i’m about a hair away from taking a belt sander to my cast ronins to see if i can get caliber style mounts to slip onto them. I’ve had a set of CRs sitting on my shelf for almost a year. The profile on them is terrible for mounts, every time i try to draw something up i get pissed.
@chaka how are you shaping your CR hangers? i just imagine you have some crazy jig set up that does it very neatly.
that’s the direction i was going to go originally but now i’m about to invest in some branded caliber mounts so if i can get them to also work on CRs via a simple process of removing some metal then it might be worth the effort.
but you can get a single caliber clone for $20. Ive run into exactly 0 issues with my caliber clones and its never crossed my mind that Ive needed to upgrade. I also feel that in the diy community that Im assuming this product is targeting, the “no two trucks are the same” issue is easily worked around. I filed down a small piece of a credit card to fill the gap between my motor mount and truck axle and now it fits like a glove. Its such a small margin that I still think it makes more sense to target the most widespread truck. Especially considering that most of the outrunner prebuilt market is using calibers, its all the more reason to target calibers, even if Ronins are “better anyways”. Getting people to seperate from their money is hard enough, getting them to do it twice for one product is even more of a challenge.
Can pick up cast Ronin’s for under $40 each. Maybe people are confusing them with the expensive precision Ronin’s?
So for $20 more per truck can enjoy the far better tracking and turning.
I personally like avoiding the emergency room and these Ronin’s track so much better over pavement irregularities I can’t imagine going back to Caliber or Paris.
im just commenting out of love for your company and the incredible products you make, but I really feel like you guys are going to miss out on sales not only by not being designed for the most popular diy/prebuilt truck but now also requiring customization on what is already a more expensive truck that, while most agree it is an upgrade from calibers and caliber clones, its not like caliber clones are unridable or fragile. You miss out on Boosted boarders that want better mounts, you miss out on the guys who just want a mount upgrade but dont want to bother with replacing trucks, and you also miss out on the people who dont mind upgrading their trucks as well but, like me dont want to make any cosmetic modifications because of either convenience or lack of access to the required tools. Im really hoping Im not coming off as offensive btw i just want to see you guys dominate the market 
edit: ill never forget a quote from our meetup in London from the guy with a raptor R2. He didnt care what was cheaper or better, he just wanted something that worked when he got it.
@Ulfberht using 6061 with a lot of success.
@guyguy @jmasta @CSN @FredSaberhagen Thanks for the kind words!
@longhairedboy I use a lathe and shape several different dimensions into the truck hanger. One dimension for the drive pulley and two more for the mount. I use a micrometer and bring it in within .001" It is insane what a difference having machine matched motor mounts and truck hangers makes.
No worries @itsmikeholland, I know you want whats best for us!
I’m sure it is pretty clear that I care a lot about things “just working”. The whole reason I started working on a drive system was necessity. I needed something that worked and didn’t need to be adjusted constantly. This is hard to do when matching machined parts to a cast hanger. The tolerances are just too loose.
you probably never tried ronins, right? precision, agility, stability, damping - all in a completely different world compared to caliber style, especially for single sided motor systems. its a miracle to me that not everybody is already running ronins by now 
Looks sweet AF dude 
With all the 6374 hype I can’t believe a forum search yields 0 results for your 6085 motors? 
They look the ducks nuts with your mounts… and heavy with copper… is good! 
@chaka beautiful mount, loved your old one already amd its great to see you switch to ronins.
i milled down a ronin hangar myself and for full circle contact mount<->hangar the diameter of the cast hangar becomes really small and I was afraid of the edge hangar<->milled part of hangar notch effect, which is even more pronounced with the large diameter difference. not really an engineer, but i know some basics of my physic studies. did you do anything to ease out the effect like with rounded edges or stuff like the wiki picture of the notch effect:
this is the main reason i like the way @nowind ronin mount is attached - its minimal invasive to the hangar.
Tensile triangles (zugdreiecke) might already be a good start: https://www.witpress.com/elibrary/dne/2/4/313
Im down to try Ronins machined trucks and wouldnt mind the upgrade! Im nearly positive I would love them, I see it like driving a Camry vs a high end BMW or Mercedes. even though they beat the camry in literally every way, Camrys still do the job at the same fraction of the price as Ronins vs Calibers. Looking at Ronins site it looks like the cheapest ones are $90/pair, but theyre cast. Isnt cast trucks an issue? The only others that arent cast are the Katanas that are $450! 
your Calibers are cast
The argument here is that Ollins trucks are machined and as a result come out extremely precise. Cast trucks like the caliber clones and even cast Ronins apparently have too much deviation to mass produce a machined mount for since not every cast truck will be exactly the same. For example, I have a machined motor mount from torque boards and a cast caliber clone also from TB and in order to get a snug fit on the truck I had to file down a piece of a credit card to fill in the space between the mount and the truck axle.
At least thats my understanding. Being machined and marketed for machined Ronin trucks means that basically nobody will have an issue with compatibility as long as they read the description.
The Ronin’s work better because they have two pins which prevent the truck from wallowing around.
and no motor mount fits perfectly on them because they are cast. My argument for just saying screw it and machining the ollin trucks for calibers anyways is that, at least to me as a consumer, the majority of the DIY builders are finding a way to make it work with caliber clones. Ollin mounts are quite obviously the most superior mount, and I would totally sand down another corner of a credit card to make them fit on my cheap trucks.
Im not arguing that Ronins arent better, its just that Ive literally never NEEDED to upgrade my caliber clone because, while there are better alternatives, it was $20 and I have literally had 0 problems with my clones, which is why I havent upgraded. You can have a BMW rep set up outside a Toyota dealership and he’ll probably convince 100% of the people that BMWs are better in every way, but most people will still just buy a Toyota.
I also want to clarify that I dont think Ollin is making a mistake, only greiving that mounts arent something I can just painlessly upsell people on because they require other specific components to be of use. Any time somebody had questions about a speed controller I could sing till the cows came home about how excellent Ollin product and costumer service is and can easily justify the premium for a chaka vesc because its as easy as swapping out just one item the the shopping cart
I step it down with rounded corners, The area under the mount actual has very little material removed, not full circle. just the corners have been rounded. Ronins also have very high quality steel axles. Makes a very big difference in strength.