markbt73

I had this idea the other day, and I mentioned it in another thread, but to avoid pulling that thread off-topic, I decided to start a new one. Turning brakes are a modification to the rear brakes on a vehicle that let you slow or lock one rear wheel to make it easier to turn. If you slow down the inside rear wheel in a turn, the outside wheel turns faster due to the diff, and the rear end swings around. Turning brakes are mainly used on sandrails or other off-road vehicles with very light front ends that tend to understeer under power (sound familiar?). The advantages I can see for adding something like this to a Lunchbox are many: the turning circle could be much tighter, especially under power or on loose surfaces; it would allow the possibility of slight steering/correcting during a wheelie; and it may even make it more stable in turns, and without altering the fundamental nature of how the car drives, i.e., poorly but in a very entertaining manner. It might even allow some weird stunts not possible any other way. I looked at the back of my Lunchbox briefly yesterday, and I had a few ideas on how to go about this. First, obviously, it will need some form of mechanical brakes. I think I can make brake shoes out of sticky-back felt, attached to a suitable backing plate, and use the inside rim of the rear wheels for brake drums. A second servo attached to the gearbox housing could actuate the brakes, and it could be connected to the main steering servo with a "Y" harness, so an extra channel wouldn't be necessary. There's plenty of room for a servo mount above the wheelie bar; I'll just have to come up with some sort of bracket to mount it. I'd probably set it up so the turning brakes would only kick in very close to full lock in each direction, so normal steering wouldn't be affected for minor inputs. And to disable the turning brakes altogether, just unplug the secondary servo. I'm going to look into this further later, because I really want to try it. In the meantime, any suggestions or ideas are welcome. (And if anyone has already done something like this on an RC car, links are welcome too.)

Oh dear, I've just had an idea. I wonder if you could rig up "steering brakes" to a Lunchbox, like a full-size dune buggy has, to slow down one rear wheel when turning, to slide the rear end around? Have to think about that a bit, but I'll bet it could be done...

The end of the battery is supposed to fit into the rectangular slot under the shock tower. It's designed for stick packs, but for the older, smaller cells. Also, I don't think they took into consideration the extra diameter of the plastic end cap on most packs. I used to run my RC10 Worlds car with packs that were just shrink-wrapped, no plastic caps, and it was a snug fit, but it worked. If you're willing to cut up a battery just for that car, try taking the plastic end caps off and re-shrink-wrapping it.

Forget Max Mad, how about Buckaroo Banzai's famous Jet Car?

The glacial progress continues... It's like, how much more black could it be? And the answer is none. None more black.

Ah, yeah, that would be in he right place, wouldn't it? It totally looks like a bullet hole in one of those pics. ...though now that I think about it, if the rear window got shot, it would just get blown out... never mind, I'm tired and not thinking clearly... Nice car, anyway...

Wow, that looks fantastic! Great job! And I love the bullet hole in the back window.

I would love a '70s Pontiac Firebird shell to do either Jim Rockford's car or the Bandit's Trans Am. I have done two Mustangs in the past: a dark green "Bullitt" one and "Eleanor," the silver-and-blue '67 GT500 from the Gone in 60 Seconds remake.

What browser are you using? I've heard some pretty bad horror stories about IE7, especially with Vista. Try Firefox or Opera, and see if it's any faster.

But I wish they would just sell the frame and let you add your own "donor" parts. $600 seems more than a little steep for a glorified Stampede, and I have an old RC10GT that would make a great sand rail.

I recently added oil shocks to my Lunchbox, ran it once, and then put the pogo-sticks back on. It just wasn't as much fun when it didn't bounce. The character was gone. I was rather disappointed by my Grasshopper's performance with plastic bushings and a 380, however. It's just more fun with the 540, and like all my cars it has full bearings. I don't really consider ball bearings a "hop up;" for me the plastic or bronze bushings just aren't acceptable if you're serious about driving the thing. Too much wear and maintenance. My M04 Alfa has a few upgrades like oil shocks and a ball diff, mainly because I had them lying around and they fit. I'm constantly taking things apart to see if I can make some minor improvement. I'm a tinkerer by nature; I can't help it. But you can keep all your anodized aluminum and brushless motors.

I moved away from my favorite-ever hobby shop, Hub Hobby Center in Maplewood, Minnesota. They were certainly in no danger of going away; they tripled their store size in the ten years I lived in the area. The RC section is huge, basically the whole back half of the store. Friendly and knowledgeable folks, good prices (usually the same price as Tower-plus-shipping), and just about everything you can think of. Tons of scratch-building materials and tools, which are hard to find anywhere except at a good hobby shop. And what they didn't have, they would happily order for you. I didn't have a good local hobby shop in Los Angeles, but now Tammie's Hobbies in Portland is looking like it might be a good one.

So you're not supposed to run a R152JE off a TEU101 directly? Hmm... better not tell my wife's Midnight Pumpkin that, since it's been happily running with that combo for a couple months now with no ill effects. Maybe it's not supposed to work, but in this case it does. Maybe I'd better try to find her a BEC for it anyway, just to be on the safe side.

I'll be interested to see if you have any clearance problems between the motor endbell and the right rear wheel. There isn't much room to spare on a stock one. Looking good, though; I like the polished motor can.

Out of curiosity, I just did a little test to see what would happen if a car with a TEU101 lost signal. I turned on my Grasshopper, picked up the back end, pulled the trigger, and turned off the transmitter to simulate a loss of signal. After about half a second, the throttle went to full brakes, the wheels turned slightly to the right, and the ESC started beeping at me. It appears there is a fail-safe built in to the unit. So no runaway worries. If you lose signal, the car will stop and wait for you.

OK, here's a photo my wife took last year of our two "partners-in-crime," Turkish and Tommy:

All of you looking at non-rebuildable motors are familiar with the ancient art of "water-dipping," aren't you? It really does make a difference... Also keep in mind that there can be huge differences from motor to motor, so sometimes it pays to get more than one and find out which one(s) are fastest.

You know, I just did think of a reason to do that... ground clearance. By moving as much as possible up to the line of the axle, you increase the distance from the bottom of the suspension arm to the ground. Less stuff hanging down = more clearance.

Just as a point of interest... Old Jaguar rear ends use the driveshaft as part of the suspension. There is a lower arm, and a hub carrier, and each driveshaft has 2 U-joints, but there is no upper arm. The driveshafts are one solid piece, and serve in place of the upper arms. The weight of the rear of the car rests on the U-joints. I've wondered before how well this would work (and if it has ever been tried) in the RC world. EDIT: I just looked at the Vanquish instructions to see what you meant... that is unique. I can't see any real reason for doing it that way. The SRBs had that setup because there was only one pivot point, so to prevent binding the arm and axle have to move as one.

Use a muffin tin to hold/sort screws during a build, especially for kits which require you to have multiple bags open at once. And to take the slack out of worn ball-ends, pop a 3mm O-ring over the ball before you snap the end on. (Save the old O-rings from a shock rebuild for this purpose)

Cool idea! Throw a little flour or baby powder or something under the rear tires and you could probably even stage a scale "burnout."

It has upper and lower suspension arms, so there is no camber change like on a Grasshopper/Hornet. The springs on the front are inside the chassis, and actuated by little levers on the lower arms. There's no damping, so it's a little bouncy. It's OK the way it is, but front shocks/shock towers made for the Frog will fit it. There has been some discussion about these on here recently, do a search for "Frog front shocks" and you'll find it.

I finally sneaked in some driving time, between rainstorms and work and household chores. I ran one battery through my Hotshot, and spent the whole time lamenting its battleship-like turning circle and nose-first jumping style, and wishing I'd grabbed the Lunchbox instead. Oh well. At least I got to drive. Now I'm off to work for a couple hours...

Looks a little like an early 80s Toyota Supra, except for the nose.

5 minutes sounds a little short, but there are a couple things that should help: Did you install ball bearings yet? There are an awful lot of drag-causing moving parts on those cars, especially since so many people overdo it on the grease. If you take the time to disassemble everything and install the bearings and clean off all the old grease and lightly re-lube everything, you'll cut out a lot of drag. Also, that old mechanical speed control isn't doing you any favors in the run-time department. They're really inefficient, especially at low to mid speeds. If you're not too concerned with originality, I'd drop an ESC in there if I were you. Finally, grass is tough on runtime to begin with, and a sport-tuned motor has less torque than the stock 540, so it's working harder. If you're going to keep driving on grass, you should probably gear it down a little.