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Leonardas

Vintage Hornet

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Hi,

So I've bought a vintage Tamiya Hornet, I think it's the original release. The car was full of dirt and there were some small rocks stuck inside of the chassis, but I cleaned it and it looks good enough for me now. I also greased moving parts, so the chassis is ok now. :)

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Rear diff works good, even tough one bearing is missing (according to the 2004 manual I found online). The seller also gave me a mechanical speed controller (not going to use that), some strange motor and an old NiCd 6 cell 'hump pack', which may be dead, but it charged more than it should - 1800mAh instead of 1200mAh. :unsure:

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I'm writing, because I've got a few questions:

1. What pinion gear should I buy for it?

2. What shock oil is best for the rear shocks?

3. Is it safe to use that battery?

4. What is the use of those blue things on the motor (if I'm right, they're resistors)?

Front tires are 'The Smoothee' and the rear are Racing R 'Super Gripper'. Unfortunately, one of the rear tires has a crack, might need to change it in the future. :lol:

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Couple of short answers:

1) An 18 teeth 0.8 module pinion (get a steel one if you can).

2) I'd go for some thicker oil #200 or #300 with these older shocks.

3) If it didn't short circuit with charging, I reckon you can still use it (if it held any charge).

4) I believe (not my expertise) they are capacitors, added to avoid signal interference.

Hope that helps, Hornets are great fun. :)

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That motor looks like it doesn't belong with that car. "which picture doesn't fit with the others...."

If anything it looks like the guy found a motor that looks like it might be the right size and threw it in the box to sell to you.

It could be from a drill or some other hand-held battery-powered device, and who knows what voltage it might be. 6V? 12V? 18V?

The fan you can see inside the motor (the white blades you see through the side long oval cutout in the motor can) is not really a normal thing on a motor, especially a regular Mabuchi or Johnson 540 or 550 size motor. Yes, some motors come with a fan like that, such as the Traxxas Titan 12T motor has one I think, but that motor isn't a Titan. And Mabuchi makes lots of 540 and 550 size motors with fans, but they are for industrial use, like hand-held battery-powered drills.

Also, those blue things... they look like inductors (basically coils of wire wrapped around a ferrite core) to me. Or they could be resistors like you surmised. Either way, they shouldn't be used because they can mess up a ESC or they are just plain not useful.

Capacitors should be 0.1uF (0.1 microfarads) which are really small and ideally there should be three of them soldered on the motor: One between motor + and motor can, one between motor - and motor can, and one between motor + and motor -.

From the picture it looks like the motor DOES have 0.1uF caps installed. You can see one of them going between the motor - connection with the blue wire and the motor can. I bet there is a second capacitor (the little yellow thing) on the other motor + connection. Is there a 3rd capacitor between the motor - and +? If not that is easy to add when you connect motor to ESC.

I would de-solder those wires from the motor and get rid of them and the blue things too. Those wires look like 26AWG (very thin) which couldn't handle any current, which is why I have doubts about the correctness of the motor in general for R/C use.

You could hook it up to a battery and see how fast it runs at least. If it isn't right, eBay has tons of stock motors for cheap, or whatever you fancy.

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Wow, thank you. Yes, the motor has three small capacitors. Also, that axle in the front is longer than on others and it doesn't have that cut where pinion screw goes. :unsure:
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About the blades, I also have an LRP S10 Blast motor, it has the blades in it too. I am thinking about getting something from the vintage motors, or a Tamiya Dirt-Tuned brushed motor. I just find brushed motors more reliable :lol:

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That 23T LRP motor is actually good quality and a very nice match for this car...

I run the same one in my Grasshopper.

:)

Grotefoto-RBC3SE6N.jpg

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I agree, too bad the pinion gear is stuck on mine :lol:

I think about getting a Tamiya Dirt-Tuned for my rally TT02 and putting the stock silvercan in the Hornet.

dutch_rc, could you please tell me where you got the tires and wheels? I should change my front rims and rear tires. :lol:

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You could try to heat it (with small lighter torch?) and then use a 1/16" diametrical hex driver on the grub screw...

That's 1.6mm, slightly larger than the 1.5mm metric size - in case it's mangled.

The wheels are an all terrain DT-02 set by Carson. Cheap but nice.

Tyres have no inserts and rims are a bit brittle though.

To run them, you'll need to replace the normal rear wheels hubs with the Tamiya Frog wheel adapters (item #53913).

:)

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There's one great looking grasshopper over there, but where are the body mounts? :rolleyes:

Didn't want to change wheel hubs, but I guess I'll have to.

I also wanted to change lower arms and uprights (everything in manual step 16), as some screws aren't original and the lower front shock mounts are rusty, but new parts would be too expensive and it's harde to find used ones, the only thing I found was a Super Hornet without rear diff., but it's a bit different and I don't know if it would work. Better keep it original :)

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If you use that LRP motor then this doesn't matter, but I was just curious: Does the marked capacitor lead connect to anything or is it just hanging in the air?

WP_20140829_001_1.jpg

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There's one great looking grasshopper over there, but where are the body mounts? :rolleyes:

Didn't want to change wheel hubs, but I guess I'll have to.

I also wanted to change lower arms and uprights (everything in manual step 16), as some screws aren't original and the lower front shock mounts are rusty, but new parts would be too expensive and it's harde to find used ones, the only thing I found was a Super Hornet without rear diff., but it's a bit different and I don't know if it would work. Better keep it original :)

I've done a lot of modifications on the car, rear suspension's not quite finished. ^_^

Here's the build thread :

Mad Hopper returning from Hades

It has Super Hornet front suspension but that is not an exact match (neither is the car in general)...

What's wrong with the suspension arms? Some sanding and a bit of matt black paint often does wonders.

The Grasshopper is a 95% match, shouldn't be too hard to find parts (maybe some patience for good prices).

I think they've been pretty much constantly produced again since 2005.

:)

I have a box of spares, maybe just post a topic here on TC first if you're looking for anything...

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If you use that LRP motor then this doesn't matter, but I was just curious: Does the marked capacitor lead connect to anything or is it just hanging in the air?

WP_20140829_001_1.jpg

You're right, one side of it isn't connected to anything.

I've done a lot of modifications on the car, rear suspension's not quite finished. ^_^

Here's the build thread :

Mad Hopper returning from Hades

It has Super Hornet front suspension but that is not an exact match (neither is the car in general)...

What's wrong with the suspension arms? Some sanding and a bit of matt black paint often does wonders.

The Grasshopper is a 95% match, shouldn't be too hard to find parts (maybe some patience for good prices).

I think they've been pretty much constantly produced again since 2005.

:)

I have a box of spares, maybe just post a topic here on TC first if you're looking for anything...

Read your thread, awesome. I am seriously considering to get that Super Hornet for spares, might be a good idea.

The arms themselves are alright, but I don't like the way uprights are attached to it.

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It also has cracks and I think soumething may be missing, but still, the car ir 30 years old and I think I paid a fair price for a model that's well worn. :)

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To get some spares would be so good! Too bad most of the people in this forum are from UK, which means I'd have to pay for the shipping more than for the parts. :unsure:

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Let me dig around the spares this weekend and I'll see what I may be able to ship normally...

If it fits through the mailbox, postage shouldn't hurt too much.

I definitely have a couple of nerf bars (for the sides) and some better looking steering knuckles for it.

Recommendation for a simple fix for the crack - to take out the gearbox mounts, then only put the screws back in and add a drop of superglue. Then take the screws out once more so it can dry under it's original tension (without the gap). If it's permanently deformed like this, same process but you can use a wood clamp to keep the gap closed.

:)

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Thanks, that would be great :)

Hope superglue helps to fix up the cracks!

And if you're digging around your spares, could you please check for parts D4 and D5? Rear bodyposts on my Hornet are well smashed. Someone really had lots of fun with it :lol:

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I do have a couple but I'm not too eager to part with them because they belong to a complete set of dampers...


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This is actually the way the uprights were attached on the original issues of the Hornet and Grasshopper.

Found a couple of those (with shafts and grubs).

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Besides the set of nerf bars I mentioned, the box of spares mostly contains gearbox halves, broken chassis and mismatched or old tyres. So not a whole lot that's of interest.

Grotefoto-NLCU3DY6.jpg

The knuckles and side bars would make your car more complete though. No charge for those. ;)

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Wow, I tought something's wrong, but it turns out my manual is too new (2004 re-release PDF) :lol:

I also traded my drift wheels (didn't use them anyways) to a Super Hornet without the rear gear box. Soon will get a package :)

No charge? That's great, thanks! ^_^ You may need my address now, right?

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Sure, just send it to me by pm...

The Super Hornet is probably the coolest looking of this kind of chassis but not many were produced and it's one of the few cars that hasn't been rereleased. So finding original parts won't be easy.

But from what I can see, with some modification you should be able to fit a normal Hornet gearbox on it...

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The Super Hornet is probably the coolest looking of this kind of chassis but not many were produced and it's one of the few cars that hasn't been rereleased. So finding original parts won't be easy.

The Rising Fighter (still in production) shares most of its parts with the Super Hornet, and is a good source of spares. It uses the virtually-indestructable DT01 gearbox, which is also easily available, and can be fitted to a Hornet or Super Hornet without much trouble if you are struggling to source an original.

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No, I didn't get the parts yet.

And yes, I know that The Rising Fighter shares some parts with Hornets. I'll see what I can find, thanks. ;)

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