El Gecko
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Posts posted by El Gecko
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11 hours ago, Snappy1 said:
I realise it is pretty much a sway bar, have a look at this thread ......
Seems a bit late in the millenium to still be using the word "ghetto" in a joking manner.
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24 minutes ago, Wooders28 said:
I think this is the crux of our , discussions.
I've never known any sanctioned events to run 7 cell Nicad/Nimh , although club meetings may turn a blind eye (Or have a 7 cell race meet, that's what's fun about club meets, as long as you all agree, race whatever!! 🤷♂️)
A 7 cell is around 10v fully charged, (the info I could find, was 1.5v per cell, so would be 10.5v for a 7 cell?).
The BRCA legal, fully charged voltage is 8.4v, and I believe someone was disqualified a while back ,when their fully charged battery tested 8.42v before the race.
I've never ran a 7 cell, as back then, they where super expensive, and I couldn't race with them. Now 3s lipos are almost equivalent to an hour's wage, so I've a few for bashing.
1.5V is for alkaline batteries, typically NiCds or NiMHs are rated at 1.2V per cell, so that would be 8.4V nominal voltage for a 7-cell pack. But fully charged, you'd have another half a volt available, which would cause every 7-cell battery to exceed the maximum spec.
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4 hours ago, Snappy1 said:
Nice work, this belongs in the “ghetto mods thread”
Not sure what's "ghetto" about it? Other than the condition of the wire, it's not much different than installing a sway bar?
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7 hours ago, Carmine A said:
I'll be trying something that I've wanted to do since I saw his Video 5 years ago....
I'm getting a Hornet, and fitting AmPro Engineering's Double Wishbone Front Suspension Kit to it. My experience in real Racing already knows that DWB beats a simple Swing Arm any day for cornering grip!
I'll report my findings here, but I already feel positive about it. It will also add well needed WEIGHT to the Front of this Classic!
Since rere's are so cheap and plentiful still, I have no qualms about hacking up a classic. 😉
Now that I've got my vintage Hornet running again, it will be interesting to see how it fares against its "properly suspended" brother
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18 hours ago, Re-Bugged said:
the ever mounting pile of Silver Cans
It's a shame that postage from the other side of the world is so expensive... there's a lot of potential in that mound of motors
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Just an update on this: I finally ran the car again, after 20 years! And despite not having the springs in the side pods, there was ZERO gearbox slap, even when going full throttle from a dead stop. Not only that, but the articulation is even better than stock because the shocks can actually work through the correct geometry. And I gave it a proper bashing too... didn't roll the car or anything, but jumped a few small things and definitely worked the suspension out, and that wire didn't even budge. We'll see how it goes long term, but I'm loving it at the moment... it handles so much better than a Grasshopper!
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12 hours ago, Superluminal said:
You wouldnt initially think understeer would be too much of an issue on a 2wd buggy!!
On the contrary, particularly on the Grasshopper/Hornet chassis there's loads of understeer, up until you hit the sweet spot with rear wheel speed to get it to kick around. On round 6 I was starting my Scandinavian Flick at the middle marker and coming into the far hairpin sideways in a 4-wheel slide, then just rotating the last 90ish degrees with the throttle and powering out.
@mud4fun I was thinking about this more and perhaps like the Hornet, your rear tires are just TOO grippy compared to the fronts? I know you're planning to get some new front tires, but maybe in the meantime put on a halfway knackered set of rears and see how you get on?
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2 hours ago, mud4fun said:
PS @El GeckoGecko I'm loving your track design. Really challenging but unlike some of the other figure eight designs it is alot more fun due to the nice straight down the diagonal and the arrangement of the mini figure 8's in the middle AND it fits on our lawn!!!
Ok, I will tell you the secret... it's a slot car layout
Hoping some more of my HO track designs can find new life for postal racing... I gained a lot of experience packing fun little tracks into as tiny of a space as possible
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18 hours ago, CoolHands said:
Good if it works, but errrr, can’t you buy a new one? (Knuckle)
Sure, I could always buy one. That's easy. Anybody can go out and buy a replacement part.
My rule (and my personal challenge) is to try to make it (or fix it) before I buy it. Hopefully I've bought myself about 6 months before I have to even think about spending money on this part.
And I taught myself how to make a steering knuckle, which I hadn't tried before. So the next one will be even better. And I may not have to ever buy one again.
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33 minutes ago, Super ally said:
I have brushed motors in all my tamiya buggies with nicad batteries which suit these buggies perfect imo.I have no interest to go brushless or lipo as im old school from 80s era tamiya.
I still have my old NiCds as backup, but they don't get used ever since I got NiMHs. Same size, same plug, new charger, longer runtimes, no worries about them exploding while charging (looking at you, lipo). Win win win win win.
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Hard to say as I've never driven an RC10, but I've noticed that when the Frog handling is in the "sweet spot" (softer than stock), the car bottoms out on anything but small jumps. I would say it easily outhandles a stock Fox, but I'm not sure how they would compare with similar work done to the Fox suspension. The Frog definitely takes some getting used to if you're coming from a longer wheelbase car, or rear motor, or 4WD. It's a bit like driving an old Cobra--it just wants to constantly swap ends, and you have to be really smooth with your throttle and steering inputs to keep it from doing so.
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Made a new steering knuckle for the Grasshornet out of a piece of old bumper. Direct replacement with no real measuring to speak of, only had to put a couple turns on the tie rod end to get it squared up. My cutout allows even more inward movement than the stock piece for increased Ackerman angles. Hopefully it holds together!
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3 hours ago, markbt73 said:
This is a really good point, and it's something I've noticed in a lot of aspects of modern life, not just RC cars: we take our "fun" very seriously these days. Probably too seriously, most of the time. Everything is "built to tackle the toughest conditions" and "engineered for extreme performance," from pickup trucks all the way down to Gatorade. Everything is a horsepower war; everything is one-upsmanship, and if you're not using the newest mostest bestest fastest, you might as well not even bother.
How is a dune buggy driven by a cartoon bear supposed to compete with that?
Easy; he grins his silly grin, kicks up a little dust, and leaves them to it.
mic drop
standing O
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Sounds like you need better front tires on the Cougar and softer suspension on both, with as much usable travel as possible since the track is so rough.
Also, don't forget, it's a brand spanking new, full-on race car. You've set it up with the "factory tune" but there are a lot of little adjustments to dial in before it'll feel comfortable for you to drive quickly, which would be true no matter who the driver is.
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I look at it from a compatibility standpoint. Brushed is compatible with everything, so I can put any of my motors in any of my cars with any speed control--mechanical, electronic or otherwise. If I go brushless (and/or lipo), that would be a total system (motor and ESC and possibly battery) that will probably stay in one car forever, and will not be compatible with anything else in my little fleet.
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I should have known better, but I just had to experience it for myself. Unfortunately a steering knuckle had to die while satisfying my curiosity
I think I'll stick with normal size wheels from now on...
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1 hour ago, Exit13 said:
1060 and new NiHM battery will slow down for no reason that I can figure out and the only way to get it to run full speed again is either hit it in reverse a few times or just keep running it and it will "come back alive"
Been getting this a bit in my Grasshornet lately too (with HW1060), haven't figured it out yet. It's definitely got something to do with the speed control. Possibly a bad battery connection? I think it helped to unplug and replug the connectors a few times to make sure the inner metal parts were fully seated.
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Apparently I'm living in the past because I still do half this stuff? Especially make my own parts.
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1 hour ago, Problemchild said:
TRAXXAS appeals to this generation
tamiya is built around nostalgia
JJ
It's interesting. I think the nostagia has taken over for me, no matter what brand it is (yes, I've heard all about Traxxas business practices and they rub me the wrong way as well).
But I see the lonely piles of parts that used to be my Traxxas trucks, and I feel an overwhelming need to drive them again!
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3 hours ago, mud4fun said:
I've been starting at bottom right marker and going up to top left marker as that gives a nice straight to start with
I had actually intended for the exact opposite of that... start at the arrow and go around the curves, with the long journey back to the line serving as a "back straight". The LapTrax records every.little.movement to insure I get a solid lap count, including my shadow when I walk around putting markers back in place! So my thought was to place the phone on top of one of the outermost end markers, facing out away from me and the rest of the track. Probably due E or due W from those markers if north is up on the diagram, at a 90 degree angle to where the little arrow sits.
I'm actually a little sad that I didn't post the mirror option for the track, but I'm happy everyone is having fun on it! Haven't had a go yet myself, but I've just had a "mad scientist" moment in the basement, so the "car" part of this round will be interesting, as always.
Good luck all!
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2 hours ago, Carmine A said:
A Double Figgar of Eight. 👍👍🍺✌
Actually a triple! There are three "8"s there if you count the hourglass in the middle, it's like an infinity trinity 🍺
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I put a Nikko Big Bubba aerial on my Hornet for nostalgia... my dad made the "flag" out of yellow electrical tape 25 or so years ago when it was still attached to the truck
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1 hour ago, mud4fun said:
doesn't bother us as we can fit it in anyway but I was just thinking about people with less space. Let's see what people think. I like it and my kids love it. We will set it up tomorrow and give it a go on the lawn and see how we go.
Only problem I have is that I ordered loads of new tyres for driving on tarmac (at the rec ground) and now I need full pin spikes for driving on grass during lockdown arrrghhhhh, Modelsport will be loving me, yet another order to go in to them
edit: Actually you could shorten the overall length while keeping pretty much the same design by simply moving the top two markers right by 1m thus reducing overall length and making even more tricky the two middle turns!
edit2: at the end of 12 months of postal racing I'm convinced we'll all be able to compete competitively at club events that previously we thought as novices there would be no point in entering..... the improvement in our driving (well, certainly my kids) since we started doing the postal racing is staggering. Judging corners, entry angles, speeds, braking and consistency have all improved massively. Sadly I'm clearly too old too change as I am just as bad as ever.... my fingers seem too eager to go full throttle LOL
Yep I'll leave it be for now, I'm curious to see others' track suggestions as well!
Agreed on the novice front too. My driving skills are still very novice, but have significantly improved over the last few months. I also have a heavy throttle finger like you, and have to remind myself multiple times during the race to dial it back and keep control (usually after a spinout). The cool thing is that while we may be well past our prime competition years, the kids watch us and take mental notes of what NOT to do, thereby avoiding our mistakes from the beginning and giving themselves the upper hand.
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Vintage Hornet floppy gearbox, simple oldschool fix
in Vintage Tamiya Discussion
Posted
Yes if I remember correctly I passed the wire through the nub on the gearbox, as well as the holes in the side pods, and then made the bends in the wire before putting the whole assembly back on the car. I have not tried to take it fully apart yet