About the AWD – Pics and Thoughts

[Aaron]

Well I thought this would be best in a new thread so we can collect the ‘facts’ about the AWD Mini-Z in one place now that they’re out and about.

Attached is a pic of the Chassis set. If you’ve got a bunch of bodies and want to do body swaps then this is the kit to buy.

This set comes with most of the available offset wheels and a chassis. It doesn’t include the transmitter or body.

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Site Owner Guy.

[Aaron]

The chassis set comes with 4 weeks pre-mounted (0 Offset) and then comes with 10 more wheels of varied offsets. The set of 10 includes 4 wide wheels.

The manual includes a table giving offsets that match the various Autoscale bodies.

Unfortunately there are some offsets that are not available but are considered to be more desireable. ie 1.7mm for running R32 Skyline bodies.

The next downside is that once the wheels are removed from their packaging you can’t tell them apart – so maybe colouring them would be a good thing.

A.

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Site Owner Guy.

[Aaron]

New Electronics.

The PCB at first glance looks just like the MR01 and MR02 boards, but then when you look closer it’s got a slightly different chip-load and ofcourse the big news is the change in drive FETs away from the 3004 type used by Kyosho up until now to the new 3010 type. I haven’t looked up the specs yet but they are still a P+N S08 pack device which means IRF7317 conversions will be possible. Except for the placement issue.

Becuase the board mounts FETs up it does give us room to make a stack if you’re willing to cut holes (Ala iWaver) in the top cover. Had the PCB been mounted FETs down stacking would be out of the question as the motor sits barely5mm below the board.

3004 FETs still do the steering dutyand the motors attach in the same manner that we’re used to.

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Site Owner Guy.

[Aaron]

The Motor:

A lot of people expected this to be vastly different and there is a slight difference to the previous setups. The stock motor has three 104 ceramic caps to kill noise and they’re mounted differntly to suit the new mounting style in the AWD. Motor wires are much the same length as before .

The motor mounting has changed. You now load the motor into a pair of mounts (selected to suit the pinion and spur choices you’ve made) and then slide the motor up into the chassis fromt eh underside. The motor cover then clips into place.

It looks like PN motors will be able to be used with relocation of the filter caps.

The motors will not cool well in this location and this is likely to cause problems with the mount sections melting.

A.

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Site Owner Guy.

[Aaron]

At each corner of the car is a knuckle as expected, these are the same front and rear , and either a left side or right piece. They’re an elegant design that accomodates two bushes in stock form, bushes that you’ll want to replace with bearings ASAP.

The bushes are 6mm outside, 3mm shaft bore and 2mm thick.

I have test fitted 6mmx3mmx2.5mm (MR63ZZ) and they do fit with a little protrusion. The ideal would be MR63 bearings (they’re open) and coincidently the same as used by 1st Gen Xmods.

I have updated the info on the Bearing size thread as well.

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Site Owner Guy.

[peteWah]

This SUX,

Hope a 3rd party company makes the wheels with that 1.7mm offset for my wanted R32 skyline collection…

Is there a offset that is close to that iike say 1.5mm that 1 could run untill kyosho or someone pull there thumbs out of dark places and get with the program.
R32’s Rule and they (KYOSHO) in my eyes/mind were stupid not to accomidate for it…

Also, They should bring out special autoscales with the wheels to suite the 010 ?
Im guessing that if we have the Chassis set we are set in that regard but they are all the same wheel style and probally only suite certain body types when it comes to looking ok and that to me is a Grrrrrr.

For gods sake its not fair i tell you…

[Aaron]

Yeah there’s 1.5mm offset wheels there! At a guess they just sit that little bit extra tucked inthe guards.

I’ll take pic tomorrow of the R32 sitting over 0 offsets 🙂

A.

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Site Owner Guy.

[peteWah]

Thanking You,

I at the moment am running 0 offset narrow foams with the
R32 cal on my MR01 and it looks and runs sweet…

So if you can find the offset compromise that looks good on the AWD with the R32 i am there…

Autoscales with the wheels to suite the 010 should be there next step instead of selling old 015 and 01 shells and not being able to use the wheels, What if you don’t have a 01 or 015 to put them on ?

[Aaron]

More Tech: I dug up the Datasheet for the HAT3010 FETs fitted to the AWD.

RDS(on) is about 175mOhms across the N+P paths. So no great gains there given the IRF7389 is 105mOhms and the IRF7317 a mere 62mOhms.

However current handling is now up to 6A nominally on the N- side but down to 5A on the P side (assuming you control temperature). This means that you’ll still be stressing them pretty hard.

Overall an improvement, but still nothing on using a decent FET.

A.

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Site Owner Guy.

[Aaron]

Well after running down a set of batteries in stock form (with my lovely old GT3 body) I upped the stakes by doing a direct drop in of a PN Racing Speedy 05NM.

The extra torque absolutely flings the car off the line and ramps it up to a a higher speed than the stock motor. The Tamiya Dyno doesn’t back this up, so we can easily assume that most of the losses occur not in spinning the mass of the AWD system, but in the extra weight of the car and the extra drag of the AWD running gear on the ground really liking the torque boost.

Can’t wait for the bearings to arrive and then I may even treat it to some alloy nuts. Unlike the previous Mini-Z nuts are less critical as the wheels and a tight fit onto all four axles, no more stuffing around wiht play and so on.

A.

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Site Owner Guy.

[kevsta]

Does the motor get super hot like the stock one ? Just want to know if the heat only occurs with the stock motor.

[Aaron]

To my touch it seesm to run a bit cooler. I’m running it in it’s standard layout which means the cooling holes int eh case face up towards the Rx board, but I suppose it could be rijigged to face them down (at the risk of getting junk int he motor).

But yeah I think it runs cooler – and for the most part I’m running on a tigh pile house carpet which is pretty ‘draggy’ comapred with foam or slicker surfaces.

It does make enough toque to want to unclip the motor cover though and I think if there’s an alloy motor cover available it’d be worth it if you’re going to play with gearing and higher performance stuff.

A.

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Site Owner Guy.

[kevsta]

Thanks for the info. Having the motor holes at the bottom would definitely help in cooling but not sure if the caps still need to be mounter on top. Is the rx board directly exposed to the motor can or is there a piece of lexan to shield the heat away from it ?

[Aaron]

The caps would need to be remounted to the top. and I think the risk of junk input is too high havign them at the bottom unless you’re real sure of the running surface.

The motor is below the PCB and there’s little more than some tape between them – but a small air-gap.

So far I’m considering the following Mods:

* Lay-down Crystal – that way I can run some of the low-roof shells like GT40

* 2×2 Drive FET stack (IRF7317) for improved torque and offline punch – possibly to accomodate a move to PN Saber power.

* IRF7317 steering FETs to quicken the steering slightly and give it a little more torque (yes it makes a difference).

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Site Owner Guy.

[z-beam]

good to here that the nm motor really gives that little bit more in performance. with the way in wich the caps are placed on the motor inhibit being able to reverse the nm so that the holes where facing the bottom? im thinking of further modifying one so that the holes have mesh to protect the guts of the car. its a pity there isnt much of a gap above it as some ducted air flow could have been possible…

[kevsta]

Here’s a link to some option parts that will be available soon.

http://www.3racing.com.hk/options.jsp?manu_id=Kyosho&carkit=MINIZAWD

Check out the motor mounts and clips… They look better than Kyosho’s.

[z-beam]

i picked mine up this afternoon, 2 km walk home with that nice big box. thankfully some hippies picked me up half way!

whaked some batts in it and attached the antenna, of she went!

it handles slipery tiles very well and after a little layer of dust had built up on the tyres the car was able to perform some nice manuvres like controlled fish tails e.t.c

gave me a taste of what will be possible with some more power under the hood and a change of gearing.

i was a little dissapointed with the white skylines body though, some of the details like the door handles looked like they are slightly obscured from to much paint. especially when compared to the autoscale astra i also got in the box the differeces are quite obvious. id like to see the jade body up close to compare for quality…

also the readyset doesnt come with all the extra wheels like the chassis set! now that is plain rude on kyoshos part i think. now ill have to wait for some option parts to be able to run other bodies…

ah well, ill probably want to paint up my own skyline for it now

[Aaron]

Interesting…. I just sent out my last white and never took a good look at it to see how it’s paint was. The MJ of DGS’s looked fine so it could be a one-off 🙁 That ‘Glosscoat’ does dilute detailsthough – starting to see that on some of the re-release shells that I handled before Glosscoat and now with Glosscoat.

A.

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Site Owner Guy.

[kevsta]

My Skyline MJ paintwork was fine. I did notice underneath the rear spoiler edges that the paint was a bit rought but it’s so small that you’d need perfect vision and an eye for detail to pick that up.

Anyone got the atomic carbon fiber drive shaft yet ?

[Author]

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