle compress in a perfect arc-- so the pinion angle, if set to point at the trans output, would always point at the trans output. Some folks don't care about rear caster, but I do-- so I try to raise the links at the diff end whenever possible, to give me more anti-squat, as I wan to keep driving the front end down. There are basic rules of thumb when moving link position (in terms of anti-squat and anti-dive) but IME every rig is it's own ball of variables, and you don't know until you know. So try moving the link positions and see what gets better/worse. I tend to like the behavior of rear uppers and lowers mounting as close together as possible, but then I try that same thing on a rig with a radically different CGH/moment center and the thing handles terrible.
I've seen this in the Facebook groups and wondered about its performance benefits. It looks really well made and thought out, which is always nice to see with a growing brand. I was definitely wondering if your scales showed any results for the cg change. I'm really tempted to recommend the quiet outrunner esc that I've been running. It survived 60 gates of a trail run today in the pouring PNW rain. I got to meet the guys behind the company this weekend and the drivers they're sponsoring. I've been talking so much about a better esc for your outrunner that I'm thinking about ordering one of theirs for you. I love running my rigs 4s for that beastly NSDRC servo power+speed and its bec was strong enough to run my SA18 servo winch (but I wouldn't try a servo that pulls more than 2.5-3A).
I'm definitely interested, for as good as this HW is for 59 bucks, I'm kinda asking it to do something it was never designed for. I've tried to order a Mamba Micro (even after hearing it sing in a few videos) only to have the order cancelled due to OOS. It's going in a rig with a direct-power servo (the BEC needs only run the Rx and a shift servo) so BEC output isn't really a concern.
I'd like to try that on my Gatekeeper. Seen Artfol Dodgers on Ebay but never tried anything from them. Would be nice if it had a top plate to mount the esc, I know it's meant to keep everything lower, but I'm dealing with room constraints from adding an SOA conversion and a few other things. I think it may have helped yours more with a different body. Good vid
The Foxbelly has it's own skid, which is delrin, and completely flat-- nothing hangs down on a Foxbelly/GroundFox rig. I took that opportunity to donate the Bowhouse to one of the other Stealth X rigs.
I would say the Foxbelly, because it lowers the CG while giving you a completely flat skid at the same time. The drawbacks are that the Foxbelly isn't as "plug 'n play," and you have to order it from Artful Dodgers in Poland and wait for it to show up. You can get a Bowhouse in a few days. But in terms of performance, I have to give it to the Foxbelly.
