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King (king) -noun: a person or thing preeminent in its group or class
HPI Wheely King Modifications
[Wheely King Info] [Wheely King Hop-Ups] [Wheely King Mods]
Re-Gearing
The speed of a bone-stock Wheely King is acceptable for a tall monster truck; a good combination of top-speed for cruising and decent torque for getting around in difficult situations. However, in order to be more effective at climbing over things it's wise to make for some shorter gearing to increase torque and decrease wheel speed. Spinning your tires on a rock doesn't get you anywhere! For a "lesson" on what gearing is and what it means, go to the RCBasher Tips & Tricks: Gearing page.From the factory, the WK comes with a X-tooth pinion gear and an X-tooth spur gear. To "shorten" the gearing, we need to either decrease the number of teeth on the pinion gear or increase the number of teeth on the spur gear, or both. Doing both is a bit more expensive, but can make life easier. Why? To add teeth to a gear, you either have to make the teeth smaller (to fit more teeth in the same-sized space) or make the gear's diameter bigger. Changing the size of the teeth isn't acceptable for reasons as described on the RCBasher Gearing page, so manufacturers change the diameter of the gear to accomodate a change in tooth count.
There's only so much room on the truck to accomodate gear diameter changes, but if we go smaller on the pinion and larger on the spur at the same time we should have no trouble getting both to fit on the truck.
These are 48-pitch gears, so you need to buy pinion and spur gears to match that. The spurs are specific to the Wheely King, so be sure to buy HPI WK spur gears to ensure compatibility. They offer spurs with tooth-counts of X, X, X, and X. The pinion gears are rather universal, however, just make sure you get a 48-pitch gear that matches the general design of the stock gear. Gears from HPI, Losi, Associated, Robinson, etc. should work just fine.
Your shopping list should consist simply of an HPI spur gear and a pinion gear. I used an HPI #XXXX (96-tooth) spur gear and a Team Losi 15-tooth pinion gear and I really like the gear ratio that combination provides.
Changing the gears themselves is quite simple, but accessing the gears isn't a terribly quick job. Step-by-step instructions coming soon:
- Difficulty: Takes a little time, but it's a simple procedure
- Pros: the truck is more controllable in rough situations, it's easier to modulate the throttle
- Cons: the top speed of the truck is noticeably reduced and is marginal for playing around in open spaces
- Cost: $14
- Additional Tip: If you've got a few dollars to spare, buy a couple more spur and pinion gears to have on hand and try out different combinations to see what you like best
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Copyright © 2007 Bruce Johnson