XRAY - Model racing cars

Just finished building my second T3 2012 kit.

When chassis is on stand. If you accelerate to any speed and turn the wheels in any direction the whole front end begins to shake and chatter violently. it's so bad it will literally lift off the stand on the front. You can relate it to a blow out of a steer tire in a 1:1 car at 80MPH. It's pretty bad and this is unacceptable from a 500.00 chassis kit.

Now before you say something is put together wrong I assure you it's not. This is my second chassis and both are in fact doing this. The parts are in the correct places, the correct shafts are being used skinny thin steel stock shaft up front thick aluminum in rear just as instructions say.

This is also not an isolated incident either. I don't know if were allowed to post links to RC-Tech or other forums, but there are over 30 or so well documented forum post of others complaining about this I have found when I did a search trying to find the fix. They all complain about the same issue and say others at their local tracks are having issues as well so there are a considerable amount of people with this problem.

I also took this to my local hobby shop that ordered this for me. There tech department too a look at both my kits, tore the front end down on one of them and redid it again via instruction manual to make sure I didn't miss something and they had the same issue. They are saying it's a design flaw with the stock setup. That it's vibrating so bad because when the wheel is turned at speed the shafts are to long causing the front to bind making the front wheels shake violently.

What I have found is some people have figured out that switching to ECS shafts will do the trick and make full throw of steering available at speed without the shutter, vibration or chatter but why would I need to buy brand new shafts when my kit is brand new and it shouldn't be doing this to begin with. I mean you can't even turn the steering 10% and it begins to shake bad.

I'm to the point I just want to take both these back and demand full refunds on the kits. I have had them 4 days and there not even usable like this. I'm not about to order and pay over 80.00 out for shafts to solve a problem that should not exist on a brand new state of the art, latest greatest chassis.

If anyone has any other insight on this or can offer a solution or something I can check I am all ears. I did some searching on here but there doesn't seem to be any help as maybe this chassis is so new know one has posted yet on here. Seems most on RC-Tech just order the ECS shafts but I say to heck with that I shouldn't have to. Maybe it's a simple design flaw or manufacturing error. Either way, XRay, a response would be nice or some advice on what to try would help to. If you would like I can list the 40 or so other links and forum post on other sites that others are having this issue. If I, and the hobby ship missed something our apologies but even I have spent the day tearing both down and rebuilding a second time and it's the same outcome.

What you have is spool 'chatter'
This happens on ALL cars with a solid front diff (spool).
Most people are OK with it as you will only get it near full lock or/and when on full throttle.

The reason they don't offer the ECS driveshafts as standard is their high cost, which also means they cost a lot more to repair.

As i've said, this happens on all cars with a spool, though it can seem worse on the Xray at full lock as they do have a lot of lock available.
But the ECS or fitting a normal diff are the only way's you will eliminate it.

Skiddins

Appreciate the speedy response. Not sure why the hobby shop didn't inform me of this. I do recall a pro racer at the track mentioning or asking me if I had spool chatter and I was not sure what he was referring to. This is my first car of any kind of expensive value. Rest are TT01's, TC5's etc. Decent chassis just nothing like the XRay. My TT01 has a spool in the front and it doesn't do this but it's probably due to all the slop in the front the axles have room to move. That and there is no joint in their axles.

Well, I guess I am stuck with this since the ECS are on back order. That or I replace it with a gear diff which seems to be on back order as well. I guess I could just try and overlook this and drive it.

The chatter will not be very noticable when running on the track, remember, at the moment you're running it off the ground (and off load) which makes it all sound a lot worse.

Skiddins

Skiddins is right.
With free wheel spinning without load it may hear bad.
Try it on the track. Dont buy ecs till you really see its necessary.
I dont need the full mechanical turn in of the steering, so chatter is also less.

make sure you put at least 1.15 mm shim between the lower rollcenter holder and the bulkhead, otherwise you will get heavy chatter with std. 52mm axels if you turn more than 10 -15 °

When I use a spool in front I always use the optional ECS driveshafts to get rid of chatter. With a gear diff in front you don't have this effect as much so regular driveshafts will work equally well. But sometimes, the chatter effect when the driveshaft is "locked" up on full lock and on-power will give more mid corner steering, especially with a front diff. It is hard to explain but it will make the car "snap" in the middle of the corner and thus rotate better. So even if the ECS will get rid of the chatter noise, it will not necessarily give more steering. So when I use the diff in front I prefer to use standard driveshafts.