How to end up with an X5
 

Hi all,

Which is the best donor car for the X5, XX4 or XXX4 and which editions etc?

Also, couple of quick questions:

1. Is it easy to still get Losi parts for the bits which stay original?
2. Am I right in thinking cells is 4+2?
3. Other than the xx4/xxx4 etc donor car and the conversion, what is needed to get the X5 working top notch?

Cheers all,

Dave

The best donor car is the XX4, what edition depends on what spec X5 you want, but I would say go for a XX4WE.

As far as I am aware every spare is still available that you will need.

Yup it is 4+2 cells.

I would get the shock tower strengtheners, a one-way (personal preference) and upgrade the standard xx4 front drive shafts to CVD's.

Hope this helps

just to echo what tom said, xx4we was are choice of donor car,make sure you use the double pulley tensioner it's a big improvement on std single one, and we prefer to run the xx4 layshaft pulley. personnel pref on the last one,not had any real probs on losi bits.and the shock braces are worth there weight in gold imho,

Can the XX4's be found anywhere to get as a donor car?

If not how much difference does it make going for the XXX4?

Reason I ask is I know where I can get a XXX4 for £160 in the states, but only seen an XX4 in one place, @£250ish!

Yeh a XXX4 can be used, but you will need the XXX4 - X5 conversion kit which is an extra £110 at DMS Racing. The XX4 is normally used as it has the same suspension, steering, shocks, diffs, etc as the X5. Whereas the XXX4 shares less parts with the X5.

You don't necessarily need a new kit to convert, and XX4's can usually be picked up quite cheap second hand. XX4's are quite hard to come by new as I *think* Losi has stopped making a kit, but still sell all the parts.

Cheers guys, some stuff to mull over there, its the squared kit which is newer yeah?

Quite tempted if the parts are available still!

Yeh the squared kit is the newer one. I don't think Losi has discontinued any XX4 parts so they should still all be available.

Definately agree with Tom there, the XX4 has so much more in commom with the X5 so the "XX4 conversion" (XFK012) is £110 less (as Tom said) at £129.95, add that to a reasonable condition used XX4 (£120/150) and you are looking at a resonable price, PLUS a lot of unused XX4 parts with a re-sale value for you to recover some money too.

Darren, can you confirm that all the XX4 parts needed are still available from Losi/Horizon?

i have a almost new xx4we if your interested pm me

They are indeed mate, in ample supply at the moment too.....no shortages on anything (touch wood)

Everything said above is pretty much spot on, just thought I could add some insight.

When we first conceptualized the X - 5 back in mid-2003, XX4's were easily available for pretty cheap. So that's what the X - 5 was really designed to use. We only made the "XXX4" conversion kits because customers asked us to. To make the kit, we just took the cost of the regular "XX4" conversion kit and added our cost on all the extra parts we had to include.

The "squared" kits are the newer ones, and improved over the original versions. All X - 5 kits sold now are "squared."

As for how to make the car "top notch"... SHY put together a great comprehensive listing of nearly everything you could do to the car here: http://www.ymr.no/X5tuning.htm.
The things I would recommend:
Suspension stuff
The Associated B2 front brace on the bulkhead and the X Factory caster block screws make the front end close to bomb-proof. Carbon fiber shocktower braces (I only run one on the front; rear towers seem to hold up well for me).
Driveline stuff
The DDP machined gears are nice, but I actually run all three stock pulleys and they're holding up fine. The double-idler pulley kit is no longer available because Losi discontinued the larger H.D. tensioner pulleys the kit was based off of. However, you can acheive much the same effect by just purchasing a second (regular) idler pulley and the longer XXX4 yellow belt (part number A3213; the stock kit uses the XXXS belt A3209). The final driveline thing is to build/install a roller bearing on the front of the drive pulley; its easy to do but hard to explain. See one of the team guys to see what I mean; does anyone have a picture they could post?

That's a lot of information there, I hope it all makes sense? Please, post away if you have more questions or comments!

I'll try not to arouse Jimmy's ire by making this too much of an advert. I simply don't know why anyone with a xx-4 would fail to convert, just from the ease of working on the car.

Chris, Dan, Tom all were immediately one main higher when they switched.

Ellis has won now on two completely different tracks, the Indoor Finals and OzFest, with consistant high National finishes last year and another Indoor Finals win.

OK, enough. Sorry Jimmy...

I just run the stock single tensioner, works fine. The most work is actually to bullet proof the losi parts such as the towers and front arms. X Factory will have our own strenghteners soon as well to help out.

I run a DDP rear pulley, xx4 drive gear and stock front pulley but I would advise the bearing roller on the drive pulley, that is the only thing you need to stop the belt skipping.

E.

See this excellent article written by some sort of god like genius...................

http://www.one-ten-rcforums.com/4wdr...ic.php?id=1540

does the DDP rear pulley help stop belt skip Ellis, and are they much better than the std ones.?? haven't tried them yet, we found that with the wider belt and the double pulley it stopped 90% of the belt skip under hard brakes.never had any probs under acceleration,we did try the roller but left it of when we ran the double pulley, the belt tensioner Dan posted is a god send ,

The length of that post is something to behold. But God-like???

note my small g Chazz ;)

You're never bored on your spare time when you're hooked on RC...

Here's some "how to's" if you wanna go all the way!

http://www.ymr.no/10ortips.htm

XX4s are easy to find on ebay, no problem!

Btw. if you're thinking X-5. Check out the X-6 as well! The X-5 is very good, fast & easy to maintain. You still can do good with most cars these days. The X-6 is WAY better than all those rear motor cars!!! I've seen the light!!! I don't believe too much in God, but boy do I believe in those Sinclair guys! :D

The best guys in the world will win with any equipment. But us mere mortals really need all the help we can get! :D

I think that thread is just what we have come to expect from Super_dan.

Good stuff though Dan, its a great source of info for anyone who is thinking about or building an x5

Yeah they are better, they also run a little straighter and just last a lot longer.

If you then add the dual idler conversion, is that "too much"? Seems like the belt is VERY close to touching itself...

Btw. how about making an "E Speed" kit for that roller? I think people would appreaciate it! (Something that's "bolt on". Maybe with a template/guide as to where to mount it?)

What pulley is it that the belt skips on mostly, surely a bearing that nearly touches the belt whilst the belt is on the pulley would stop the belt from lifting and skipping. Im not sure how easy to do this is though, but it will add zero drag and stop belt skip:)

That's exactly what is done Lee. To quote Dan's 'god-like article':

'Belt hold down roller. This too is a really easy mod that’s talked about lots on the forum and I was amazed at how much difference it has made. Basically for the belt to skip on the drive pulley the belt must physically ride up and the teeth become disengaged. By placing a roller bearing in front of the belt, if the belt tries to ride up, the bearing stops it and so the teeth can’t disengage and skip. You set it so that under normal use the bearing isn’t touching the belt causing drag, only when it would skip. I simply made mine by drilling a hole in the chassis ahead of the pulley and mounting a motor bearing on a bolt going into the belt tunnel. I’ve done this mod to a customer’s car in all of about 5 minutes!'

http://img294.imageshack.us/img294/6161/img3056ui0.jpg

cheers Ellis will have to give them a try, we had the bearing roller pulley on, i removed it when we fitted the dual pulleys, to see it was or wasn't still needed,will refit and try the rear DDP pulleys,lee it seems to be the drive pulley on the layshaft that skips, but i can make the rear belt skip buy hand,hence why i asked the question on the DDP pulleys.

Hi again all,

What's the space for electricals like, ideally I'd be running futaba 2.4 radio. Also does it take normal servo's or just low profiles?

plenty of romm for std sized everything on the car, theres some pics on 4wdrc.com heres the link clicky check out the gtb installed in x5 theres more than one link

The car is built for standard servo's; to get any real advantage with a low-profile one you'd have to dremel down the mounts for the servo to lower it down, otherwise you'd just create space underneath the servo.

when i run the x5 i had a low profile servo in and i run spectrum recivers the really small 1 which fitted under the servo

Which was wired in with god like precision by somebody amazing I assume? ;)

thats right dan and u must admit it was really neat and tidy;):D

Who did it for you then Shane? :confused:

It was indeed. I think though if I had a low profile servo I'd cut the mounts and do it low so the steering turnbuckle then mounted off the top of the servo horn and the CoG of the car was lower. I'd prefer to mount the receiver at the back for weight dist, especially when Lipo becomes the norm and we run a stick pack down the RHS of the car!

Cough, cough :blush:

Here's a quick pic of how I did the belt roller. The roller's shaft is actually a XX4 CVD front axle, with the round part cut off. The axle is the perfect diameter for a drive bearing, of course, and the little lip holds it on. The two "hat" spacers are just rear axle spacers (That go between the bearings and the drive pin). I just drilled the hole in the chassis by eye and adjusted it (file in or out as needed) as needed. The large "hat" spacers cover up the slightly-oblong hole, and clamp the whole thing tight on the chassis with a regular wheel nut on the end. Probably the hardest thing about doing this is you have to shave down one of the flanges on the drive pulley - just take your time with this and it'll come out fine.

http://www.xfactoryrc.com/paul/PaulS_X5_Lipo_10.jpg

With things like the B2 brace, where would be stocking them?

Other than the bearing to stop the belt skipping, how much does it require "DIY" as a car for the extra's, as opposed to stuff that just bolts on?

I am a lazy Fekker, hence the question!!

whats the difference between a standard X5 and the squared?

Even Chazz and Paul would admit that the X5 is more of a "fiddlers" car than the X6 is, by that I mean you do have to cut, file and dremel a few parts to convert and several mods are pasrt that you adapt or play with to fit, but none of the mods are too stressful and all are easy to implement and the advantages of each are easy to see and understand when you apply them. The main things you probably refer to will be the actual build of the car which will need the use of a dremel or file or similiar (see Jimmys original X5 build review), fitting the front "B2/XXX" front brace, fitting the "Modified Wishbone Kingpins" and adding the belt bearing roller to prevent skip, but that is about all that requires "work" in order to fit. B2 braces BTW are in stock at just £1.55


Differences between the old X5 and the Squared are as follows;

New body with larger space for fitting brushless speedos etc and more cooling holes
Chassis updated/improved/strengthened in 15 places plus a new material. Several minor updates too
New Belt idler bar
"Pro Proto" white lower chassis cover, top "gear cover" and rear diff cover
New mutlicolour X5 Squared logo decals

Thats it........

You can upgrade an older X5 to the latest "squared" with the following upgrade kit - K014 "Higher Power Upgrade" - which includes all of the parts. We currently have these in priced at £49.95 (parts are just over £62 bought seperately)

Do you have stock in on the XX4 conversion kit?

We do indeed..... priced ar £129.95