Tamiya and other R/C vehicles (not just for Christmas)

@Pierre what ESC are you using? If it’s the standard Tamiya (TBE 02?) then its only rated down to 23T motors. Could be your updated motor is lower than that which could cause problems.
Bigger pinion may help but not by much.

@Merak – thanks for the offer but I’ve got the Lunchbox to play with for the time being so not in a major rush. Have been recommended a sensored brushless motor from HobbyKing via one of the Tamiya forums so waiting for that to arrive, should be here early next week.

@clubby It’s that one, yes. Looks like it’s time to look into either a new ESC or find out what the difference in turn counts means for motors. Which means being tempted by brushless, which means potentially putting too much power into a car that was never really built for it, which means breaking lots of stuff, which means being tempted to buy a whole new car, or maybe a couple…

I see what’s happening here. 😉

Sounds good Andy, will be there.
Lunchbox and the Crawler. 🙂

Cougs, might be able to give you a lift if not meeting up with the daughter and grandkids – will drop you a line, just waiting to hear back from them.

That’s very kind of you, but I think we’re going to kill two birds with one stone as my better half’s sister is out that way so we won’t be coming directly home.

No worries mate.

Looks like we’ll be meeting up with the family too.

I don’t suppose you have a power kite you could bring, by any chance?

🤣

I’ve a cupboard full of the buggers.

Cheers HTS for the directions, I think I know where I’m going. Whereabouts in the park though? It looks kinda… not small.

Meet in in the carpark. We’ll walk down together.

You mean I have to be… on time? Ye gods man.

If I wasn’t on call I would have been up for this, only got a crawler “at the moment” 😉

Just told my OH, she asked what time, I told her and she replied “well… you’ll probably be up by then.”

Cheers for that guys, it was a giggle.

It took me to walk through the front door back home to suddenly realise, I could’ve brought my car and borrowed a battery…

Wasn’t it? 🙂

Lovely to see everyone and nothing broke (too badly).

I think we’ll be doing it again.

Good fun…..

Yeah, it was a hoot.

Cars cleaned and damage assessed. Nothing too major. Broken shock on the Mad Bull (again) but I’ve got better ones in the post.

We’ll definitely do it again!

I’ve still got my Thunder Tiger 1/10 nitro R/C car under my bed. The only problem with it was finding a car park big enough.

Gotta say, I don’t envy you having to clean those cars, it was minging underfoot. Are the buggers waterproofed these days too?

Any pictures?

I didn’t think to take any, sorry. Something else I kicked myself for when I got home.

Though in my defence I was fighting with Aspie brain “argh strange new people!” and mostly trying to pretend to be something approaching normal.

Not waterproof, I think we were just lucky!
It was a trifle moist. 🙂

Not cleaned mine yet, carried on building the new one when we got home.

It’ll brush off tomorrow….

A spot on afternoon, thanks all.

Cheers for the pictures. Shame I live too far away glad you had a good time.

Looks like fun was definitely had judging by the state of the cars!

To counter you lot having fun I’ve had some goodies arrive for the Lancia:

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Now just got to figure out how A/B/C corresponds to the blue/orange/yellow wires, find my soldering iron, clean the chassis up and get it all installed. I’ve read that some people use Bring Your Own as a way of remembering A=blue B=yellow and C=orange, does that sounds right?

Finally getting around to building a Mad Bull and wondered whether there’s anything I should be thread locking (Loctite 2400 Medium Strength is what I have). Instructions say no, but I expect there’s some metal-metal fittings here that could use it e.g. the grub screw holding the gear onto the motor shaft, and the screws that hold the motor through the gear box casing.

Also what about this tyre gluing – what glue, what method? It’s the standard 540 brushed motor so if it doesn’t need it then I’m fine with that.

Glued the tyres on my Mad Bull as I’ve had them roll off the rim. I used Rocket Hot.

I haven’t Loctited the wheel nuts on, but they do work loose over time so I nip them up before a “razz”. Gearbox and motor screws have been fine. I wouldn’t glue them anyway as you need to get in there to grease every so often.

Just Superglue for mine.

Just cleaned the Lunchbox, which consisted of jumping off a couple of kerbs and shaking the loose bits off. 🙂

Looking slightly tattier, but works perfectly.

Oh, the grandaughter now wants a ‘proper’ car so she can race against the rest of us. Good grief…..

I think you’ll do OK there, that Mario Kart wasn’t shabby.

Done and ready to smash up so here’s a picture of it for posterity. Gone for a slightly stealthy look as I dont like the Mad Bull stripes.

Yay! Looks great.

Get it on some gravel, pull the trigger and guess where it is going to go!

Watch out for your receiver aerial wire. It is close to the pivot on the rear suspension and mine got nipped off at about half its length as a result. Doesn’t seem to have harmed the range though.

You are right about the stripes. It looks like my duvet and curtain set from 1984.

Get it on some gravel, pull the trigger and guess where it is going to go!

Me and one of the yoofs had a blast on the local redgra / all-weather pitch. Already have more 3300mAh on order! Eyeing up the oil shocks too but having much fun on the pogo sticks it came with.

Put some of these on my Mad Bull today as it has been snapping the Pogo Sticks.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Aluminum-RC-75MM-Oil-Adjustable-Shocks-Absorber-For-1-10-HPI-HSP-Tamiya-CC01/252102135612?ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT&var=550944882245&_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649

75 mm on the front, 90 mm on the back.

Initially it bounced like a bouncy thing, so I wound on about 5mm of pre-load all round and it is much better.

Looks pretty good too.

About to break.

Well thanks to Pete this thread has cost me £768.
Still its good fun 🙂

I’m at about £500 8-0

Harry_The_Spider – have you checked whether the shocks have any oil in them? Makes a massive difference to how they behave.

Err, about £850 down the rabbit hole so far…..ooops.

I really shouldn’t have added it all up.

Ah well, finished the 2CV chassis last night, started looking at fixing the buggy and realised I need to order more bits.

Bum.

have you checked whether the shocks have any oil in them? Makes a massive difference to how they behave

Not checked, but the description says that they are pre-filled and I’m not about to pull them apart to check. They are a vast improvement on the kit ones now that I’ve added some pre-load. Sharper turning in at low speeds and power slides at higher ones.

As long as they’re performing that’s all that matters!

Did a bit of work on the Lancia tonight: fitting the brushless motor. Easy to fit it to the motor mount and adjust the pinion alignment, had to trim the cooling cover a bit though to clear the connecting pins though. Actually means it’ll get more airflow so possibly a good thing! Took a few goes to get the ESC into brushless mode though, thought I was switching it but I was actually just turning off reverse. Why do they make the orange and red LED’s so hard to distinguish between?!? Oh and my soldering skills are very, very rusty. Could be the soldering iron as it struggles to hold heat so I’ll blame that!

Got it running on the bench with the wheels off the ground, the auto brake was a bit vicious so turned that down before taking it out for a spin. First pull of the trigger and it took off like a scalded rat! Full-bore wheelspin, fully controlled but a lot more violently than the original motor. Top speed is only a little bit faster than the original but I can gear it higher now so that will solve that issue, should make launches a bit better too.

Got an issue though. After the first acceleration from switching it on and it comes to a halt it won’t start up again unless you give it a nudge, whether that’s forward or reverse. If I keep it rolling there’s no issue, even going from reverse to forward or vice versa. Nipped it back in the flat thinking it was just an alignment issue but it’s not. Even with the motor unmounted the shaft needs a little spin to get it going. It does move slightly, a degree or two but not enough to get it in motion. The motor has adjustable timing so had a play with that but it makes no difference (although advancing it does make it a decent amount faster). Could it be the ESC isn’t happy getting it going? I chose this motor (Turnigy Trackstar 13.5T Sensored) as plenty of people on the RC forums have run it on the standard ESC (TBLE-02S) without issues. I know the stock one has some limitations so maybe worth getting a better one?

Haven’t got round to fitting the shocks yet as I want to get it running and see how much of a difference they make back-to-back.

Traced the issue, a damaged sensor cable.

Was going into town this morning anyway so took the opportunity to nip into the local R/C shop, Antics in the arcades in the centre of Cardiff. They didn’t have one as nearly everything they sell is sensor-less. Got chatting to them about stuff, as you do, and the subject turned to the differences between Tamiya and the RTR stuff. Had a look at a few different things and the difference is huge.

So to see if I like the other ones I left with this:

Fully waterproof, oil shocks all round and comes with everything bar some AA’s for the controller. Even has a 2S lipo with it!
Should be fun round the local park, battery is already on charge.

I knew this would get addictive!

My mate has the brushed version of that. Good fun, not the most robust of cars but it’s a hoot when it’s running

Traced the issue, a damaged sensor cable.

Was going into town this morning anyway so took the opportunity to nip into the local R/C shop, Antics in the arcades in the center of Cardiff. They didn’t have one as nearly everything they sell is sensor-less. Got chatting to them about stuff, as you do, and the subject turned to the differences between Tamiya and the RTR stuff. Had a look at a few different things and the difference is huge.

So to see if I like the other ones I left with this:

Fully waterproof, oil shocks all round and comes with everything bar some AA’s for the controller. Even has a 2S lipo with it!
Should be fun round the local park, battery is already on charge.

I knew this would get addictive!

Got one of those last week, on a grippy surface it full on motorboats on acceleration and in the long grass tore loads of it up with rooster tails of decapitated grass flying up 😀
Oh and don’t mess about with it in the kitchen while your stood close it hurts 😉