Percymon

I have Seben Racing wheels on my hotshot, just swapped the triangular wheels adaptor plates of the boxart wheels to plastic 12mm hex adaptors. No issues.

I can get a good 30 minutes run time on grass/damp mud in my son's rising storm with a 5000mAh Vapextech NiMH pack - good enough for most people, no need for new ESCs, chargers or the (relative) hassle of lipo packs. For bashing this is plenty of time - 30 minutes in this weatehr and my 8yr old is too cold to want to carry on longer

Admittedly its early days for me, but initial (tarmac) experience of the EZRun 9T 4300kV system (380 sized rotor) on my relatively heavy and 'thirsty' 4WD Hotshot suggests no cogging, even when running a 5000mAh NiMH battery pack Ive not trialled dirt/grass yet, so maybe i will see problems - using full throttle sounds like a good solution though

Hey mate it was your trawl back thru the classifieds that put me onto it. Will have a pop repairing the body I have, before looking elsewhere. There are some nice hpi American pick up truck bodies I like but need to check dimensions.

The search is over, but the wait begins. Done the deal with gordb on the Gmade Spider kit, shipping from Canada not the cheapest sadly so it'll be 3-6 weeks shipping. Plenty of time to rebuild the gearboxes and make a start on repairing the body. Thanks for all the suggestions and help both on the forum and by messages int he background. Cheers guys.

Keep the aerial cable from the RX away from power cables, if it must be in close proximity then make sure the aerial cable crossed the power cables at 90' and doesn't run paralllel to them

www.modelsport.co.uk stock a huge range of steel pinions, cheap and fast delivery. They are sold as Ansmann Racing brand in the UK.

My first experience of fastrax and tamiya ps was yesterday! Fastrax is.... 1. 20% cheaper 2. Bigger can 3. Sprays finer and drier 4. Better coverage rate I was very pleased with the fastrax in use and it's final result, the PS was very second rate in use although the result was fine.

No idea on the clod but I'd be interested to see responses on the relative speed of crawler motors versus silvercans, on both 7.2 and ca 14V. As to the dual motor / esc limit you are spot on , 2 x 27turn motors is like a 13.5turn to the esc

Wrecks to respectable is my thing, I like buying rubbish off eBay Finally painted the manta ray shell and just finished a hotshot. I have a blitzer beetle and a clod on the go now!

Turned my garage into a paintshop for the day.. 1 manta ray sprayed fastrax chameleon jade, backed with fastrax jet black 2 son's Rising Storm fastrax rally blue and tamiya White 3 Hotshot in boxart red Observations are that the fastrax paints spray much finer but have heaps better coverage, and the rising storm rear wing is a pain in the butt to spray given you have to remove the film to spray that side, and need to mask the exposed side.

Now i have a Clod, i'm all confused about tyre and wheel sizes. Its pretty easy with buggy tyres, they are much of a muchness, but when it comes to bigger stuff i'm lost They are 1.9 and 2.2" sizes, are these the outside diameter of the wheel rim ?, If so, and assuming a clod uses 2.2" wheels, how do i ensure any 2.2" tyres i buy have the correct overall wheel n tyre diameter ? What about 1/8th off road tyres, how compatible or not are they ? Sorry for the daft questiosn, but at £30 a pair i don't want to be buying too many sets of incompatible tyres !!

Nice job.

Ordered some new parts for the Clod project (thanks Fusion and Europro) Stripped one Clod gearbox and axle to component parts, another to do tonight. Bought some degreaser for the stripdown of the two clod gearboxes. Bought some plastic primer for hotshot wheel refurb. Browsed the Tamiya and Clod forums

Its just not worth it by the time the shipping is added fromt he US, never mind HM Customs intervention !

Modelsport are out of stock, Fusion website doesn't give actual stock but they may have some.. http://www.fusionhobbies.com/Tamiya-Tyre-x...p/ta9805226.htm look after them, they aren't cheap !

Can you not open the can ? - generally not much more than a few folded metal tabs hold them together . Failing that find a nice strong magnetic field to pull the filings from your motor !!

Whenever I see a modded Clod, one question always springs to mind "How is that still a Clodbuster?" Well if all goes to plan mine will be a Clod Buster Buster :P

Programmed it tonight with some safe settings to preserved the Hotshot drivetrain, then popped outside the house for a shake down run. Yikes this thing needs some space as it's pretty quick. Even with the punch on minimum it takes off with ease, accelerates quickly and I was easing off the throttle after a few seconds. It's more than quick enough for me, small rotor or not. On grass it might be a bit slower, but very impressed for my £41 outlay. Well happy :)

Your choice of battery and charger will be determined by how seriously you get the bug again - things have moved on appreciably in terms of motors, and more so batteries, so it might be wise to buy a used Ni-Cd off ebay, run your cars half a dozen times and see how much of the RC bug is still there. If you buy a bigger capacity pack, you'll have to charge for longer, so just put it back on charge a second time. Given your username i won't recommend UK battery sellers or brands as things will be different stateside. An Ansmann vbase deluxe charger for mains charging, which has variable charge rate up to 5A, will handle NiCd, NiMH, and LiPo (although not balanced charging). A popular charger is the Imax B6 and its clones, mainly available from HK sellers - this will do pretty much everything, includign balanced lipo charging, so its a one for all solution. I went with the Ansmann charger purely because i won't be going lipo for some time , and i wanted a reasonable charger supplied within the UK (to avoid import taxes/VAT).

As a newcomer to all this, i'd suggest the iconic RC cars of my childhood were the Grasshopper/Hornet/Frog , the Lunchbox, and a monster truck (my memory says I drooled over a Bigfoot in my local RC store, but maybe it was a Blackfot or a Clod). If you had deeper pockets then the Sand Scorcher type cars would also be there So with those, buggies, vans and trucks are covered. To me, on road cars, would not define RC, mainly because there are loads of cheap ones on the highstreet shelves every Xmas and those toys don;t compare to Tamiya and its rivals.

Today a somewhat bigger box arrived at my desk, all 5.3KG of it - the basis of my Clod project . Quick peak inside the box says the original wheels need a rub down and paint, but the tyres appear to be in reasonable nick so thats £55 saved ! The office staff were as intrigued as me lol !

All depends what your collection is, or your favourites are A mini Clod might be quite cool, even in B&W A few other ideas, just words, which your fiancee might not find the funny side of.. Too hot to handle (Hotshot) or Wild Willy

I will hopefully confirm that one tonight, and better order some gearbox internals just in case lol!

Many thanks - looks to be less Chinese on that version than the one i had too !