The Zip Zap Monster Trucks Project:
Make it a crawler.

So here I am, with a new zip zap monster truck Bigfoot. I had run it over a few
things in the house. I ran it through the little car cruching obsticle cousre. But
I wanted more. I wanted more power but without the extra speed of the higher
rpm motors. Those motors made it real hard to drive with precision. So I started
looking for a way to slow it down. It just happens that I ran across a post on
a R/C crawling message board about the pinion gears. It said that the pinion
gear on a Zip Zap car was 1 tooth smaller than the truck. So off I went to grab
my Zip Zap SE. I pulled the pinion off the stock motor from the SE and the stock
pinion from the Monster Truck. Guess what, the SE pinion would not fit the larger
shaft of the MT motor. And to make matters worse, I didn't  have a small enough drill
bit to use. I was not going to let this stop me. I thought about it for a few. Brain
storm, a paper clip! I have used them to drill my finger nail to let pressure off
when I smashed a finger once, it has to work. Well, let me tell you, a regular
high qualit paper clip will not work. It has to be a small cheap paper clip.
Once you fin the paper clip, straighten it out, then cut a bit of the drilling end of
it off at an angle. This will help it "drill". I "drilled" out the SE pinionall the way
through. Now it fit on the MT motor shaft. It was still pretty tight, but it worked.

With the stock MT motor and the SE pinion with the stock gearing in the truck,
this thing was SLOW! It was perfect, I thought (more on this later). So now I needed
to test out tires. The stock tires are ok, but not great for crawling over things.
Add in the fact that these trucks have very little suspension travel and very little
ground clearence, and I had problems. I needed all the traction I could get.
First I tried out the Swamp tires from the tire pack I bought from Radio Shack.
They were better, but not good enough to call it quits. They just spun to much.
Next I tried the slicks figuring they would have the most contact patch. They worked
about the same as the Swap tires. I figured the All Terrain tires would be no good,
but I tried them anyways. WOW! They have WAY more traction than the other
tires. So muc traction in fact, I was stalling out my stock motor with lower gearing
when trying to climb up an oak transition that normally would just give me
wheel spin. Great, now I need more power from the motor.

So I went up one motor size to the red 14,500 rpm motor. With the gearing
it is still faster than stock, but WAY SLOWER than it was with the stock gearing.
Now I have just the right amount of traction and power. While the speed is
still a little higher than I would like, but there is not much I can do about it.

Here are a few pics of what I am running. Just click on the pic to get a full
sized picture to open up. Enjoy.