DIY RC Car!!

I am a Junior at Irvington High School and I made an RC Car as my side project for my Principles of Engineering class using Ms. Berbawy's Makerspace with the help of one of her former students, Dhruth. I have recently been really into cars and wanted to learn a bit more about RC Cars. This project entertained my love for cars as well as increased my knowledge of RC Cars and circuits in general. Being able to build a car that works from scratch is incredibly rewarding.

Materials:

Chassis kit

Motor and Esc

Transmitter and Receiver

Servo

ESC Programmer

7.4 V Lipo Battery

Tools:

Allen wrench (2mm + 2.5mm)

Strong plyers or clamps

Lipo Battery charger

Materials from: https://www.amazon.com/

RC Cars are VERY expensive to build. The average cost of one RC car is about $250-$500 and I did not have that kind of money to spend. This made the purchasing process a bit difficult. First of all if you are buying a chassis to build on your own the price averages from about $130-$180. Though it may seem tedious building your own chassis gives you a lot of freedom to assemble the car the way you want to. You could also buy a pre-assembled chassis but it comes with a lot of limits. The one linked above is the cheapest one that I could find and it definitely comes with its challenges but it worked really well for me.

Moving onto the Motor and ESC (Electronic Stability Control). I purchased the motor on its own which was a bad idea because it ends up being much cheaper if you just buy and ESC+Motor combo. Another thing you want to do is get a good quality motor and ESC (this also applies for the servo) these are brains and limbs of your car so if you want to splurge on anything it should be this. Make sure you order the one with the T-plug.

Now for the transmitter, receiver and the servo. I was lucky enough to have some help on this particular part because one of Ms. Berbawy's former students had a transmitter, receiver and servo that I could use. The transmitter and receiver that he had was a bit modified so I did not program it like you would normally but the programing should be easy and there are YouTube videos online that you could use to help you out.

An ESC Programmer is not always necessary but you could end up needing it. If you use the ESC that I linked then you should be fine but every once in a while you might run into and issue and have to reprogram your ESC.

Make sure that the Battery that you use is a 7.4V Lipo Battery. It is possible that you could figure out how to use a lithium battery but I have not done that and they are a bit more difficult to attach to the T-plug on the esc. Make sure you get one with a female T-plug because it is very important that the one electronic that you do not have to solder is the battery. This project should not involve any soldering if you buy the right materials.

You do not have to use all of the parts that I linked but you would have a higher possibility of success if you did because I have already successfully done this project with these parts myself.

This step was probably the most time consuming step during this process. The parts were definitely not easy to put together and some of the instructions were not very clear. I am here to help make this process 10 times faster because I have figured out every issue with this product and figured out how to solve it.

1. Make sure you take inventory of the the pieces. My package came with 2 missing pieces that were very necessary to the process. It was not that big of a deal for me because Ms. Berbawy had the pieces that I needed replaced but if you don't have access to this then I would recommend letting the company know asap so you can get a partial refund or a new set.
2. In the first package you will be dealing with some gears. This step is pretty easy except for the oil. DO NOT TRY TO MELT IT. It is very thick but I later found out that it is supposed to be this way. I tried to melt it with a heat gun (do not try this) and the container melted instead of the oil. I eventually just scooped the oil inside and let it sit for about 5 min. This ended up working perfectly fine you just have to be patient.
3. This next warning is also about a lubricant. The second bag has another lubricant that, in my opinion was harder to deal with than the last one. For this one I just took each individual gear and rolled it in the lubricant which worked great and the gears moved smoothly.
4. Next is the ball and socket joint. This was by far the most frustrating thing about my project. This part was actually designed very well because it will definitely not be coming apart but putting it together was such a pain. We tried so hard to push it in using our hands but it was way to difficult so we tried handheld clamps. This also didn't work because it wasn't strong enough so eventually we ended up using a super heavy iron table top vice grip to get it in. This worked well, but there are about 20 of these sockets throughout the chassis so it will definitely get annoying.
5. Lastly, be very careful with all of the screws!!! They strip VERY easily and it is a huge pain to get them out if they are stripped. The kit also does not come with much extra of anything so you absolutely can not waste your screws.

The rest of the instructions on the manual are pretty straightforward so it should be pretty easy to put together but it will definitely take more time than you expect because there are a lot of pieces.

Above is a circuit diagram that I put together to make this process less confusing. Make sure you check your circuit a couple of times before attaching it to a power source because if it is wired wrong there is a very high possibility that you could ruin all of the electronic parts. When connecting the esc and the servo you have to put them into the right channels. The servo is for rotation of the car so it helps you go left and right. This means that that it goes into the steering channel which is channel one. The esc is connected to the motor so it goes into the acceleration channel which is channel 2. Make sure that you put them in the correct channel the correct way or the car will not run. If you switch the 2 then you'll end up with the acceleration button steering and the steering button controlling acceleration which will make it a bit confusing. When you connect the battery make sure that it is fully charged or it might not work. You may need a lipo battery charger to charge it because it requires a special charger and most of the time the battery does not come fully charged. If you do not have access to this you can find it here. Make sure it has a T-plug charging cable. Once you are all done with the wiring put the battery in the slot for the battery and attach a velcro patch to the far side of the battery pack so that it can be taken out to charge.

To pair my transmitter and receiver was actually pretty easy. Here is a youtube video that I used to bind my transmitter and receiver. The video says that you need to use the bind plug that is provided but that is not true at all. All that wire does is short the circuit so that it can bind. You can easily do this by taking a simple female to female wire that you would use for like breadboarding or something and loop it around like the bind plug does. So if yours does not come with a bind plug it is not the end of the world. Once the transmitter and receiver are binded you need to select a profile for your car on the transmitter.

This part is simple because once you choose a profile your car should work. You could modify it by changing all of the settings like auto brake system and end point adjuster as long as you know what all of them do. It is all in the manual for the transmitter so you should have access to it because it should come with the receiver but if not here is the online one. If you don't want to change the settings you don't have to. Once you get more used to it you might want to make some more adjustments which is were all of these settings will come in handy.

Once you have finished this you are done building your RC car. You could add onto it by adding a body some other modifications. Feel free to ask me any questions about the project and I will do my best to help you out. I hope you have as much fun as I had building this!!