Been busy with a whole bunch of life changes (Moved to a bigger house, got rid of the workshop) and shit which lead me to being extremely slack and abusive to the ZZW30 this year.
It was over due a service in April and I’m only getting around to doing it now in September….
10000+ km over due… Toyota tough thank fuck.
New garage is a bit small, so needed to shuffle things around to do the service.
International Hoist Appreciation Day!
And done! (Yeah, I forgot to take more photos….)
Just finished some new Federal RS-PRO tires to the ZZW30 and it’s due an alignment, so headed off to my favor suspension guy.
Up on the hoist, checking all the joints and bushes as well, now aligning it to where we put it last time.
RS-PRO’s have different tread pattern to the RS-RR which seems to have cured the crazy levels of road noise.
With the alignment all done, it drives a lot nicer and is confidence inspiring when being spirited.
Till next time.
As mentioned in the finale Legnum post, I purchased a new car to leave the stress of shit boxes behind.
2023 Hyundai i30 Sedan N.
It is a 2L turbo making 206KW and coupled to a 8 speed DCT gearbox.
Within the first 12 days of owning it, I clocked up the required 1500km for the first service and check, all thanks to a couple of small road trips.
Another i30 Sedan in the car park.
Ready to be serviced!
Now that it has been serviced, it can be given the full stick, including the NGS button!
Till next time!
Well the Legnum developed a noise in the gearbox in 2nd and 3rd gear, I just went through a bunch of health drama for a month and had to move at the same time. Enough was enough and it was time to move this car on.
Anyway, it was fun at times and shitful at others.
Sadly, I will miss it though….
But with that chapter closed, I’ve gotten old, softer and less tolerant to shit boxes.
So I bought a Hyundai i30 Sedan N
Till next time!
With the workshop going and a new car on the way, this girl has to go…
So I have sold her to a mate who is looking for a sleeper daily for a potential project in the future.
RoboWars Returns – 15/01/2023 – Day 2
With minimal damage taken on the first day, the battery was topped up, all the fasteners were checked over and it was go time. 
Fight 3: Zenghiaro
First fight of the exhibition matches against Zenghiaro. This time The Verdict got to show off what it could do. It pushed Zenghiaro around, rammed it up the wall, hammered it, got flipped over and had to self right (completely untested!!!) and continued to give them them a tour of all the walls.
Towards the end the weapon was a little lazy on the hits, but I assume that was the controller getting on the thermal limits.
Result: Win by Judges Decision
Watch the fight here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ptN-_YCyVCU
Fight 4: Zapper
Next exhibition match was against Zapper, another full fat featherweight, but with the weapon slowed down to the speed limits for sportsmen.
This would either go well or bad.
The first clash went in my favor with Zapper bouncing up onto The Verdict.
The next the drum hit bounced me back, the next few dances I was able to push it from the side and then jammed the front into the drum, trapped it against the wall, then pound it with the hammer like it owed me money.
More dancing and then I trapped it against the wall again, 10+ hits and Zapper stopped moving, with the whole top plate caved in.
Result: Win by KO.
Watch the fight here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ytW84sRQSE4
The damage done to Zapper, the top lid was pounded into oblivion, jamming down onto a drive motor.
Fight 5 – The Verdict VS Gigablue VS Raptor VS Clunk.
While giving the grand finalists as much time as possible to get ready for their match, we through in 3-4 bots per round and sent it.
No story here, just watch the video!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7MS0VtTlGeE
What a hoot! Shortly after we sat down and watched the finals where a very close fight between Citizen Flips and Saw & Order lead to a new champion.
SAW & ORDER!
With the event completed, it was pack up time, then to hit up a bar for food and booze, then talk shit with all the other builders till we couldn’t stand.
Next time, we talk about what when well and what could have been done better!
PS: The Legnum did this 1800km trip without any issue.
RoboWars Returns – 14/01/2023 – Day 1
In December RoboWars announced a Sportsmen event to be held in Hamilton, Queensland. Below is a collection of photos and diary of the event from my fuzzy memory.
Fight 1: PotHead
Other than driving The Verdict for 30 seconds prior to leaving for the event a day before, I was going into this one blind. And it really showed. I’m super rusty with my driving, doing a lot of weaving instead of straight driving, spinning in circles from over shooting when turning (Really should have put some steering rates into the radio) and I noticed one side was a little bound up compared to the other (it pulled to one side when going forward).
There was a lot of dancing around as I tried to pin Pothead to the wall so I could wail on it with the hammer, but it was actually hard to push to the wall without it slipping off the front. Eventually I managed to get a few decent hits, mangling the pot easily.
Pothead’s saw was scratching the paint in the corners when we collided but did nothing more then that which was nice. However by the timer ran out, the judges has decided the winner was Pothead. It went the full three minutes and didn’t fail, so I consider that a good start to the event. Back in the pits, I just tightened all the nuts and bolts to ensure nothing was going to fall apart and then charged the battery, ready for the next match
Result: Loss by Judges Decision.
Watch the fight here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rsgc7zcOLUM
Fight 2: Raptor 
After the Pothead match, I dug into the menus of the radio and dialed in some rate limiting on the steering to try to reduce the twitchiness. Raptor is a full fat featherweight that swapped out their usually vertical discs for a pair of saw blades and wedges…… (I wasn’t expecting these since it was a sportsmen event, but the EO allowed it.)
There was a lot of back and forth, sparks and hammering through out the match, there was a moment where they actually wedged me up and onto the weapon, which missed the internals my a few millimeters. After that, as it was clear the wedgelets were not something I could defeat, I just focused on pushing against their weapon, trying to hammer, stall and push them where possible. For the last ~30 seconds, I just jammed the weapon down on them to clamped on (The APD speed controller did well here, the thermal/current limiting saving it.)
Sadly, the judges gave it to Raptor.
Once again, there was no real damage other then a slice into the tongue on the robot and some more scratched paint.
Result: Loss by Judges Decision.
Watch the video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cl5Bw53AW8Q
Unfortunately we are now out of the competition, so we can only compete in exhibition matches and melees.
With the first robot event announced and confirmed with only a short window to get it done, it was time to dig out some parts and get cracking.
I dug out the old Dewuts and BotBitz TZ85A controllers that were in the first version of Farmboy. This combo was good enough to win RoboWars Sportsmen 2013 in Sydney, maybe it can do it again!
Updating the gear selector on the Dewuts with my own design that cannot come loose.
Fitted and locked into mid gear.
Designed up a 3D printed mount for the TZ85’s so they can be mounted to the Dewuts directly.
Fitted and ready.
Adding the ESC itself.
The Brazil wheels I purchased in 2020 have an odd sized 15mm shaft which is hard to adapt to the 1/2″ Dewut shafts.
So I farmed out the machining to Demon Designs for a 20mm Hex into the wheel.
Then he machined up these adaptors for me.
Drilled and tapped some 3mm grub screws into it.
Bolted it all to a plank for initial testing.
And then we hit a problem… I had issues with the main door on my workshop and lost my entire xmas break off…. It was fixed 9 days before the event.
What I had designed and was prepared to build all went out the window and we started the rush build!
I bought a gas bottle from Bunnings, found an old winch motor setup with a brushless motor on it and decided to run with some form of hammer bot.
Marked the gas bottle with this simple method.
Followed by the cutting.
Marked for the next cut.
Pushed both halves together, it looks like a bot shell….
Added a few tack welds.
Started adding the first internals frame work. Just some basic 25x6mm mild steel.
Tested fitted the weapon motor setup.
Started mounting the drive motors.
And starting to add more bracing in.
Now to add the weapon slot into the chassis.
Getting closer.
A quick weigh of all the components as it is… Very close to the 13.6kg limit!
Some brand new batteries from Ovonic arrived, just in time!
Things from here were a blur, suddenly a lot of thing were done an no photos were taken…
But here we are, 13.50kg
One last beauty shot.
Next time, the event!
With the Legnum running again, one of the painful issues that I ignored previously was the fact the head unit was dead.
So with some cash left over from offloading some 4AGE parts, I decided to splurge on a head unit for it.}
Picked up a Kenwood DMX5020S, has all the bells and whistles I wanted and I can wire up a reversing camera in the future.
I hate wiring stereos with a passion, I was really hoping one of the previous owners had done at least a tidy job and installed an ISO loom. Lets find out…
Remove the center shifter console trim, pop the main climate control trim off.
Unplug the ciggybutt plug.
Unplug the two climate control plugs.
I was surprised to find that the stereo is only mounted by slots, no screws.
Hoorah, ISO plugs! Along with a dodgy glass fuse that was…. blown. completely redundant considering the stereo has a fuse on the back of itself…
Cut that out, soldered the wires together and shrink wrapped.
The Kenwood is a short body unit and only uses the first two bolts, the rear section of the brackets kept fouling on looms and was a pain in the ass…
I cut the rear section off. I then found the holes were not quite spaced correctly for the Kenwood… (I guess standards changed since 1997…).
Quickly slotted them with the drill…
A few wriggles and adjustments of screws and it all went back together with relative ease.
Couple of minutes setting it up and it was playing music.
It wasn’t all rainbows and lolly pops though. Each time I turn the car off, the stereo resets… I’m thinking one of the wires in ISO plugs is not providing power to the stereo when ignition is turned off, so it does not retain it’s settings… bugger. Well I know how to pull it all apart and fix it.
Until next time!
With the Legnum all buttoned up, I took it for a quick 2-3km run up the road, then came back. There was a couple of knock and bangs I could hear while driving. Turns out one of the driveshaft nuts needed torqued up properly and a sway bar link bolt was loose.
With all of those tidied up, it was time to set sail for home, taking all the back roads and avoiding the free way till I’m more confident that it will not shit itself while doing a buck ten. It made it home without fuss.
Till next time!