A Short Rant About Mechanical Speed Controls

[taliesin]

i have long thought that mechanical speed controls were meant to be thrown away upon opening the kit and replaced with the proper electronic speed control at the earliest possible moment. however, to be perfectly fair and honest, i had never used a MSC, so i must admit there was a possibility that i didn't know what i was talking about.

i could theoretically understand keeping the original quality of a vintage model intact. or perhaps they weren't even all that bad. or perhaps i'm just lazy and don't want to fool around with them.

i can now safely say that i think MSC's are complete ****. i tried using one and my brand new hummer went balistic. had i not been still holding it, the car would have been in the next county. i took it all apart and monkeyed about with it for a few hours and it still doesn't work right. it is now in the trash bin and the proper ESC is installed where the MSC used to live. the car runs great.

from now on, all MSC's will be sent out to live in the local landfill, and i can safely say that i've tried one and don't like it.

i apologize in advance to any loyal adherents to the MSC cult, and to all of the vintage crowd whom i am probably offending in a most unforgivable manner, but there it is.

MSC's must die.

[DCLXVI]

I used the MSC that came with my TXT-1.....................................................I removed the cables and used them, the rest I trew away

[mymonsterbeetleisbroken]

you're lucky you wasn't playing with tamiya's back when esc's cost a bomb then

I started out with msc's, having only a clod and a pumpkin as my main runners years ago.

There are many tricks you get to know when using msc's, like taking them apart and making the spring bit more effective. Never turn on a car fitted with an msc without the transmitter on and working first, and even when you do, have it off the ground - just like a nitro.

I've had one go up in flames, and loads fail due to solder melting and leads falling off.

Nowdays i've only got 1 car, out of 15 or so runners that still has an MSC, just for old times sake!!!

[B.M.T.]

C'mon boys. If your gonna be honest, there is no such as a short rant about M.S.C.'s.

I won't suffer them in my oldy runners, like Blackfoot and Fox. Too much chance of them just flipping out and damage done.... Even to gears, in emergency..... Well, slapping it into reverse is not braking....

[ryanbored]

I like the look of them, reminds me af an era past, but they are of no use to man nor beast now

[Wrc action]

Moronic Stupid Controller thats what MSC stands for

and goodridence to them!

[B.M.T.]

Hehe... I just remembered, when I built my Ghopper2, bog stock, to remind myself how slow RS380s were......

To get it moving, I had give it full stick, then back it down to 1st speed.... It would not move if you just crept the stick off center......

[4wdmt]

MSCs, friction shocks and plastic bushings should be banned in all RC kits.

[Origineelreclamebord]

What do you all have against MSC's? I know that offroad you just need an ESC because the MSC wears too fast. The MSC is heavier, only has a 3-step control and stuff, but I like their primitive feel

I run my M02 with the standard friction dampers and the MSC just because it makes it more fun to drive. It isn't smooth, but then at least it's challenging to keep it in control

I also had a Wild Dagger, which I kept the MSC in... It had a rubber pieceover it to protect it from sand, but that soon broke and things started to wear really quickly... So yeah, I learned from that to use an ESC when being close to sandy surfaces...

So for me it would be best to have a 3-step ESC... ^^

[taliesin]

you mean i'd like to have a wooden leg for that old time feel, but i wish it had some skin on it?

[DCLXVI]

MSCs, friction shocks and plastic bushings should be banned in all RC kits.

Well, friction shocks has a place...without them the Hornets front wouldn't bounce as much...

[Bluefoot]

Well I'll run with whatever sort of speedo is in any car - mechanical or otherwise. These new-fangled electronics make things too easy. Where's the challange if you know exactly what the thing is going to do at any given moment? Ok, so I don't race - I just bash about with my cars, but there's a lot of fun to be had coaxing an ornery critter to do your bidding... Anyway I never had much trouble with an MSC that could not be easily fixed in a short period of time. I can't say the same for ESCs, when they go bad it's terminal.

I've done my fair share of sprinting after runaway cars (don't do it now - that's what kids are for ) and I've only ever had one serious consequence as a result of MSC failure - and I ask you - what sort of an idiot leaves a large glass mirror leaning against a wall at the edge of a carpark!?

[hairyguy4]

what put me off msc's was when i had one in my manta ray with a 15t, at the end of my garden there was a table with a massive sheet of wood against it that i was using to trial on and the msc went berserk, slammed it into full speed, shooting it up the ramp, flew about 10+ft into a bush, fell on the floor then broke... lol

My clod had one in which decided to just set on fire wasnt because of the twin 16t's and 9.6v pack though lol

[yellow-dragon-70]

What all of you have failed to mention, is how funny is it when one of you friends cars goes flying up the road or track out of control because; A the MSC has failed (again) or the 4 AA batteries in the car are flat and its locked the MSC wide open.

Its happened to me too so I have felt the pain of it. I used to dream of ESC's

They never go faster than when they are out of control, have you noticed??

[Origineelreclamebord]

What all of you have failed to mention, is how funny is it when one of you friends cars goes flying up the road or track out of control because; A the MSC has failed (again) or the 4 AA batteries in the car are flat and its locked the MSC wide open.

Its happened to me too so I have felt the pain of it. I used to dream of ESC's

They never go faster than when they are out of control, have you noticed??

Haha, yep... Maybe the cars want to tell us that they are better off without control... But it hurts when it happens to your car yeah...

And there's one advantage of an MSC; Most of the times you can fix it if it fails,although your car may need more attention, but at least the MSC can be fixed , while an ESC just says poof, releases a stinking chemical cloud of smoke that clearly lets you know it failed...

[taliesin]

another 'advantage' to MSC's is that it makes you feel so satisfied when you 'fix it' with a big freakin' hammer.

no, if i want my car to go really fast and totally out of control, finally ending up in a pile of broken plastic, i'll just hand the transmitter to my wife. or better yet, my best friend who always seems to find the one immovable object in any parking lot, no matter how unlikely it is that you could hit it, even if you tried, and then proceed to drive my car into it at an unprecedented speed. its like he suddenly had a 4 turn motor with a lipo installed, and the closer it gets to the impossible to hit object, i swear the car goes even faster. he ought to work for the pentagon. hand him a transmitter and he could drive an rc drone into any incoming object. we don't need no stinkin' star wars....

you can't 'fix' your friend with a big freakin' hammer though, no matter how much you are grieving for your car. of course, you can secretly install a damaged MSC in his car whilst he isn't looking and watch as his car careens into some immovable object at unprecedented speeds...

[type54]

man im so glad its not just me!

picture the scene saved and saved to restore a falcon but it was to slow to beat my mates g hopper so i invested in a 15 turn ansman 5.50 wooooh big spender anyway new 3.300 battery car on floor switch on transmitter switch on car wooooosh flat battery in reciver ahhhhhh falcon flat out 150yards 5 inch curb. ..........crack 5 foot jump and a pile of bits. ive never wished for a drive shaft to fall out so much in my life.

sorry if that was a bit long but it is a rant.

[Hibernaculum]

I'm with Bluefoot.

Well I'll run with whatever sort of speedo is in any car - mechanical or otherwise. These new-fangled electronics make things too easy. Where's the challange if you know exactly what the thing is going to do at any given moment? Ok, so I don't race - I just bash about with my cars, but there's a lot of fun to be had coaxing an ornery critter to do your bidding... Anyway I never had much trouble with an MSC that could not be easily fixed in a short period of time. I can't say the same for ESCs, when they go bad it's terminal.

Darn, where's the "thumbs up" icon.

I grew up with MSCs. Sure they can be a pain, but so can a lot of things. And at least they can survive water, and be tweaked and repaired without requiring a degree in electronics.

The generation before mine was racing latent or petrol powered model cars in a straight line - how boring would that have been!? Heck, my Dad used to scratch build his own toys from wood, because the concept of "a model car your parents bought from a store" was nothing but a dream. For these reasons, the mere idea of a radio controlled toy is something I still think I appreciate, and which (at some very basic level) still fills me with a tiny little bit of wonder - just like I felt the first time I ever saw one in 1984.

Yet here we are, in this age of convenience, pointing out that anything less than a tiny, magical black box that acts as the "brain" of these remotely operable toys, is an unacceptable inconvenience

I'm no technophobe, but in the spirit of nostalgia, every single vintage Tamiya I have, uses an MSC - including all my runners.

I don't use ESCs for anything - unless a kit actually comes with an ESC. I don't buy the argument that the old way of doing things is "dangerous to your models" or "inconvenient". What ***** I don't run my models hard, or every day, but I've never had anything terrible happen. My recently finished Sand Scorcher chassis was scooting around the house the other day just fine with it's MSC and vintage radio gear. No erratic behaviour there, she was as smooth as they come.

I even have a stockpile of spare MSCs, new in packet, that I'm saving for future years of vintage running

So in a nutshell, I appreciate the new way of doing things. But I still love the old way of doing things.

cheers,

H.

[loaded]

ROTFLMFAO :-)

At all you guys, both sides of the fence, this is just the funniest thread I have read in ages. Oh and you CAN fix your friend with a large hammer, just don't expect to be out for at least 12 years. (Well they couldn't call that murder, just manslaughter!)

I hate Tamiya ESCs, because of the awkward cabley way you have to hook them up to HiTek receivers. Too many switches and cables and loops as far as I am concerned. From a vintage point of view, I build vintage models (including runners) with MSCs usually, but also have an ESC one.

All the best, Paul.

[Gruntfuggly]

I can't help thinking that the MSC is taking a bit of battering here unfairly. On it's own, the MSC doesn't actually *do* anything. It's actually the servo that controls it...

[Mad Ax]

I'm in the school that grew up with MSCs. My King Cab, my Grasshopper and my Mud Blaster all had MSCs. An ESC was an unaffordable luxury, a dream for us plebs. I never had any serious damage done, but then I always powered my radio off the stick pack - that way then the battery is too flat to operate the servo, it's also too flat to operate the motor - so you don't do any big damage at all.

I have to say there are bits of ESCs I don't like. Often the reverse is too delayed or just awkward. Why do they always seem so controlled going forwards and yet jerk horribly going backwards? My HPI GT speedo is worst for this - run my Dagger forwards and it's easy to control, try to go backwards and it seems to jerk to full throttle almost straight away and flip the truck. I don't get it, maybe it's just me

Anyway, ESCs are a whole lot more convenient and I love them, but to be honest I think they're way overpriced. Can somebody tell me why a no limits speedo costs more to manufacture than a 27T limit? OK, so it has a heatsink and maybe higher grade electrics, but I think most of the price increase is deliberate - they know they can make a hierarchical pricing structure just by making ESCs of different specs. In this modern day of uber-cheap electronics and mass-production techniques, it shouldn't cost more than twice as much to make a no-limits as it does to make a 27t limit.

Rant over.

In conclusion, everything I run these days uses an ESC, just because they're easier. It also means I have more spare servos. My shelfers usually just have one servo for steering and no speed controller at all. They're there to be looked at, not to be working examples. But that doesn't mean that I don't miss the old days of being able to bang the wheels from forwards to reverse and do all sorts of clever donuts

[taliesin]

I can't help thinking that the MSC is taking a bit of battering here unfairly. On it's own, the MSC doesn't actually *do* anything. It's actually the servo that controls it...

good point, from now on i'll smash the servo too since it potentially had a hand in betraying me

[markbt73]

This is a fun thread... Gotta throw my 2 cents in.

I have to go back to my analogy from another thread about carburetors. The Nissan Pathfinder out in my carport has fuel injection and electronic ignition and overhead cams, and it starts and runs reliably, even with over 300,000 miles on it. But does that mean that my old Chevy Nova, with its Rochester carburetor and pushrod V8 was useless? Nope, it ran fine too. It just needed more maintenance and more frequent repairs. The difference is that I could fix anything on the Nova, whereas I'd be lost without the repair manual for the Pathfinder.

If you're complaining about Tamiya speed controls, be glad you never had to deal with the old Kyosho ones, or any of the old "wiper arm" designs. I remember actually fitting a Tamiya MSC into my friend's RC10 for him because the Associated speed control was such junk, and again, didn't have reverse. He was jealous of the speed control in my Tamiya cars, so we got one and made it work. The Tamiya 3-stepper was a huge improvement, even if we did have to screw it in place with little blocks of wood. The alternative was prohibitively expensive; an ESC would have cost almost as much as his whole car did, and he still wouldn't have had reverse. For bashing, an ESC was actually a detriment, especially since we both had a tendency to drive with the throttle wide open anyway.

For a while, even after I had a couple ESCs, I still used the MSC that came with Tamiya kits because it was just easier to do that than keep swapping out the ESC between cars, and buying another ESC was an expense I wasn't willing to pay. And I never liked ESCs before the pushbutton setups came around. I never quite understood what I was adjusting with those potentiometers on the old ones.

That said, the TEU101 is the best thing ever to happen to Tamiya kits, IMO. One piece of tape, a few wires to plug in, and boom, you're done. It made things much easier when I decided to get his-and-hers Lunchboxes for my wife and me; she was perplexed enough by the build process without having to set up a mechanical speedo too. I like the way it works, too, with the "double-click" reverse. And since I don't bother with anything beyond standard 540 power in most cars, the little black box is a great way to go. It really cuts down the expense of adding a car to the fleet.

Now, if I had a vintage car, would I go back to a mechanical setup? That depends. If I were building something from a kit, or found a new-built or decent shape runner that already had an MSC, I'd probably leave it alone. If I were restoring something or building it from parts, there is no way I'd bother tracking down all the parts to set up the MSC. Not worth the time or effort for me; I don't care about originality that much. Back to the real-car analogy, would I bother fixing up the drum brakes on an old pickup truck? No way, not if I could just as easily bolt on modern disc brakes.

[dazaa]

well i can tell you now i hate msc's. if you have a vintage kit then i think they look better than an esc but if you are running the car esc is a must, afew months back i was tinkering with my 959, putting all the 20 year old servos ect back in so i could put the car on display, then i found a charged battery and thought i might aswell see how it goes with a msc since i had only driven it with an esc, so i plug the battery in and whoosshh i had never seen a car fly off so fast then bang the car had smashed in to a table and broke the table leg. managed to fix the table but never again will i drive a 959 or any car with an msc, but saying that the msc on the 959 was very worn out and the connectors were melted. i have a very nice msc from a monster beetle( a black one) in my schumacher wildcat, i hardly drive the car but when i do i cant belive how good the msc is compared to the one in the 959. i do agree that esc are to complicated and expensive. lucky got 2 no limits worth 40 each for free because the guy thought they were dead but all it was the servo leads had melted and were shorting, simply cut out the damaged part and tape the connector back on an we have 2 perfect esc.

dazaa

[dazaa]

forgot to say never again no matter how desperate i am will i use a kyosho msc. last one started smoking and would have caught fire if i have unplugged the battery.

daza