retroman

rc-martin, I know don valley well! never had a personal injury there, although I've lost many a wishbone to the boards around the outside of the track being over lapped the wrong way.............!

Best bet is to buy a droop guage, start with the kit recommended settings, and experiment from there. Normally you want the suspension arms dropping a little from dead horizontal. Droop can be a very powerful tool for setting up a touring car chassis, as it can help control weight transfer. One car I found quite sensitive to droop settings was the old Associated TC3. A friend was running one on carpet (rubber tyres) and it was kicking the rear end out wildly. We took some of the droop out the rear, and it was a different car!! General rule of thumb I have always worked to is bumpy surface, more droop. smooth surface, less droop. Then play with the balance between front and rear to help get a neutral handling car. Always helps to get tips off a friendly racer for wheel, tyre, insert combinations, and spring and shock oil weights. If you know anyone who runs an X-Ray, ask if you can borrow the set up book that comes with the kit. It pretty much explains all! Hope this helps, Rich :-)

Good idea for a topic! I've done the racing thing, mostly 27 turn stock, and also enjoy a nice spot of bashing My Charger/ discharger is the good old Pro-Trak. Fantastic piece of kit, when using the remote leads on non stick packs, you can monitor what each individual cell is doing during a charge/ discharge/ cycle. The good side of this is that if you have a few packs that are going soft, you can dismantle them, and build a good pack. I think a good rule of thumb to work to is the higher the charge rate, the greater the punch from the cells, but shorter cell life due to heat. Both for Ni-Cads and NiMH. When I was last racing, I was running GP3300 NiMH matched packs, and always found them best straight off the charger, charged at 5 sometimes 6 amps. Straight after the race they were discharged fully, and periodically equalised. For bashing with old tamiya cars, you tend to be stuck with stick packs. I love the old Tamiya RC1400SP stick packs for this. Good punchy Ni-Cads which seem to suite silver can bashing well, especially with fully ball raced cars. Ni-Cads seem to respond well to pulse charging, where as NiMH seem to be better with a linear charge. again, I always make sure that they are fully discharged after each run. The only way I have come up with for equalising stick packs is to trickle charge them overnight, so that each cell has been fully charged, with no false peaking to worry about. trickle charging, which at best only gets the cells luke warm definately gives better run time, and longer pack life, but at the cost of performance. I think my closing thoughts would be try not to leave any NiMH or Ni-Cad pack charged during storage, don't run the car until it stops, run until the performance noticeably slows, and if you want your cells to last a long time, avoid charging over 3.5 amps. This is just my opinion chaps.

I'm pretty sure I know where it is

Cheers mate, I'm hoping for some decent weather! I think a friend of mine is planning on coming along as well. He's going to try and get his Hornet up and running. I don't think I'll get one of my SRB's up and running in time, but I'll probably bring a Frog, and a Hornet. I take it that we're off roading it? I've got on road stuff as well. Best wishes, Richard :-)

Cheers for the replies chaps, I think I'm going to hang it out for a front end to appear on Ebay for the moment. I might come across another bargain box of bits, wigth a bit of luck!

Hi Chaps, I'm quite phillosophical about ebay. One thing I have learnt is items on there are like buses........... if you miss one there will be another along soon enough!! I always check people with negatives before bidding, and the postage cost. Some scammers will use a buy it now of 0.99, and set postage at 100! Poorly listed items, with poor photo's are another favourite hunting ground of mine. OK, it takes longer to go through huge lists of stuff, but it gets good results. I needed a motor and gear cover for my Super Champ, and stumbled across a job lot of SRB spares, with a poor picture. I won the lot for sensible money, and I wound up with enough bits to build 85% of a Sand Scorcher as well as getting the Champ on it's wheels! There were 2 sets of gear and motor covers, 2 radio boxes, transmission casings, arms, torsion bars, UJ's, etc. I think the best advice is know what you are willing to pay, including postage, and stick to it. If you see what you want, and there are lots of bids on it, and quite a few days left, leave it! There will be another one on there soon enough.

Cheers Dazaa, One of the tubes that the axles for the front arms run through is quite bent, and the 4 axles for the arms look like nails that have been used a thousand times!! I also need the right hand arms, ball races, and 1 front axle. I've got my eye on some front shocks that have had the coil over conversion done. I might go this route with the rear as well, as the torsion bars seem too stiff to me. The problem with the front shocks I have is the brass part that the shock piston runs through is horrendously worn, and the pistons wobble about in them! I haven't sussed how to post pictures yet, I'll have to ask the Mrs!! Regards, Richard

Can I come for a play??? I live in Chezzy, so only about half hour from clumber park. Where is the usual meet up point? I've got a few runners that I can bring along.

It would be cool if Kyosho re-released the old Cosmo, or Optima Mid. I have a really nice original box for the Cosmo, and I used to have an optima mid custom, which unfortunately I could not find the belt guards for. Every time I ran the thing it would pick up a stone in the rear gearbox "Crunch"!! So I sold it. Interesting subject, re-releasing one of the SRB's. My take on it is they would probably be seriously expensive, which would undoubtedly make Tamiya nervous about a re-release. The price of metal is very high at the moment, and just think of all the alloy they would need to make a batch!! I would love to see one of them back out. Perhaps there would be a market for re-release body sets, and wheel and tyre sets? I'm sure they could do a roaring trade on radio boxes, I'd buy 10!! My Super Champ has taken about 2 months to build from scratch, collecting parts off Ebay. Would have preferred a re-release to make life easier. I have 3 of the re-release cars, Hornet, Frog, and The Brat. They're huge fun, my favourite has to be The Frog. Fully ball raced, and a black mabuchi in it, it's ace! The speed controller that came with it ain't bad either I'd definately buy an FAV, Wild One, or Holiday Buggy if they came around again.

Hi Guy's As well as my Super Champ project, I'm also building a Sand Scorcher, but unfortunately the front suspension is wrecked!! I could do with a full front end, complete with shocks. A shell is also needed, but I'm not too worried if this is for the Scorcher, Blitzer, etc, as this buggy is for thrashing!!!!! This SRB I affectionately call Super Rough Buggy!

Hi Guy's, Newbie here!! For the last few months I have been busy rebuilding a Super Champ. I now have a full rolling chassis, that is nearly ready to run, but sadly no body. I'm quite happy to take on a restorable body, but hoping to find one that is free from any major damage. I already have a new roof panel, so I'm not too worried if that's missing. I'll see if I can get some pictures up later. Thanks everyone, Richard :-)