markbt73

Honestly, not much any more. Packing up all my stuff for the move got me excited about what I already have again, actually picking up every car and removing the wheels and bodies to fit them in containers made me remember what I like about each of them, and I'm really looking forward to unpacking it all at the other end. Right now there are only two models that interest me: an Avante or Egress re-re, and the BBX. Eventually. For now, I'm happy.

I would be shocked. 1/12 scale is kind of a dying format anyway, and these early chassis are not much more than a way to make the body move. The modern 1/10 scale F1 cars are so much better to drive, I can't see Tamiya bothering with the old 1/12 kits. And personally, I kind of like having some things stay vintage-only. Yeah, it means they stay expensive, but it also means they stay special.

The trouble with this servo-saver design, and it applies to Tamiya's kit-supplied units as well, is that if there is any gap at all between the ends of the C-shaped spring amd the two nubs on the top and bottom halves, there will be play in it, and there isn't a thing you can do about it. It's just a lousy design. My advice is to get rid of it, and spend far less on a Kimbrough (name brand only!) servo saver. They're made of nylon and essentially unbreakable (I have some going on 30 years old), and are completely slop-free. They use an internal coil spring instead of that external c-shape, so the spring always holds the two halves together tightly to take up the gap.

Funny thing about the Sabula Tech bodies - they're all old Bolink molds, so the tooling already existed. And Bolink used to sell them as Ford, Pontiac, etc, so I imagine Sabula is just playing it safe with the made-up names.

That's really cool! I've seen those trucks before, I think they were sold by Radio Shack or Sears here in the US, but I had no idea they were so sophisticated. It doesn't look like it would be too hard to connect a servo to that long shift lever. And with modern batteries and whatnot, why worry about switching off the front motor in 2WD mode? Just let it run when it's not in use.

This is kind of why I've been on a scruffy vintage runner kick recently. It's about the cheapest way to get something I'll actually enjoy. As long as you don't go hog-wild trying to actually restore them, or try to throw too much power at them, old beat-up runner-quality vintage cars are actually pretty affordable. Kit prices have definitely gotten eye-watering in the last few years. A Lunchbox was a superb value at $89, but at $150? Not so much. And I love the looks of that new Squash Van, but I don't see $200 worth of value there. By contrast, the BBX at $255 seems fair, with full bearings and aluminum shocks and all. But that's a lot to spend on any kit. What stops me dead in my tracks are the prices of bodies, wheels, and tires, especially when it comes to the scaler/crawler scene. There are some really incredible options available these days, but man are they expensive. $109 for a set of wheels? $180 for a hard body kit? $60 for a lexan body? Nope.

Yeah, my favorite is still the Grasshopper/Hornet/Lunchbox etc gearbox. Cheap, simple, indestructible, throw as much power as you like at it and it just says "ok." Only needs six bearings for a complete driveline, motor to wheels. Gearing options are limited to 10t or 18t pinions, and it's a live axle, so not much you can do with the suspension, but it will spin smoothly until the heat death of the universe. And if you expand your definition of "track" to include a dragstrip, it can do that too. Second place: Clod, for basically the same reasons. What can I say? I like things simple.

Huh, I knew there was a reason I didn't buy a Black Special last winter. Maybe I'll see if I can make this this year's Xmas gift...

There are some Matchbox/Hot Wheels cars in there filling in gaps, but no, that's 50 RC models, including a Clod, a Bruiser, and several other monsters. Nearly all have the wheels/tires removed, and most of the cars with big bodies have the bodies removed and nested/stacked together. It's going to be a bit of a mess sorting everything all back out, but that's all right. It'll be fun.

Well, it's time to start packing up the house. The moving truck comes at the end of May, but we'll be making a couple of trips east before then transporting some stuff. And I have to take down all the ramshackle shelves in my office and patch the holes to make it look like a bedroom again, for the realtor to take photos. So all my RC stuff is packed up and ready to go, except for one car that I kept out in case I have some time to mess around between now and then. It took surprisingly less space than I imagined. That's 50 cars, and a whole bunch of spare parts and tools. So what made the cut? This scruffy bitsa Hornet, built from leftovers from that huge lot I bought in January. I stuck the body from my Spiral Jump attepmt on it. Just your basic RS540/TEU101BK/cheap Chinese radio and servo combo, but it actually runs great. I have permission and budget to build a garage/workshop at the new place, which I have slowly been designing in my head. It will be half "big" car stuff and half RC stuff. And there's plenty of room in the new yard to build my own private off-road track... really looking forward to it all.

A stand-up workbench is a good idea. Just make sure you have one of those standing mats, and/or good shoes. I had a standing desk at work for many years, and good shoes made a huge difference in comfort. Dedicated reading glasses for close-up work help a lot; my wife keeps telling me to get bifocals, because I need both reading glasses and distance glasses to drive, but I don't think they'll work for me, because between 3 feet and 20 feet, I do best with no glasses at all. As far as reading glasses go, I just bought a 3-pack of the cheap Costco ones, and they do fine for me. I also have a pair of those silly jeweler's glasses with super-magnification for tiny stuff. And light! Lots and lots of light. Those LED tube lights that look like fluorescents are like $40 from a big box home improvement store, and provide great lighting for a workbench. Get a couple small desk lamps for extra light in certain spots too. I know I always feel more eye strain trying to see things if it's too dark. Getting older sucks, doesn't it?

I actively despise most decals. Even after dozens of attempts, I still haven't gotten the hang of applying Tamiya window frame and wrap-around light decals. I always get one junction between pieces mis-aligned, and no matter how careful I am on prep and cleanliness, they always lift at the edges after a while. Nowadays, when I bother at all, I mask and paint the window trim from the outside. It ends up being just black, but it's better than nothing, and it doesn't make me grumpy when I see it on the shelf. Livery and stripe decals I have better luck with, but I still don't actually enjoy them. Quite often I don't bother, or I mask and paint my own stripes, unless it's a specific livery I'm going for. Which is why my Lancia 037 has a completed chassis and an untouched body; I need to be in the right frame of mind, because I don't want to mess that one up. And the quality of the decals matters a lot as well; Tamiya's decals are worlds better than the Rally Legends bodies I bought, which are wretched quality. Far too thick, printed on cheap material with weak adhesive. But then again, they were half the price of Tamiya bodies...

They are not necessary in a stock TT02. I've been gleefully beating the stuffing out of a stock-except-bearings TT02 for over a year now, including lots of big hits on the front (I tried it with drift tires for a while, it did not go well) and have never had a single part fail or dogbone pop out. It's almost boring in its reliability, sort of like a Toyota Corolla. I don't know, maybe I just haven't hit anything just right (or wrong). Of course, it still has the stock Torque Tuned motor in it as well...

The reason bronze is used for bushings, as I understand it, is that bronze absorbs oil, so if you oil them once, they're good for a good long time. I usually add a drop of 3-in-1 oil on each bushing when I build the kit, and then just leave them alone. However, on used motors, I have solved bushing "chatter" by adding a fresh drop of oil. I have done this with the motor running on a test stand before, and you can actually hear it smooth out and speed up. Over-oiling probably won't hurt anything, but it has the potential to make a mess, and it's wasteful. Think of it this way: these are industrial motors repurposed for RC cars. How often do you think the fan motors in a printing press (which I have seen 380 and 540 motors used for) get oiled? If you guessed never, you'd be right.

A lot of touring car bodies advertised as "200 mm" are actually a little wider than that, so if you can get the wheelbase down, those should fit as well. Same thing for any American bodies from RJ Speed or Sabula Tech or McAllister advertised as "8 inches" wide, that's 203 mm, and they're usually a hair over. And most of those don't have defined rear wheel arches, so you have some wiggle room in the wheelbase.

For static kits, there are a couple of different options, and sometimes certain things work better for certain parts. For joining large parts, like halves of an engine block, I like liquid solvent adhesive. You hold the two pieces together and put the solvent along the seam with a syringe, or some brands have a brush in the cap that works as well. The stuff I use is sold under the name Plastruct Bondene, but if you look for "plastic model solvent cement" you'll find a few brands. To attach smaller parts, I like the good old fashioned plastic model cement in a tube, usually Testor's brand. It's thicker, so you can put a tiny dab of it on a part with a toothpick and it stays put so you can assemble. Clear parts like windows and light lenses are tricky. Most adhesives will turn the windows milky around the edges if you're not carful. I've used white glue before (Elmer's or similar), but it doesn't always stick well. It works better when all the windows are one piece and you just glue the whole thing in place. There is such a thing as "clear-safe" model cement, but I've never tried it. Most important, DON'T use cyanoacrylate-based "super glue." It's too brittle, too messy, and doesn't bond as well as normal cements anyway. And, as stated, don't use any threadlock on your Lunchbox anywhere except the grub screw on the motor pinion gear. It isn't needed anywhere else, and it will ruin the plastic parts.

Nice collection! One of my favorite chassis as well. To answer your question - yes! You can flip the stock suspension arms over. You need to figure out a way to attach the U-shaped shock mounts; in the past I've cut off that round plastic lump on the bottom of the arm. You'll need shorter front spring shafts, and short springs. Pan car front springs work, but so does a ballpoint pen spring cut in half. You can also use Grasshopper II front arms, they have shock mounts built in, and will widen the front track about 13mm for some added stability. They'll mount upside-down too.

There is a possibility that the motor wires were soldered on the wrong tabs from the factory. It could happen. It doesn't actually matter on a standard RS540; the motor runs the same in forward as it does in reverse. Set up the radio and ESC in the correct way, because that matters a lot more. 100% forward throttle on forward, brakes and then 50% reverse throttle on reverse. That's the way the electronics are supposed to work. Do this without the motor plugged in, watch the blinky lights to make sure they're doing what they're supposed to do, verify with a voltmeter attached to the ESC's motor output wires if you feel the need. Then plug in the motor wires in whichever direction makes the car go the right way. If the colors don't line up, and that annoys you, then re-solder the wires at the motor. Don't mess with radio or ESC wiring unless you know exactly what you're doing.

So now that we've decided to move, I need to figure out how to pack up a room full of RC (and static model) stuff that has been in the same room for 12 years, and safely ship it across the country. Yes, the smart move would be to sell a bunch of things before moving, but I just don't want to. The unfinished/project stuff actually isn't hard; most of it is in plastic tote bins already, and I figure I can just tape those shut and call it good. And the couple of NIB RC models and all the NIB static kits can just get boxed up. No worries there. It's the shelves and shelves of completed cars that worry me; they take up a ton of space, and if I try to cram several of them in a box, I'll end up with flattened tires and broken shock towers. Not ideal. So here's what I'm thinking: Why not get more tote bins, and just sort of "re-kit" them? Disassemble as much as is necessary to make them fit the bins, put all the wheels and tires together by themselves so they don't get squashed, all the bodies in another to prevent damage to them, and pack up the chassis in small boxes in pieces, or at least components? It would be kind of like having a whole bunch of new cars to assemble after the move, at my leisure. Crazy? Or genius?

Not much anymore, really; I have been fortunate enough to lay my hands on just about everything I wanted as a kid. I regret selling a few things, but that's another story altogether. There is one $150 that I regret not spending, though. Way back in the early 2000s, Hub Hobby had a clearance rack for kits that had been sitting on the shelf for too long. I managed to score some great deals off that rack: a Kyosho Nostalgic Series MGB for $160, and a Kawada Wolf (missing decals and instructions) for $90. But for the longest time, there were two Associated RC10 Dual Sport Team kits sitting there, one electric and one nitro, and they kept dropping in price: $120, then $100, then finally $75 each. I hemmed, I hawed, I waited a week too long... and the guy behind the counter bought them for himself. They also had a stack of the TA03RS Lancia 037 kits marked down to around $130 for a while, which I regretted, but now I have the TA02S version, so I'm good.

To be honest, I find the whole premise of that thread to be a little silly anyway. "Here's photos of cool stuff I've done but don't you dare comment on it!" makes very little sense to me. Probably why I clicked on it the first day it was up, and haven't bothered to go back. But hey, you guys do you. Doesn't bother me any. As for this thread, there's another forum I frequent that's ostensibly a car forum, but drifts off into other topics as well: https://opposite-lock.com/. There is one and only one rule for posting there: "Be Excellent To Each Other." Good advice in general, especially so on the internet, where there's no body language or vocal tone to help convey your meaning. This argument doesn't strike me as being particularly excellent. But that's all I'll say. Carry on..

For carefree running, the Squash Van is the way to go. I don't have one, or any of the 4WD variations on that basic theme, but I have the 6WD King Yellow and I've had several 2WD versions over the years. All absolutely bulletproof mechanically, more stable than you'd imagine, and a delight to run. The all-gear drive in the King Yellow is silky-smooth and free-running (with full bearings) so I would expect no less from the SV. That said, I'm also no stranger to the ORV monsters, having owned quite a few of those over the years. I greatly prefer it to the Frog/Brat form of the ORV, because the front end is actually less sloppy. As far as the diff and axles go, yes, it is an issue, but there are solutions available. Personally, I like the through-bolt method for fixing the diff, but it does require some mechanical know-how and parts modification to pull it off. Braces or stiffer side plates for the gearbox are a simpler option, and more cost-effective than the MIP diff. One other thing to consider is your driving style. Either one of these is going to tend to roll over if you turn hard. The Squash Van's lexan body is far better able to shrug off such abuse; the Monster Beetle's hard plastic body can get cracked or scratched or parts broken off easily. The sound of a freshly-painted Tamiya hard body grinding against a paved surface after it rolls over is a terrible sound to hear. TL;DR - You can't go wrong with either one, but the Squash Van is the better choice for more worry-free fun.

I'm really sorry to hear that, he always seemed like a good guy. That's a pretty good send-off...

It's funny this thread should come up now, because my wife and I are in the early planning stages of a cross-country move, and I'm beginning to look around my workshop (and the house in general) and think seriously about how much stuff I want to pack up and move, and how much I want to get rid of beforehand. When it comes to RC cars, currently I have 40 complete cars that could be driven within, say, half an hour's notice. Some are missing a speed control, or need motor wires soldered on, or something like that. I have another 14 that are disassembled or halfway-finished or not started yet, mostly already packed away in plastic tote boxes. And I have a box of scale crawler components - axles, gearboxes, etc - that could yield another 2 or possibly 3 scaler chassis. I've also got a stack of probably 20 body shells that were either old shells that came with a car, or botched paint jobs, or just old and beat-up. And several drawers full of parts, wheels and tires, hardware, and the like, not to mention a big box of scratch-building materials like styrene and aluminum sheet that I have gathered over the years. Oh, and there's the small matter of the 100 or so unbuilt static model kits, some of which are 1/8 scale and have boxes bigger than NIB RC models, the couple dozen built models I want to keep, and 40 or 50 Hot Wheels and Matchbox cars (which don't take up much room, at least). It's a lot of stuff, and obviously with this impending move, I'm in a complete buying freeze until afterwards. And honestly, there isn't much more I really want, at least for now. I can't stomach the thought of dropping $400 on any new or re-release kits, as interesting as they may be. I've had Mids and Avantes in various online shopping carts over the past couple years, and never pulled the trigger. I guess I just don't want them that bad, which is probably for the best. But the tough part is going to be figuring out what, if anything, I'm going to sell. I hate selling RC stuff, it's always a hassle, and I'm never satisfied with the money I get for things, and half the time when I sell something I just want it back in three months. So I have a feeling most if not all of the complete cars (finished or unfinished) are coming with. The stack of old body shells I'll get rid of, along with a big chunk of the scratch-building material. I've already thrown out several sets of old worn-out tires, tons of broken parts, and other useless stuff. The one wild card in all of this is that many of the houses we're looking at have great places to run off-road RC cars, but basically no place to run on-road. I only have a few cars that are strictly on-road, so maybe those should find new homes. You can always drive an off-road car on-road, but not vice versa. So maybe that's one place I can thin the herd a little. I do worry slightly, though, that in a new and almost certainly bigger house, my RC collection's ranks could swell to truly preposterous numbers. Let's hope this "not really wanting anything new" feeling lasts a good long while.

Yes, one of those. A little plastic one, I think it was actually a Traxxas shock end.