MRC Driveshaft Upgrade

As I added weight and additional power to my MRC I started to see where the weak points were. The firsts thing most people complain about are the plastic diff lockers, plastic tranny locker and the driveshafts. Losi is producing metal diff lockers and I have plans for a transmission replacement but I still needed to figure out something for the driveshafts. I started looking around and since I had a bunch of them sitting around I decided to give Stampede shafts a shot.

PARTS & SUPPLIES NEEDED
(2) Traxxas Stampede Half Shafts #1953

TOOLS
Dremel with cutoff discs
Orion tire lockdown CA glue
Basic handtools
A bench vice is super handy for this
Small file or sandpaper



1. The first thing to do is rip your MRC apart. I had trouble stripping all the dam grub screws until I got my hands on some Axial Drivers. They are well worth the investment.


2. Seperate your shaft pieces form the yoke pieces. You'll be able to save the shaft pieces as spares.


3. Notice that the MRC yoke fits neatly into the Stampede male shaft hole. Trim off a piece of the male shaft that is slightly longer than the stock MRC piece. Drill a hole for mounting it and err on the side of making the hole to far from the end. Drill the hole near the end you had to cut originally.


4. You may have to lightly file or sand the yoke or inside of the shaft to get the yoke in. If your hole ended up to far away to get the screw through, go ahead and take off material until it fits. It should be a PITA to get the yoke into the shaft end but it will go in.


5. Now go ahead and cut off the remaining nub from the left over shaft part.


6. Repeat the process above to get the nub attached to the other yoke.


7. Using the female end of the Stampede shaft cut off the ears so you have just the internal splined section left.


8. Slide the collar over the stub/yoke and test fit it with the other piece you assembled. You want to make sure you can acheive full compression once the units are in the truck so mocking them up before gluing isn't a bad idea. You will need to trim the collar at least a little.


9. I ended up notching the female section before gluing it in place. Be careful when gluing to not get glue into the splined sections that will be moving past each other.


10. Once the glue dries install your new shafts and go beat on them!