mb_c11

Kyosho's headquarters are one big mess: http://rcspecial.com/news/?p=70121 But no one was hurt, thankfully.

Tamiya have made several interior sets, and lots of different companies have made drivers for 1/10 cars

Is that the Lancia Delta body for the Kyosho Lazer-based rally game cars?

The thing has three buttons: - N(eutral) - Throttle stick in neutral - H(igh) - Full throttle - P(rogram?) I assume they must be pushed in a certain order, but which one? (obviously I don't have the manual)

Note that boiling will melt or warp any rims not made from nylon, AFAIK.

Yesterday: Fitted bearings to the front of a Striker, the alloy C-hubs of my F150 TA01 build, the steering plate of a Kyosho TF-2, and most of a Tech Racing 4WD M02L conversion. Tried to find a belt for the Tech Racing 4WD conversion in my collection of belts, but failed (need narrow belt for M02L conversion set). Today: finished the Kyosho TF-2, cut out a gorgeous Kyosho Pureten Lotus GT-1 body for it.

92/93 Mercedes C11

I can't help with the F104, but F101-103 all use the same bearing sizes for the fronts; F101 has the dish wheel set, which has different sized front tires, but it can also use the later wheels. F101-103 are all compatible concerning the rears. The upper deck won't work unless you find some way of mounting the shock to the F103'S top deck without having to lengthen the shock...

Ask him to call the TNT customer service and then he should explain the parcel appears to be lost and whether they can find it in their system. He can find the phone number on the TNT post site (http://www.tntpost.nl/). The post office likely can't help him because: 1) they don't have access to all the fancy tracking software the customer service has (thank the privatisation of the Dutch postal services for that - most post offices are just shops that do parcels and registered letters next to being normal shopkeepers; they don't know much beyond the simple stuff ) 2) According to official regulations a parcel is only lost after 6 months (if I recall correctly), and the shopkeepers/clerks usually keep to those rules much more stringently than the customer service. So clerks will likely say "we can't do anything". Customer service is more helpful (if you're nice to them).

"Global Pack"? That's not the name of the courier service/shipping company I hope - never heard of it... Popular shipping companies in the Netherlands are: TNT Post, DHL, UPS, Fedex. "Global Pack" sounds like it could be one of TNT's services, but likely not Express mail (IIRC, that's "Global Express"). If you can't track it outside the Netherlands, it likely was sent by regular registered mail, which suffered MASSIVE delays in October-December 2010 due to the weather being snowy (5 cm of snow effectively halted my country ). You should ask the sender to phone the shipping company's customer service and have them track the parcel. The post office is ineffective, as the clerks often are rather clueless.

A large lot of Kyosho TF-2 parts, including to my surprise the rather rare Cross suspension arm set and some alloy steering.

Lipo chargers that do not have a build-in balancer can often charge more than 1 cell, as you can buy a separate balancer (paid about 25 bucks for mine several years ago), which is connected to the balancer lead on the Lipo. The Lipo's power leads are also connected to the balancer. Then the charging leads from the charger connect to the balancer, and you can happily charge away. But if you want a new charger, Graupner makes some very nice and decently cheap chargers with built-in balancer that will charge about anything (NiCd, NiMH, Lipo, Life, Lead). They work off 12V DC and 220-240V AC.

Italian F-1 car. It has the Italian red and the big chunks of rubber on all fours.

Rebuild part of a TF-2

Midnight Pumpkin Quickdrive.

Read the manual that came with your ESC and use the procedure described inside to set your ESC.

40 MHz FM and AM are both legal in the Netherlands, and I assume in all of Europe. I put 27 MHz Am on my slower models and 40 MHz FM on my competition and faster cars.

Isn't the Lotus supposed to have "Camel" (another smokeswares company) stickers?

Continuing with the shock towers and body mounts. For the shock towers I am going to use Cross' carbon shock towers, shown below next to the alloy original versions: I'll start with the front tower: Laying the original front shock tower on top of Cross' front tower shows that the Cross mount has additional holes for the upper shock eyelet and the camber links, while the other holes match the original shock tower. First, I am going to attach the shock tower to the upper halves of the front bulkhead with four tapping screws. Indeed, the TF-2 has a very maintenance-friendly design where the diffs can be accessed simply by taking off the upper half of the bulkheads. This also allows me to assemble the suspension before the transmission of the car. At this stage I am also going to attach the screws used to mount the shocks. Which results in this. Next up is assembling the front body mounts. Kyosho's body mounts are more or less inversed from most body mounts: the top goes through the body, which rests on small tabs, while body height can be adjusted by unscrewing the small screw and sliding the body mount up or down. This allows for relatively inconspicuous body mounts and very fine adjustment of the body height. Four tapping screws are used to attach the body mounts to the shock tower. Which ends up looking like this. At the point I set the completed front shock tower/upper bulkhead assembly on the lower front bulkhead just to see what it looked like: I'll stop here, and keep the rear tower and rear upper bulkhead for tomorrow.

Part 3: Front and rear bulkheads: Today's build report will first focus on the bulkheads. First up is assembling the front bulkhead: For this I use the plastic front bulkhead parts, two tapping screws, and the SPW-28 aluminium suspension holder FR ('front-rear'), which includes two machine screws for its installation. Assembly is simple. The two black nylon ball-like parts on the sprue will be used later when assembling the suspension arms. Next up is the rear bulkhead, which is a bit more complicated: I start with the right rear bulkhead and two screws: one tapping screw to attach the bulkhead to the chassis, and one machine screw to attach it to the motor mount. Like this. The bulkhead also attaches to the center mount. Then it's the turn of the left rear bulkhead. Again, one tapping screw to attach it to the chassis. Also, two 6x3x2.5 mm ball bearings and a machine screw to guide the rear belt. The machine screw and two ball bearings attach to the left bulkhead like this. The ball baerings should be able to turn with no problem, so the screw isn't tightened too much. And the bulkhead can be attached to the chassis and center mount. Top view showing the belt guides and the motor mount. The next step is attaching the SPW-29 aluminium suspension mount RF ('rear-front'). This part actually is a very tight fit and I couldn't get it on at first. I had to disassemble the rear bulkheads again, slide the suspension mount in place, and reassmble everything. But the result is gorgeous, as the pictures below show: (I really can't get enough of the Lego Technic-like way the entire rear of this car assembles - although I wonder why Kyosho couldn't keep to one shade of anodizing) Continued in the next post...

Yes. The motor limit is typically the lowest turn motor you can use (less turns = more powerful)

The TA03 diff is also adjustable. That's why there's 5 spring washers inside of it. Just be sure to replace the ****ty plastic thrust bearing by a one-piece version.

No (3600 mAh), but if you give full throttle and the ESC cuts out, it's likely that the voltage drop caused by going full throttle makes the ESC go into failsafe mode because the battery drops below what the ESC considers as "safe". At least that's what happens with my LRP Sphere Competition, of which the Nosram Matrix Evolution is a rebadged version (so it likely behaves the same).

Could be that the motor is too powerful for the battery. I had the same problem with a 7.5 turns and using NiMH; after switching to Lipo the problem went away.

Who knew installing electronics in a TA01 was so dangerous? Anyway, hope it heals well. Done today: Installed some leds on my TA03 build, soldered a Deans connector to the TA03's ESC, and soldered some leads and Deans connectors to some vintage motors. Painted part of a 1/24 Tamtech shell.