Fresh poop: RC basher's worst enemy?

[OoALEJOoO 3127]

Warning: this is going to be a crappy topic.

Imagine you are happily bashing your newly built car on the local park. You put a lot of time & effort and the model looks & runs fantastic. You negotiate a corner past a sidewalk, then catch some speed out towards some distance. As the car gracefully scatters some loose leaves on the ground, it hits something more "massive" creating a splatter along with it. It takes you the next fraction of a second to realize that the worst thing that can happen to your car has probably materialized: you just hit a nice, big, fresh dog poop head on.

I think I'll rather hit a concrete wall head-on at full speed than fresh poop. Physical damage can be repaired. The fresh product of a dog's rear end all mixed-up with warm RC components, all the way to crevices, will pretty much ruin the whole thing. AWG grease + poop does not make the car run better.

This is why I always inspect the park area where I plan to bash. However, last weekend I had a very close call. I ran the car along a path with scattered leaves a few times and after a few passes I realized there was something far deadlier camouflaged within the leaves right there along the path. I felt lucky indeed.

On other instances I've hit more "drier" counterparts that are not that damaging. The smell lasts a few weeks. And that's after washing and leaving the chassis outside in the sun for a while.

I take this opportunity to kindly remind all dog-lovers and park-goers of the simple hygienic and civilized responsibility that comes with owning a pet:

 

What is your experience? Have you ever hit a dog-bomb?

[Willy iine 18805]

Yes, I want to make an off road course in my backyard, but there are many wild animals that drop bricks and walk off..  so I have not.   

[sosidge 624]

Do people not bag it where you live?

I have to say that dog poo "en plein air" has become pretty rare in the UK, thankfully. When I was a kid, dog poo was everywhere, every trip to the park would involve scraping some kind of cr*p of your shoe when you got home. Not any more.

[KEV THE REV 2319]

I've only hit pidgeon poop so far and that's bad enough , but dogs-tip-out is gross . There are many signs everywhere , but I guess some dogwalkers can't read or have no moral sense of duty / care / hygiene for anyone else

[OoALEJOoO 3127]

19 minutes ago, sosidge said:

Do people not bag it where you live?

I have to say that dog poo "en plein air" has become pretty rare in the UK, thankfully. When I was a kid, dog poo was everywhere, every trip to the park would involve scraping some kind of cr*p of your shoe when you got home. Not any more.

Most people do pickup/bag after their dogs, there are hefty fines for not doing so, but the reality is that there is nobody enforcing it. You still see poop frequently enough to make you pay attention as you walk and specially when bashing a car. On parks where people do not regularly take pets, it's more manageable.

[alvinlwh 5895]

In my garden, it is the cats that are doing it. Worse of all, the owners say it is the right of their pests to freely roam and mess up my garden. At least dog owners are covered by the law, cat owners are a law onto themselves. That's why I brake for dogs but... 

[DK308 219]

Nothing so far in over 30 years. I'm a pretty calm dude - until I see people not picking up after their dogs. I love dogs and own dogs, and I ALWAYS clean up, even in secluded forest areas.

The neighbours cat in the garden is one thing which grinds my gears, but the neighbours cat on the bonnet of a brand new car is another. They always have the same lame excuse, and we have tall fences and everything - it's not hard for them to keep their pets out of my land. It happened again about a month ago, but this time I setn the bill to him and bypassed the insurance. He was a bit shaken about the 7000 Euro for getting the bonnet resprayed and polished.

Don't get me started on people who can't clean up after their pets at the beach.

[alvinlwh 5895]

1 hour ago, DK308 said:

He was a bit shaken about the 7000 Euro for getting the bonnet resprayed and polished

Did he deny it? From my experience, all cat owners deny any evil doings by their pests. They even claimed the crap in my back garden was done by a dog wondering in and I live in a mid terraced house! I had since installed a CCTV to prove them wrong. 

[DK308 219]

19 minutes ago, alvinlwh said:

Did he deny it? From my experience, all cat owners deny any evil doings by their pests. They even claimed the crap in my back garden was done by a dog wondering in and I live in a mid terraced house! I had since installed a CCTV to prove them wrong. 

No. We have cameras that overlook the driveway and garage area. We are normally on good terms and usually I let it slide. I had taken the car home the same day and it was going in for PPF the following Monday. What shook him was not that I asked him to pay, but how much he had to pay. He's not a car guy, so he has no idea about such things. Took the car to my dealer and got an estimate, and that was what I asked for when I told him what had happened. He would have been off worse had I gone though the insurance, because then he would also have been hit with diminished value after getting a respray.

[Ferruz 11702]

@OoALEJOoO sorry to hear about that.

6 hours ago, OoALEJOoO said:

I think I'll rather hit a concrete wall head-on at full speed than fresh poop

I totally agree. Fortunately for me, I never hit fresh poop so far, although I had more than a couple close calls. Like you said, I too always inspect the areas where I'm planning to run my cars, especially if they are new to me, but there's only so much we can do and the risk is always there, especially in crowded public places such as city or neighborhood parks.

When I run my RCs at the park, my rule of thumb is I stick to whatever area is closer to the fenced dog park: since people bring their dogs there not only to exercise but also to relieve themselves, there is supposed to be way less dog poop in the surrounding area, right? Or at least that's what I hope for 😅 worked well so far but still, I'm cautious about park running, and always check the car carefully afterwards to make sure the worst didn't happen.

In my area, people seem to distinguish themselves for carefully bagging their dogs waste... and then leaving it right where it is. Mind you, it's now secured in a flimsy little bag, ready to be squished out like toothpaste by whatever car or pedestrian steps on it first. Way to clean after your dogs, people...

[RushRebel 98]

As a kid I once ran over a fresh doggie landmine driving a friends new car he had just gotten for Christmas. It was a gag worthy situation.

[J@mes 2326]

This is a crappy thread.

[J@mes 2326]

I’ve been aware of the possibility & lived in fear of hitting a steaming pile anytime I’ve been RCing but by some miracle so far in this respect I’m a lucky guy 

[Frog Jumper 3661]

I've been crawling with Little Zoey (my CC-02) a lot lately around our local creek and lake, which is part of a larger Greenway system.  It is, in effect, a large natural toilet for all the critters and homeless people that live around here. 

Little Zoey always gets a bath when we get home...

Terry

 

[KEV THE REV 2319]

Forget the cats & dogs ( & Foxes )  , this could be a worst case :-

https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/latest-news/driver-caught-having-poo-side-23342211

[KEV THE REV 2319]

9 minutes ago, Frog Jumper said:

Little Zoey always gets a bath when we get home...

For sure - quite right . The very reason I find it hard to understand why people go the parks and lay all over the grass with a picnic ( and invariably leave their litter behind )

[Frog Jumper 3661]

2 minutes ago, KEV THE REV said:

For sure - quite right . The very reason I find it hard to understand why people got the parks and lay all over the grass with a picnic ( and invariably leave their litter behind )

Doesn't everyone keep a Festival Blanket in the back of their car for this very reason???  

I'm an all-natural barefoot hippie kid, but I'm not a fan of freshies between the toes...

Terry

 

[Willy iine 18805]

Although we don't smell it, there are fairly large ranches not too far west from my house, and we frequently get westerly breezes..my neighbors like to keep their windows open to catch horse excrement dust in their houses to 'freshen up' their places.  

I usually keep my windows shut 150% of the time.. 

[whahooo 465]

For me ist's snails.....

 

I'm totally affraid of them. Ist's my worst Nightmare to run over Snails......

[Willy iine 18805]

2 hours ago, whahooo said:

For me ist's snails.....

 

I'm totally affraid of them. Ist's my worst Nightmare to run over Snails......

Wait, your ancestors were the biggest consumers of snails!

In the USA, deer is road kill and free to take it home for consumption.. if desired.. 

[Nugget 412]

I remember running my freshly built Porsche 959 in the late 80s on a path and driving through a fresh dog turd. It was horrendous, I still remember the smell to this day and the hours it took to completely strip the car afterwards to clean it in my parents laundry sink 😆 with old tooth brushes and warm water. 

[OoALEJOoO 3127]

Interesting experiences. Indeed this seems to be a battle of defecation domination, on which unfortunately RC bashers are on the loosing side. All we can do is practice avoidance and damage control. Normally the dirtiest areas on a park are the most transited areas and perhaps around ~1m of grass next to sidewalks. I guess most people walk their poo-pals from the sidewalk and the leashed dogs can't go too far off to offload.

Something else that limits my ability to run my cars, at least on the local park, is dog hair. On inspection, area seems free of dog hair. However, I've now run my cars two times early in the morning, when the paths are damp, and pretty much the result is having the chassis caked with dog hair all over. I guess normally the hair flies and you can't see it, but the dampness makes it stick to the car. I now don't run my cars when it's damp on that park.

As far as pet's reactions to seeing a car running, my experience has been that most dogs remain very well-behaved. They normally just stare attentively at the car without any urges to chase or bark. Good news there.

Squirrels are another story. With so many of them road-killed by real cars, I had an hypothesis that given the size of their natural predators, they might not have the necessity thus ability to be able to recognize the large bulky threats approaching at speed. I was wrong. They fail to recognize a fast speeding 1/10 RC car just as poorly. There has been a couple of close calls where my speeding rally car almost became the instrument of squirrel-cide by accident. The squirrels would just dash through the path without warning or care. My hypothesis now is that squirrel's are not very good at binocular (3D) vision and perhaps they can't distinguish something approaching.

I love all animals, big and small. It's really not their fault to poop or dash along paths. Their owners on the other hand...

4 hours ago, whahooo said:

For me ist's snails.....

I'm totally affraid of them. Ist's my worst Nightmare to run over Snails......

Same here. I'm the kind of guy who would pickup a snail struggling along a dry path and place it on the grass, add some water to it too. I once hit a small lizard, poor thing probably died instantly

[OoALEJOoO 3127]

2 hours ago, Nugget said:

I remember running my freshly built Porsche 959 in the late 80s on a path and driving through a fresh dog turd. It was horrendous, I still remember the smell to this day and the hours it took to completely strip the car afterwards to clean it in my parents laundry sink 😆 with old tooth brushes and warm water. 

I've been thinking on what to do if worst comes to worst and a car needs some deep cleaning. Would bleach hurt the plastic? Perhaps electronics can be removed and the whole chassis dipped in a water + bleach solution for a few days. This would disinfect everything and hopefully loosen-up the turd.

[whahooo 465]

4 hours ago, OoALEJOoO said:

Same here. I'm the kind of guy who would pickup a snail struggling along a dry path and place it on the grass, add some water to it too. I once hit a small lizard, poor thing probably died instantly

I wouldn't pick it up. I'm horrified by snails or better "Slugs".

 

Slugs are way more horrifying than Snails. But yes it would also hurt me If i would hurt a snail.

If i think about a broken house of a snail i get that bad feeling and around my private parts that you get when you See hurtful accidents.

 

I hate yucky Stuff Like Slime, Pool or Spit.

 

 

2 years ago, my Daughter Ran over some Spit with chocolate in it or a drop of Dog diharrea..         i do Not know what it was and i do Not want to know it.

But it was Just a tire of a WL Toys Crawler, so Stuff didn't flew around. 

 

 

 

I Like Dogs, but i can't stand them because of their owners. Here 80% of the owners shouldn't have a Dog.

But i Like the Dogs of the people who Care about their Dogs and Spende Time with them.

[alvinlwh 5895]

7 hours ago, OoALEJOoO said:

Squirrels are another story.

Knowing where you are, I am surprised you haven't met a wild boar yet... Or have you?