Ok.... I got the steering worked out, I used a short 12kg servo that mounted up all the way up front and pretty much stays hidden behind the front bumper.
The motors were sitting a little low making the driveshaft angles a little steep so I just made some mounting plates to lower it a little.
The layout is pretty clean... until I start running wires all over
View from the front, looks pretty good I think.
Now here's the plan... I'm using the Huina 1550 slew gear setup with a 4 wire slip ring, I'll have 3 functions in the carrier, steering, fwd/rev, and lights.
I'm going to have separate power for the carrier and the crane house. I'm going to power everything in the carrier with one (or two)battery and just run the signal wires and a ground thru the slip ring to the receiver. Then power everything up top with another battery or two. I connected all the signal wires thru a terminal block to the slip ring then connected it all to the receiver on the other side
I did a quick test and it all works, so far so good. It drives and steers so the carrier is figured out just need to finish up and clean up the wiring.
Now time for the house.. Like I said I'm using the huina 1550 excavator slew gear and slip ring set up, I like this one because it has a wide flange for the house to bolt to making it really stable
But first I need to get some stuff cut away, I drilled out the spot welds and then used a chisel for the tough ones
The slew gear has a shouldered section that needs about an 1 1/4 hole so I just used a hole saw and cur it out
Now the back cover needs to come off, again I just drilled out the spot welds and took it apart.
I only got carried away with one weld...
The shoulder on the slew gear came out past the front of the house just a hair... in later versions I may try and move it back.. but one has to be careful because if you go to far the counter weight will hit the cab.
The nice thing is with the gear installed the house sits at the same height as the original toy..
I 3d printed a simple dust cover for the slew gear, it doesn't seal it up but it should help keep dust and dirt from flying into the gear.
it also cleans up the area underneath.
This is moving along pretty well, I haven't had any major problems so far...Thanks in large part to you guys that have already done this and gave me great information to get me started.
I do have a question though.. I want to be able to run 2 batteries both in the carrier and the house. The house will be capable of running 2 4200AH Nimh batteries. But underneath I was going to run 2 LiOn ( not LIPO) I don't think it will matter but since LiOn use a balance plug for charging can they still be wired in parallel. I'm pretty sure it won't make any difference to the battery but wanted to ask.