Awesome awesome news! But before that, quick apology for not posting in over a month! The project is still a go at full speed and I have been making huuuuggeee progress.
The circuit board is NOW ON THE CAR! I have made the necessary modifications required to integrate the circuitry to the car chassis. The first mod required was the servo swap. The RC car originally came with a DC motor to steer the front wheels. This is a very inefficient way of achieving steering since it counts on the motor stalling and keeping the wheels fully locked to the either side. This means you get no control over where exactly your wheels are pointing and the stalled motor pulls billions of amps!
The servo swap required me to use some machinery to get rid of the old fasteners that held the DC motor in place. After I got rid of that, I had to drill a new hole through which the servo went through. Finally, I did have to extend the gear piece that came with the servo, by super-gluing another piece of plastic which finally connects to the steering column.
Here is a close up of what it looked like right after I did the servo swap. I did unfortunately use super glue to glue down a couple of nuts to the body on which I screwed the servo in place.
Right after I finished the servo swap.
Before the standoffs and the battery holder were installed.
After the servo swap, the next modification needed was to mount stand-off's on which the circuit board could sit on. For this, I needed the help of my buddy Jeff who has a friggin' wood-working/machine shop in his basement! We got a pair of standoffs that was quite what I needed to we used his tools to modify the standoffs until they became what I wanted :) The standoffs are screwed into the chassis of the car and the circuit board screw into the standoffs. Here is a picture of the car when we were drilling holes into it.
Picture of the car in Jeff's shop.
There are only 2 standoffs and they are both on the same side, however the battery holder also supports the circuit so it should be fine. Speaking of the batteries, I have purchased 8 2300 mAh Energizer AA batteries from Amazon. These are the batteries that powering this bad boy, and I also got a very nice battery holder for them. The battery holder unfortunately does not fit in the original compartment where the old battery used to go, so it sits on top of the old battery compartment. The holder is Velcro'ed on top of the old one and without too much hassle, it is possible to reach the batteries inside without having to deconstruct the whole car. It is still somewhat of a pain in the ass though!
Finally, I do have a demo video for you. Enjoy:
Thanks!
