Jozza(2)

Agree with Dazmeister. Batteries charged with a slow charger will last longer, but will not have the "punch" (power) of a battery fst charged using a delta peak charger. The simplest ones can be picked up for 20-30 quid, and will handle the newer NimH batteries as well as Ni-cds.

quote:Originally posted by netsmithUK- race details will be published soon id="quote">id="quote">Hopefully including some Mini racing please []

Ready made Deans leads cost about a fiver, which I think is way OTT. They are easy to make up, all you need to do is solder a deans plug (female) to a length of wire, strip the other ends of the wire and tin them and they will fit into your Propeak charger. I've changed all our Tamiya connectors to Deans, I think it's a worthwhile change as the Tamiya connectors are rubbish. Shame they haven't updated them in all these years IMO.

I gauge the worth of any kits which I have in terms of the pleasure they will give rather than a hard cash value. If the pleasure >= the amount I paid for it then I'm happy. I personally wouldn't keep any kit NIB cos I can't resist building and running them, but others like to collect the kits. If you are looking for a kit to be worth as much as possible later, keep it NIB and it will be more valuable, but you might have to wait 20+ years before it is, better to build the kit and invest the equivalent cash in some sort of savings scheme or shares thingy, then you get the best of both!

The original had plastic torsion bars, which would snap. I understand that the reissue has metal ones? However, it wasn't as tough as the buggies, but was quite capable of racing around dirt tracks, but as soon as you rolled it, the plastic bits would break, and if you dared jump it more than a few inches, snap went the torsion bars. I still have fond memories of it though, my first RC car about 20 something years back, but I sold it instead of putting it in the loft - shame []

The ECO27 is fine for the stock Tamiya motor (mabuchi 540) and I use them in my Baja Champ, Mini and Mad Bull with no trouble so far. If you are thinking of upgrading your motor at any time the EC20 could be a better bet, but if you are going to run the standard motors, the ECO27 is fine, and only costs about 20 quid.

Try downloading and installing the codecs for WMP version 9 from here:- http://www.soft32.com/download_2592.html That tends to fix 99% of probs where you can't see the video part of a file in Windows Media Player. Or, you could try viewing it in the latest version of Winamp (v5) which handles video quite nicely too...

I'm definitely up for this, and it's only 2 days before my birthday []. I'm not sure if I will be there both days or just Sunday though, will need to check with Mission Control [] netsmith, I'll bring my Mini-Z too, I like the sound of the midnight carpet race.. Can I bring my Mini-T? I know it's not strictly a Tamiya, but it's cute and fast, and I will stick a Tamiya decal or 2 onto it [] vintagejack - I live near London, and have got a reasonable sized car; send me a mail and we can see if we can sort something out - depending where you live I could pick you up or you could get a train to mine and we could go from there (I'm about 35 mins from East London on the choo-choo).

My first was the Tamiya XR311, bought sometime in the early '80s. Sold it for 25 quid a few years later. My second was the Baja Champ, bought last year. Now I've got the BC, a Mini, 2 Mad Bulls, 3 Schumacher Missions and a Mini-Z []

Something in the Spring would be good - I live in Essex, but Beds, Bucks and Herts are closer than Clumber [8D]

I see what you mean, I haven't got the ESC handy to look at the colors of the leads (it's out in the shed in the cold, and I don't want to go there []). If you want an inline switch it would probably involve a bit of soldering. I've just dig out the Mtronics instruction sheet for the ECO27, according to that, orange is the signal, red is the +5V and brown is the 0v, so you would still need the switch in the red lead.

Metal shield bearings are fine so long as you clean and re-lube them periodically. Soak overnight in WD40 or motor cleaner, and then dry them and give them a few drops of Trinity bearing lube, and they will give a long service time. The rubber or Teflon shielded tend to be better at keeping sand out, but are more difficult to re-lubricate properly in my experience. (I had more experience with skateboards than R/C cars, but the theory is the same [])

If you want to switch the power to the receiver manually, you should put the switch on the thin red cable on the 3-way lead (red is +5v, black is 0v and white is the signal lead). I run the cheaper Mtronix in my tamiyas, and I use the battery connector as the on/off switch []. The ECO27 speedo turns off the receiver when it can't see a signal, so when you turn off the transmitter it stops. Wouldn't stop it being affected by another signal from another transmitter though, so an inline switch is probably a good idea.

I think you're right there Mike, it's the reason so much stuff is so pricey in the UK. So as well as being head of Tamiya, I would need to be promoted to Prime Minister too, so I could remove all import duties on R/C cars, that would fix it []

quote:Originally posted by minijoshI would make a buggy based off of the TA04 and then cancel it.[)] id="quote">id="quote">I would make a buggy based on the TA04 and not cancel it [] Seriously though, I would make some competition cars which were competitive on price in order to bring up Tamiya's reputation amongst the "serious" racers. There is still the air of "TC3s are serious, Tamiyas are all toys" in the clubs, and I would do all that I could to raise the profile of Tamiya touring cars and buggies for competitive use.

Glad I'm not the only one decorating [] I'm doing the dining room, the hall, bathroom and finishing the kitchen. In between that, I will be rebuilding my Baja Champ, putting in nice shiny stainless suspension pins and new Carson shocks (the correct length this time []), changing all of those horrible Tamiya connectors for Deans plugs, and hopefully finding a cheap 2 motor Tamiya on Ebay to build! And, some not-Tamiya things too, I will be finishing my Micro racetrack for the *****ar-G cars, and painting a few bodyshells for my lads racing cars.

I grabbed a couple of Orion 2400 Rocket Packs the other week. As with all Nicds, they were a bit dissapointing for the first few runs, but then they perked up and now give me a nice long runtime with good punch. Well worth 34 quid a pair. (You can also pick up 3000 Nimhs for about the same price now, but I prefer the Nicds in the Baja Champ and Mini, they seem to give better performance, and the runtime is more or less the same, give or take a minute or 2).

I think that some Hitec gear is fine, they do cover the mid to high end stuff as well as the cheap gear. It's always worth spending as much as poss on a tranny though, like a good quality tool it will outlast cheap items many times over, and will probably cost less in the long run.

Whatever happened to trust [V] It's a shame that this happens, I'm always a bit naive and think that everyone's as honest as I would be, but it appears that there are a few Paypal transactions which go bad due to fraud. What about Nochex, is that less open to fraudulent transactions? I've used Nochex a lot for paying people, but not accepting payments, and went to Paypal in the end because it's much more popular on Ebay..

I've found the Tamiya paints to be good for hard shells. Using car paints is okay, but you should make sure that you prime the body first. I personally prefer to use the correct paint, as I'm not sure whether the car paint will last as long or give as good a finish. You can also polish the paint once it's cured with a car polish to get a deeper shine, I didn't find that to be necessary though. If you take care with the painting, the Tamiya paints give a lovely deep shine without requiring a polish.

How do you remove the metal shields?

quote:Originally posted by mud4fun quote:Jozza said: 2400's will be fine for a 5 min race on a stock motor. id="quote">id="quote">LOL, They'll do a lot better, my thundershot with a 14x2 motor lasts 5+ mins with a sanyo 2400, with stock motor it lasts 20+ mins!!! []id="quote">id="quote">I agree with that mud4fun, I chucked one of the Orion 2400 sticks into my little Mini Cooper Racing, and it lasted until I got bored, and then my son had a go [8D]. Total runtime was over 35mins on tarmac before it ran out of juice. The higher level cars we use at the club tend to eat more juice though, but after a 5 minute run, a 2400 stick will still have about 700mAh left in it.

Thanks for the info Twinset, I was wondering if it would feature real group of aluminium damper, and it's good to know that the suspension stroke has been done fully (there's nothing worse than a half done suspension stroke in my opinion) [] I'm still not sure about the TLT-1 though, I think the Mini-T will be better. I wonder if Tamiya will re-release the Tamtech cars, with the popularity of these little cars at the moment I think they would be onto a winner.

Ah, found a UK supplier - Apex models http://www.apexmodels.com/product-search.php - Type VARAD in the text search box and it will list all of the available kits.

You can find some ready made kits for body lighting at http://www.rcneon.com/leds.htm, or try Maplin in the UK or Tandy in the US, they do various kits by Vellemen which could be used on a car. It's a fairly simple circuit, all you need is some bright LEDs, a 9v battery and a resistor to cut down the amount of current. I'm not sure the precise values, will try to find out from my friend who is always messing around with electrical bits. Another idea is to get a small set of LED christmas lights from Tesco or a similar store (about £5.99 at Tesco) and substitute the LEDs for high intensity ones - that would probably end up costing more though.