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MadInventor

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Everything posted by MadInventor

  1. Nitromors will definetly eat the plastic, don't use it anything other than metal ! . Brake fluid is the best option. If you don't want to buy new, is there an independent garage you could cadge some old from that's been drained out of someones car ? I'm sure they would happy for you to take it off their hands so they don't need to dispose of it.
  2. The play in the axles is pretty normal for any tamiya car..... Also expect a certain amount of wheel wobble out of true, the wheels are only plastic, and if memory serves, you have to be reasonably rough to get the tyres onto them. Expect this to get worse the more you use it, especially if doing jumps with it. The trueness of the wheels is also dependent upon the quality of the moulding of the triangular drive bosses, if these are even slightly out you will get a lot of wheel wobble. Also there is a degree of slop between the bearings and the wheel axle, and the bearings and the uprights. Unless the bearings are a press fit onto the axle (which they aren't ususally) there will always be some wobble. Back in the 80s a company called SRM made some very nice circular aluminium wheel adapters, which helped to cure the wobble a lot as there was more surface area for the wheel to sit on, and of course they were machined aluminium rather than moulded plastic. Also, be sure not to overtighten the wheel nuts trying to remove the slop, as this can cause the the triangles to split, and I've also seen wheels distorted through overtightening as well (Although these were very old). The only way you can assemble it wrong is to not have the triangles seated over the drive pin correctly, but if you'd done that you probably wouldn't be able to tighten the wheel nut onto the nylon portion. You might find alloy front uprights improve the situation very slightly, look for GPM TA-02 on ebay, the uprights should fit fine as hotshot II uprights were used on the TA-02 & top force. The only problem is that they are only available in blue silver, and 'pimp my ride' purple, no red ....... Edit: I've not actually tried these GPM uprights to see if they fit the hotshot / boomerang, can anyone out there enlighten us ?????
  3. , Re 3, all I can say is I've done it several times and never had a fire. Lots of black froth and some vapour, but I've never had a problem, although I do carry out particular operation somewhere where if anything goes wrong it won't be a problem. The good thing about using a manual speed controller to do this; - you can hold the motor in one hand (Otherwise it jumps around when power is applied) and operate the speedo with the other. Also, I used a plastic margarine tub to put the motor in as it is easy to grip, it might a bit difficult trying to hold the motor inside a jam jar.
  4. I've found it helps a lot when body cutting to mark out the cutting line with a felt tip or fine permanent marker on the outside of the shell. Makes it a lot easier than trying to hold the shell up to the light to spot the cut line when you're cutting HTH
  5. Somone has pointed out via PM today (and not very politely) that RC Channel used socket cap bolts and M3 nuts to hold on their alloy wishbone kits for the hotshot. Having looked at them I think it's going to be easier to use these (and cheaper) than the custom made pin and circlip method. All I need to do is source some M3 socket head bolts with the correct amount of sleeve on them (for the long bolts 46mm of sleeve is required), hopefully buttonheads as they closely match the look of the original screw pins. It is usually the norm to buy these bolts in packs of 100 so I should have plenty left over to pass on later if people are interested. I will update here when I have found a cheap source for the bolts.
  6. They also fit in the front bumper of the bullhead, in case you decided you want lights in the front bumper as well.
  7. I thought about this, but new shock shafts are around £2 each, making a complete set £24, and it will be difficult to hold the shaft still when tightening the nut if using nyloc nuts (Which you would want to do to prevent the wishbone from being pinched when the nut is tightened.)
  8. I'd dis-assemble it completely, then clean parts individually with warm soapy water. On the gears and greasy bits I'd clean initially with white spirit to remove the worst of the grease, then remove the white spirit residue with warm soapy water, then re-assemble as required. If you want to keep the vintage motor and it's been run well, I remove it from the car, submerge in white spirit, then run the motor (submerged) in both directions using a battery and an old manual esc to wash the crud out. After drying I put a couple of spots of damper oil back on the motor bushes (Note BUSHES, not BRUSHES ) to lubricate them. This can breath new life into an old silver can.
  9. Thinking about it it might be an issue if you're using a mono shock at the front with the extension arms, might have to make those pins slightly longer, and the rear upper pins would have to be long enough to accomodate the wider boomerang style upper wishbones. Supershot rear lower outer pins would need to be slightly longer to allow for the thickness of the HP suspension kit shock mount, but this can all be taken into account quite easily.
  10. What with the new supershot re-re coming up shortly, I'm thinking about getting a batch of pins made to replace the screw pins tamiya supply for the hotshot, hotshot II, supershot boomerang, bigwig, and super sabre. These are the pins that hold the suspension arms to the gearboxes, and the rear uprights in place. I planning on replacing mine with top force style pins that just use circlips at either end. I'm sure you have all noticed: A. the standard screw pins tend to split the plastic of the suspension arms when the arms get old and have been on and off the cars a few times B. The cost of wishbones once a re-re is no longer in production (and the cost of bigwig front arms). I think that using a pin with no thread on a new build car will greatly improve the strength and longevity of the suspension arm, as the plastic is not being stressed when the screw thread is forced into it, and it will lessen the chance of a cracked arm disintegrating completely. With this in mind, I'm thinking of getting a batch of these made (I need 48 pins for my collection alone (4 cars X 12 pins) and am trying to gauge if there would be any interest from members here in buying these (I would try and source suitable circlips as well to sell on as a kit.). Cost would depend upon the numbers required, but I'm thinking around £10 + postage for a kit. So, if you would be interested please leave a reply.
  11. I'd agree with PercyMon on this. I'd use the TL-01 chassis. It has the same basic dimensions, double wishbone suspension (I'm sure the rear end could be modified to use 4 wheel steering). Looking at the pics of the full size item it looks like it has independent suspension, so using a solid axle crawler might not be a good idea. I'd then look at 1/16 tractors / combine harvesters for the agricultural linkages and cab if you don't want to build too much yourself, but them you get into having to squeeze it all into a smaller model.
  12. Given the relative rarity of the ranger shell, you might well find someone on here who would be willing to swap the ranger shell for a clod shell, or maybe even a new super clod body kit if the ranger shell is not damaged.
  13. I wouldn't worry about this. I suspect the ESC requires a signal from the rx for it's neutral position, and if there's no signal from the rx, when the power is turned on you might get a slight 'spike' on the control line. I think I've seen similar from my cars when turning them on before the transmitter, the car just has slight jolt forward when the power is turned on.
  14. Nice hotshots. Probably my favourite RC of all time. Here's my Hotshot 1.5. An original hotshot with a re-re body, hotshot II undertray, front and rear suspension, upper chassis, and topped off with vanquish wheels.
  15. Doesn't Tamiya include a pot of this free with every TT-01 ???
  16. Yes, I got the car back, I waded straight in after it, had to smash through the ice to get to the point where it sank, then had to submerge myself up to the shoulders to reach the bottom to fish it out. One very cold experience, but I did manage to dry it all out, and even got the radio gear and esc working again
  17. Can't really suggest much else, all of my experience is with old tech as far as radio gear is concerned. I'm still running all 27MHz apart from my tanks. Are there sensitivity settings on the transmitter where you can adjust the dead zone of the stick, or perhaps there is a similar setting on the ESC. I think there is adjustment for sensitivity on the eZRun ESCs I use, but that doesn't explain the steering servo twitching. It might also be worth while disconnecting the ESC, fitting a servo in it's place, and powering the RX through a battery box to see if you still have an issue with servo twitch. If you do it's going to be an issue with the TX/RX. EMC can be an odd thing. Have you cable tied the wires all together neatly, or jammed them all into a small space to make the installation look neat ? Wires running next to each other can induce currents in the wires next to them, causing very strange behaviour. It might be worth extracting the equipment including motor, ESC, and RX and bench testing them with the wires well separated. (I'd leave the servo in the car and put everything else on the bench.) I think it's definetly worth your while taking your time to pin down exactly what is causing this, there's not much worse in this hobby than watching an out of control RC impact something immovable at full throttle. I watched one sink into a pond after the ice it was on cracked. I tried to reverse out of the hole the front wheels had dropped in and they threw water onto the ESC, causing it to cut out, and the boomertanic to go down on it's first trip on the ice
  18. All I can say is I've just sold one one (A kit) for £43 on TC and that had hop ups on it (Alloy uprights and suspension, propshaft, motor mount, front UJs, high ratio spur gear kit, adjustable track rods). Basically over £40 worth of hop ups and a free car. You could well be right about ebay, it does get the best prices, but then it also charges the most fees......
  19. First thing I'd check would be to see if the capacitors are still fitted to the motor. If they are'nt, this can cause you all sorts of problems. I'd also suggest using something that you know works from another car as a start point, and swap equipment you are using in until the problem appears, i.e. put in old ESC and RC gear and motor first, get the car working properly, the gradually introduce the new equipment one piece at a time until the problem re-occurs. I had a similar problem with 6 channel RC gear in a tank running 2 ESCs, with it randomly going berserk, and that turned out to be having a loose connection on the RX aerial wire to the RX circuit board. Once I resoldered it, it was fine. Are still using the original boomerang metal antenna ? The 2.4GHz radio may not like having the aerial wire wrapped round the metal aerial. Might be worth trying it with a re-re plastic antenna, or just removing the antenna wire from it as a check.
  20. Thanks, that's pretty much what I thought. Shame the top force re-re is so difficult to get hold of now. Still, it's a lot easier to find and get parts for than old kyosho or schumacher...... Perhaps a Manta Ray + hop ups is a viable option.......
  21. It's a TT-01 all right. Tamiya's entry level on road racer. Drives ok with a silver can, but try and make it go fast and you get terminal torque steer. Kit is probably worth about £25 second hand, with radio gear probably about £40. That's all I'd be prepared to pay for a second hand one anyway.
  22. As the desctription says, in stock trim which car is the better engineered, has the best handling, etc. Never owned either car so interested to hear peoples opinion as to which is best. (not counting looks or collectability, just looking at 'on track' and off road performance. The avante was supposed to be the engineering pinnacle, but many considered it over engineered, the top force was a later, simpler design, so I'm guessing the Top Force would be the better performer. What do you all think ?????
  23. What about thundershot rear uprights ? They're black, same basic design, but are thinner than the hotshot items. You could use spacers to take up the slack in the top and bottom wishbone slots. Not sure whether the camber would be the same or not though, but you could always use an adjustable top link. Depends on how far you want to stray from original components. I've got all the components so might look into this myself, out of interests sake.
  24. I've got a 1/10 lotus elise shell (Red) unused for sale in my trade area, and I'm in the UK. PM me if interested.
  25. Hi all, I'm in the process of doing a rebuild of a super sabre, and at the moment have no shocks for it, and don't like the tamiya dark red originals. I'm also needing some shocks for an Ultima Pro as well. So what I was thinking about doing was getting a GPM DF-02 shock absorber set in nice anodised red, and using the rears on the SS and the fronts on the front of the U.P. (Or maybe getting 3 sets of rears and doing the hotshot II as well.) Can anyone tell me what the shock length is for the front and rear DF-02 shocks ? (Centre eyelet to centre eyelet). I think the front of the ultima is going to need 55-60mm long shocks, and the super sabre is 84/85mm I figured the spring tension should be about right for the rear shocks as the DF-02 and super sabre have a similar amount of weight at the rear end, but I think the front springs will probably be a bit stiff for the front of the Ultima. Does anyone know if GPM do spring kits for the their shocks?? The last of GPM shocks I owned had shock bodies that were slightly too large for tamiya springs, they would go on but rubbed on the threads for the spring tension adjusters. Lastly, are there any other non tamiya cars I could get the GPM shocks for that would be the right length for the super sabre (I'm probably going to need a set of rears for the ultima as well at some point) Thanks
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