Mad Ax

I don't have a wife to buy me pressies [] Best of luck with the painting dude, and look forward to Christmas day []

Pole Position: http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseacti...eoid=1194603615 Muppet Babies: http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseacti...eoID=1373061103 Bravestar: http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseacti...eoID=1373463074 Oh, sweet memories []

18/19 is good for me too, and Yeovil sounds good [] If there's some good jumps I might bring my camera along to get some shots for the "all 4 wheels off the ground" compo []

I think the TamTech Gator looks really cute [] although I'm not into Tamtechs, and won't be buying one. The 501 looks great - beauty, IMO, is where form follows function. If its form allows it to function at its best, then it is beautiful. No, it won't win any fashion awards, and yes, a dakar / baja-style body would look cool, but if that is detrimental to racing performance, then I'm all for the 501 body. I like that Tamiya has at last released a 4x4 race buggy that can contend in serious racing. If I was going to get into off-road racing, that's what I'd buy [] I'm not a fan of the Keen Hawk body, tho. Looks a bit silly, IMO. It's a high-spec basher, just like its DF-03 and 02 brethren... THAT is where we want our dakar bodies, Mr. Tamiya! []

and I thought I had wierd dreams... If I dreamt that I was going to difuse a bomb, I'm sure I'd get it wrong and blow myself. I quite often die in my dreams. I had an RC related dream when I about 5 years old, and had been promised a Nikko Turbo Panther for Christmas. I dreamt my mum had gone to buy me a Turbo Panther from a local lad and was "test-driving" it around the school car park to decide if it was any good [] Funny, I never imagined Mother Dearest as the RC type before that...

Definately a deserved winner - if I'm glad to lose to anybody, it was this entry [] Looks like I'll have to work on my own style for next time - a whole week of evenings making those pics, and I came in 2nd last [] Not that I'm a sore loser or anything [] []

weekend 11/12 or 18/19 suit me - others are out of bounds. Actually I'd better get on and order the new tyres for the Blackfoot - I managed to destroy two at the weekend, don't want to be without a blackfoot for this meet [] How is everyone else put for these weekends?

OK - here's another update: Two days ago, while masking up my Chevy El Camino shell from Parma, I decided to size it against the Cross Tiger shell to see how much bigger it is. Result! It's a 200mm 1/10 shell, designed for wide tarmac chassis rather than monster trucks, so it looks huge. The Cross Tiger shell fits easily inside it. ANYway, here I noticed that the 1/10 car shell has almost the same wheelbase as the Dark Impact. My theory is that if the El Camino fits, so should the other 1/10 car shells. The El Camino is the only pickup shell in the Parma tarmac range, because officially it's a musclecar with a flat bed, rather than a proper pickup. But enough words - onto the pictures I took! As you can see, the DI wheelbase is just a few mm longer than the El Camino. Since you'll have to cut out the arches a la Monster Truck anyway, this won't be a problem - just cut the front ones as normal, and cut the rear ones a little further back. Sorted [] Width is just about right for a scale-ish off-road racing truck It's loads wider than the Cross Tiger... Worth a shot, I reckon []

Except most RC stadium trucks have stupidly oversized wheels (as opposed to slightly-oversized wheels on the DI chassis). The wheels stick out far further than the DI chassis. And they're not usually made on good buggy chassis* unless you buy a top-end nitro model from one of the big competitors. The Stadium Raider isn't a true stadium truck either - the wheels aren't big enough. It looks very much like a short-course racing truck, which is an entirely different thing. What it actually is, is a truck shell stuck on an outdated rally chassis. *actually I'm not sure about this - Tamiya don't seem to have a good stadium truck in their current range, and the old classics like the Stadium Blitzer and King Cab didn't come on high-end buggy chassis.

Agreed... Although, beauty can be defined as form following function - and if that's the case, the most beautiful 4x4 buggy will be one that doesn't pretend to have windows, air intakes, exhaust pipes or any other things that you have on a 1:1 off-roader (from this era or any pretend future one) - and just has a very functional aerodynamic cover, perhaps with a wing - if wings really make any difference to off-road racers of so small a size. I do wish there were more off-road buggies that were actually replicas of 1:1 racers, although 1:1 buggy racing has become so refined that there is only one essential shape (much like Formula 1 GP cars, which all look mostly identical apart from colour schemes and tiny differences); hence, there would be no variety in Tamiya buggies like we're used to. I sometimes wish Tamiya would break the mould - my favourite Mini 4WD from my childhood years was the Neo Burning Sun - a chunky-looking off-road buggy with a front-mounted engine, angular wing, and all-enclosed moulded body. I think it was a shame they never made a 1:10 version

Cheers for that - I've got some of that nice chrome-effect lexan spray, I'll give that stuff a try saves buying more paint...

I look forward to seeing how this one works out []

I've decided it'll probably be cheaper to paint my Blackfoot Extreme wheels than to buy some chrome ones. There seems to be a stock shortage of original wheels on ebay at the mo, and aftermarket 2.2s are just stupidly expensive (unless anyone can recommend a good supplier of chrome-plastic monster truck wheels?) Anyhoo, first up - I need to detatch tyres from rims without ruining the tyres. What's a good way to get rid of instant glue? (It was 2nd hand, so I'm not sure what glue was used). Then I need to clean them thoroughly (they got filthy last weekend). Then - do I need to prime them? What's a good primer that will get coverage right inside the rims where I can't sand the surface? Similarly - what paint? I'm guessing and tamiya hardbody spray would be good, although the wheels seem to be a slightly different plastic to ABS shells... []

OK MMBIBBIBMMmmmbb... (?) Last night I whipped the Cross Tiger shell off my Blackfoot Extreme and stuck it over the Dark Impact to see how it fits. The good news is that the DI wheelbase is pretty much identical to that of the Blackfoot Extreme - so it's a good bet that it's close to most Tamiya monsters. HOWEVER - the bad news is that the shell isn't quite long enough. It looks OK on the Blackfoot Extreme because it's so high you don't notice that the wheelbase is slightly longer than the arches. On the DI, it's that much closer to the wheels. It looks OK, but not brilliant. I suppose it depends just how much scale realism you're going for. The Cross Tiger shell is virtually identical to a Twin Detonator shell. It's a typical lexan monster with the wide-cut wheel arches. If you were to use a hard scale shell like a blackfoot, hi-lift of brat, you'd probably find that the arch misalignment looks much worse. Also the DI track is much wider than a 1/10 truck - so the wheels and suspension arms extend far past the edge of the shell. You might be OK with this, you might not. The final consideration is the rear towers - they are too tall for a pickup bed. The only solution to this is to cut a hole in the bed to allow the towers to poke through. Fine for a lexan shell, but would weaken a hard shell. In conclusion, yes - it can be done, and you'd have all the fun of a buggy but with a pickup shell. However, it wouldn't look scale. There is one final possibility - going a little bit more custom. I've noticed on scale4x4rc.org that some people use TA chassis components to make custom crawlers. This presumably means that the TA makes a good off-road chassis, with the right modifications. With this in mind - take TA front and rearends, add a custom upper and lower deck ally or carbon, off-road wheels and tyres, and you've got yourself a scale truck [] If funds were unlimited, I'd do this just to see how it looked []

I was planning on doing exactly this with mine - when (if) I can afford to get one. Used the left stick for motor and rear steering, right stick for up-down gearshift and left-right front steering. So it can be driven as normal, but the left stick can come into play for rear-wheel steering when required. Not only would it look seriously cool, it would also be good for directional correction and anti-roll correction when climbing []

I sometimes dream of having a milling machine [] []

There's no manual or partslist uploaded for the Double Blaze yet, so could somebody tell me the part number for the wheels & tyres? Or can someone suggest a set of chrome-effect wheels and good tyres that look good on a Blackfoot Extreme? I HATE yellow wheels!! Thx

If nobody else has come up with the answers by this evening, I will sit my Cross Tiger (Wild Dagger-esque) shell on my DI chassis and see how close it looks. Interestingly, I only just posted in the Wanted New Releases thread that I think more scale-ish trucks are required, like the good old S10, F150 Ranger, Brat etc - OK we have a Stadium Raider, but it's not on the hottest off-road chassis these days... Mr. Tamiya, we want more pickup bashers!!

You're not suppose to grind aluminium, it melts and cloggs up the wheels []

I don't think brushless is common enough for Tamiya to including brushless setups with kits (many kits still come without ESC, even!) but I like that many new top-end kits are coming with full ball bearings (Sand Viper, Dark Impact). Just thinking aloud, I reckon a Smart Car M04 would be really cool - although it would mean re-designing the chassis rails to be shorter (M04S ?) I don't know how popular the Smart is in Japan (they have a huge market for "K-class" miniature cars, due to strict parking/road tax laws). I'm not a fan of the Smart, but I reckon it'd sell well. Biggest issue is the Swatch marketting - I have a feeling they'd charge silly money for the licence [] I also think some more realistic pickups would be nice. The good old S10, F150 Ranger, Brat etc were favourites in their day - they had pretty good "fun" chassis, and reasonable scale styling. These days there isn't really anything apart from the big-budget Hi-Lift or the poorly-rated (and poorly scaled) Stadium Raider in that category. How about a Blackfoot or Hi-Lift or similar hard body on a modified buggy chassis (DF-03, DT-02) etc? The Stadium Raider fits nicely over the chassis, but the TL-01 is outdated (I was advised not to buy one given its poor handling compared to modern buggy chassis) the body still looks like a monster truck with those big cut arches, and the wheels are just too big for scale looks. Or maybe I should just buy another DI and stick a blackfoot body on it [] myself

Thanks for that advice - it was already fully ballraced when I got it, and came with an NIB silvercan but no speed controller. I could swap the ECO27 for a TEU out of my Pumpkin and run a Super Stock BZ

So as a rule of thumb, as my motor becomes faster (lower turns) so I have to lower the gearing of the car (smaller pinion) to get the benefit of the faster motor. So by fitting a lower-turn motor and lower-turn pinion, I may only marginally increase my top-speed - but the acceleration will be much-improved? [] Is there a reason why I need to decrease the pinion as I decrease the turns? Is it simply because lower-turn motors make power higher up the rev-range, therefore won't be capable of accelerating a high-geared car from a standstill like a silvercan does? Or is it that the motors can be damaged by running too much torque through them at low RPM?

Does anyone else have a problem with TC forum randomly deleting spaces while typing a reply? For example, if I type a word then decide to correct it and backspace, as I delete the first character in the word it often also deletes the space - so that as I type again, the word is joined to the previous one. Also it sometimes deletes the space between the word I've just typed, and the one before it, for no reason. I haven't figured out what triggers this. Not a major flaw, but really annoying, especially as I touch-type and have written a word ahead before I notice I have to go back and fix old spaces...

I finally took my 2nd-hand Blackfoot Extreme out for the first time yesterday - had it nearly a month, collecting dust and going nowhere... Handles very wheel for a stock 2wd truck with friction shocks etc, but I was a little disappointed with the speed. My Dark Impact aces it in just about every challenge - including some seriously rutted and bouncy places. The stock DI is so much faster than the BEx that given enough run-up, it'll just bounce over any obstacles in its path, whereas the slow old BEx doesn't have enough speed to get across, and then gets bogged down and needs to rely on its (sadly lacking) torque to pull itself out of the thick stuff... That said, it is very good at power-climbing - it faired better than the DI up some steep, slippery, leaf-strewn slopes, despite being only 2wd. Given some extra run-up speed and some additional climbing torque, I bet it'll run over anything! TIA []

Looks nice! I'm using a Monster Beetle shell on my Bearhawk chassis to make a small-wheel Blitzer Beetle, hopefully I'll find some scale-looking wheels and tyres and make a good looking buggy. Looks like I've got my work cut out restoring the shell, tho []