Jump to content

Berenger

Members
  • Content Count

    99
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Everything posted by Berenger

  1. Well, for one thing, you want your drive shafts to be as close to horizontal as you can get them, and if you go and stick a big spur gear on the end of the gearbox you won't be able to do that because you'll need to get clearance between the spur and the chassis. To do that you'll need to raise the gearbox, and to do that will mean increasing the shaft angle. I'm not sure I understand the reason why you're trying to depart from the usual motor/gearbox/differential approach. It's tried, it's tested and you know it can give you the speeds you need. Plus you have the added tuning options of slipper clutch and adjustable ratios already incorporated into the design. Using a gearbox from an FF chassis doesn't stop you custom making the rest of it.
  2. Sure, but everyone who uses the main site has the ability to use the forums, and therefore has the ability to get in touch with the person whose parts they've had for a year, even if they lost their contact details, and didn't have access to the email account they'd been trying to reach them on. Slimmy, do you still have the postal address of D-spec? If you do it would be well worth typing a paper letter and sending it to him recorded delivery, or whatever the equivalent is in Alaska, so you know for sure he received it. Then you would know for certain that someone in his household knew about the issue. E-mails are very simple to ignore, even miss if your address is accidentally filed under 'spam' (AOL is dreadful for this), but paper correspondence has to be actively ignored and then at least you'll have a better understanding of whether it's intentional or not.
  3. I'm trying to track down a 934 RSR static kit if anyone has one that they no longer wish to keep. There are a couple on Ebay just now but both are in the US and i'd rather find one either in the UK, or from someone on here who I know I can trust to package it safely. If you have one could you let me know how much you'd like for it please. I can pay by Paypal gift.
  4. You could have a look around some of the Cosworth enthusiast sites for some ideas on common alloys that people run on their full size cars. You're being forced down a 'modified' Cosworth route anyway with the front headlamps, very reminiscent of the Morrette twin lamp conversion that was so common on the Cosworth. Many fitted it to change the looks, but a great many fitted it to improve the fairly poor standard light unit. What colour are you planning on painting it? I reckon you should go for a standard colour - maybe as close as you can find to Petrol Blue? Petrol Blue Cosworth
  5. I stand corrected. My point about AE having a significant head start over Tamiya still stands though, aside from Tamiya fans of course, it's hard to imagine that a great many will drop their favoured B4 to run to the TRF201, at least until it's proven to be significantly superior to the B4. Given that buggy design seems to have reached a bit of a plateux at the moment that seems quite unlikely.
  6. This kind of thing happens a lot, and I mean everywhere, not just in RC. When a design team start designing a new model (of anything) decisions are taken to give optimum performance, durability, most features, simplicity (sometimes) or low costs. Obviously those things are afforded different weights depending on what's being designed, but they and more inevitably drive the layout and 'look' of the end product. In addition, designers would be foolish not to look at competitors and pick out the best parts of their design to study. That again inevitably leads to other manufacturers including features or elements in their design that closely resemble those of another manufacturer because they've already been designed close to their optimum. What are others to do, make something worse just to stop it looking too much like the original? In any case, I don't think AE will be too peeved. They have a long head start on the TRF201 and the racers who have them will likely be reluctant to ditch their pit boxes full of spares and jump to a new model. They also have an advantage in offering a club level variant. Much cheaper, upgradable but basically the same underneath. Tamiya don't have that unless i've missed something, and your club racer who suddenly wants to go top-spec racing is more likely to buy the all singing all dancing version of what he or she has than jump to a completely new model. Those are just my thoughts of course and i'm sure others will disagree.
  7. I don't see how you could fill a lexan body, for several reasons: - Lexan should be painted on the inside - Lexan is far too flexible. There are flexible fillers for plastic, but even they're not designed to cope with the amount of flex in a lexan bodyshell. - Even if you did paint the outside of the shell to cover the filler it wouldn't shine. Lexan paint is matte or silk in appearance, it's the plastic of the body that gives it its shine. If it were a hard plastic bodyshell like the Clod etc then you could fill away, but not on lexan.
  8. I made a road replica Cosworth many years ago with those replica wheels. They were made by HPI and were sold in white, black, chrome and silver. Might be worth seeing if they're still for sale and save yourself the hassle of painting them.
  9. Don't know about the Kyosho, but the FG you can get from loads of places like Rossendale Models or Modelsport. Modelsport used to stock a lot of 1/5th scale stuff but these days they order most of it from FG Modellsport on demand, so the waiting time is about 2 weeks from the date of order. It might be worth seeing if you can buy direct from FG yourself. Be prepared for the cost of 1/5th though. The competition F1 chassis is over £2000. Even the sportsline version (cheapest) was between £700 and £800 when I bought mine.
  10. Hi all, I bought a Team Losi JRX-S touring car a little while ago with the intention of getting back into racing, but I haven't had the time. What little time I do have i'd like to spend bashing around with my son, so i'd like to trade the JRX-S, which is new built, never run, for something new in box. If the idea of a trade takes your fancy, let me know what you've got.
  11. Would it be cheaper overall to locate an RS TRF kit from someone on here? Sounds like a great project, but unless you already have most of the parts for it I imagine it'll end up being either impossible or horrendously expensive. An RS-TRF with a Corolla bodyset would look great, maybe you could even do one of these 50% painted boxart, 50% clear paint jobs.
  12. I agree with everything so far. I also think that as i've got older i've begun to see Tamiya kits for what they are in terms of quality, ease of assembly, realism of bodies etc. When I was growing up and reaching my teen years (early 90s) there was the tendency to view Tamiya kits - and particularly people who tried to race them - as inferior and cheap. It's a strange and immature view to take since most of the people who held that view, me included, started off with Tamiya anyway. Tamiya I think in recent years has done a superb job of walking a line between cars for amateurs and cars for professional racers. What I will say though is that i'm very disappointed in Tamiya taking the cost cutting measures it has. I completely understand the need for it, don't get me wrong, but it's a shame never the less. I first noticed it years ago with the loss of the blister packaging, then came the smaller boxes, (the smaller boxes actually is a sore point in itself, how often did you find a deformed or creased bodyshell in your kit because the kits contents were hurriedly rammed inside it?). After the smaller boxes came the most annoying thing of all in my eyes; the chassis kit with a body thrown in. I remember a few years ago buying the Porsche GT3 kit with the TT-01E chassis. Generic manual. Unclear exactly what parts were needed for that kit because so many alternatives were there to account for others kits and no unique illustrations.
  13. My concern with that new FF chassis is the distance between the dampers and the motor. I'm sure Tamiya will have taken it into account, but i'd be concerned that you're being forced into running stiffer suspension than might be ideal, purely because you're having to provide stiffness to hold up that big pendulum of a motor way out front. Previous FF designs used vertical or near vertical dampers that were near enough alongside the motor and didn't make that such an apparent issue, if it even is one. I also think the decision to buy the new TRF buggy will be almost entirely based on price, at least for me and people like me. Buggy design seems to have reached a bit of a plateu, so if they plan on charging much more than Associated or Losi prices it'll be interesting to see who buys on and why - people who 'must have everything new from Tamiya' notwithstanding.
  14. I always used Corally connectors on my cars, very easy to connect/disconnect. You do have to be very careful though with polarity and also making sure the loose ends don't move around while you're fitting the cells and short them out. For that reason the Deans connectors seem superior since neither of these problems can easily happen.
  15. I don't understand what would possibly give HMRC the right to destroy something being sent to me that could be proved genuine, providing it has been accurately declared, even if I could have purchased it from an official importer in the UK. We're free to buy goods and import them from wherever we wish. The price we pay (literaly) are the customs charges, and even then it almost always works out significantly cheaper (and often just as quick) as ordering from the UK. Has there been a law introduced that stops me from sourcing something for myself? @Chain Driven - I see you're from West Sussex! I'm driving down there this weekend from Scotland (8hr drive, ouch). What's good to do while i'm there? I'm heading to Cuckfield.
  16. Cool. I gave away a new built Evo 5 I had, annoyingly. That's the second Evo they've now re-re'd on the RA chassis, the 4 is already out. I'm looking forward to the 6!
  17. That 3m tape is excellent. If it's the same 3m stuff I have then it actually feels more like electrical tape than masking tape, but it does the job very effectively and it's narrow and pliable enough to work round some very tight corners. Shouldn't have any trouble masking out a Scorcher shell with it.
  18. I worked in Beatties from the age of 16 until I was 18. For someone who loves modelling of all sorts and RC in particular it was a fabulous place to work. We used to offer a build service for people who wanted to get into RC but couldn't or didn't want to build the kits themselves. It was amazing how often we'd get the job of completing or building a model that an enthusiast had owned before they died, and the family wanted it completed for display. It's a tremendously gratifying thing to do. The staff discount (50%) was amazing as well, and let me expand my collection considerably. I remember standing there early in the morning or after closing, just sifting through kit boxes, smelling tyres (come on, well all love it) and generally day dreaming about pay day when i'd be able to pick up the next kit. We used to have shelves packed with broken up kits that we used for spare parts. We'd phone the distributor (at that time Richard Konstam [RiKo]) and get permission to break a kit open to give or sell a customer some parts. When the store closed I got most of what was left. Sadly Beatties sold off most of their stores just before I left. I think the internet-aware hobbyist killed off the shop in the end after it was taken over. Even though it was bought over and continued to sell RC they priced themselves right out the market. I always remember a kit only Xsara WRC being priced at £125 at their closing down sale, it was £160 pre-sale. At the time they could be picked up NIB from Ebay sellers for half the sale price. One thing Beatties always did (in my opinion) was price their things fairly.
  19. Sounds nasty! As for whether to replace the wheels or not, i'd maybe be slightly concerned about how out of balance they are now they have chunks out of them and how that might possibly contribute to a future crash or driveline damage due to the vibration.
  20. Hi Staite, My own Lunchbox kit arrived at the office this morning, so i'm ready to start my own build! That motor as I understand it is quite mild, so you could go for the TEU-101 speed controller that a lot of Tamiya kits come with these days, you'll be able to pick one up from Ebay quite cheaply. An alternative (and what i've gone for) is an Mtroniks Viper 40. That's still cheap but has the added benefit of being splash proof, quite a good thing given the amount of water and debris that gets thrown up inside the body on a wet/snowy/icy day. As for shocks, the Lunchbox kit box recommends the CVA Damper Set 2 (short). I'm not sure how easy these are to find, but from memory any shocks of approximate length 80mm will do the job. There are at the moment 2 sets of original yellow CVA Dampers for the lunchbox on Ebay, but they're £30 a set. These are the ones recommended for the original Lunchbox that your uncle would have built. Edit: Here are the CVA 2 shocks here: CVA Shocks
  21. There's also going to be an element of "it's not the original Tamiya therefore it's got to be better" syndrome. A lot of people will perceive the Mtroniks unit as an 'upgrade' simply because it's aftermarket, so when they go to buy a replacement and the original type Tamiya item is sitting there alongside an Mtroniks unit they sway toward to other brand.
  22. It shouldn't really matter where in the UK you order from, if you use Next Day delivery it should get to your colleague's hotel just the same. Even if you order from a shop just down the road, it'll still go to the courier depot before it goes back out on delivery anyway. Order from someone reasonably reputable, like Apex Models or Modelsport and choose Next Day during checkout and you should be just fine. At this time of day (mid morning) you should get your parts by tomorrow quite easily. Next Day means next day, from anywhere to anywhere within the UK. That's my experience anyway.
  23. Hey Olly, It doesn't matter in this case what direction the fan is spinning, it's down to the direction of the heatsink fins in relation to the direction or airflow, i.e. blowing air across the fins is no good, you need to blow air along them. With this implementation the most you could ever hope to do is inefficiently cool half the fins on the sink.
  24. haha, yes me too, and a pumpkin, but there is at least a point to them.
  25. Hi all, I was having a little browse through Ebay earlier and I came across this motor heatsink complete with fan: Now i'm prepared to believe that the heatsink will have a positive effect on cooling, but the fan?! I mean it's not even blowing in the right direction to cool the sink properly, never mind whether it's actually large enough to have any effect. That made me wonder who buys other 'novelty' items like this and what other odd products are out there?! I'm also curious to know whether anyone's going to refute my claim that the fan (in this case) is just silly. It looks to me like that fan would struggle to match the airflow caused by the ram effect of air rushing in under the bodyshell, even if it was blowing along the fins like it should...
×
×
  • Create New...