Accuracy Of Rc Car Reviews From The 1980s

[dinorider]

Has it occurred to anyone else that the RC car reviews from 1980s magazines were not very accurate, nor exactly helpful? I don't know whether it was because of the state of RC car magazine industry at the time or maybe we were just fine with wishy-washy printed reviews (because that was all the media we had back then) in the 1980s.

Many examples of so-so reviews can readily be found on the TC archives, take these two Clod buster reviews for example"

First one:

http://www.tamiyaclub.com/article.asp?id=114

The last page of the review, the picture caption says: "Nothing on earth will break this chassis". Errr.... Hello? Run this truck hard enough and everybody discovered that the hopeless B11 plastic braces will break, and the trailing arm mounts will start to tear out from the chassis. The reviewer just hadn't the time to run the truck properly to realise that the Clod had weak points. This isn't a review. This is a reviewer making assumptions.

Second one:

http://www.tamiyaclub.com/article.asp?id=154

The last page, the reviewer states: " The bodyshell seems to be very heavy which I'm sure accounts for its strength", then also saying that in economy mode the truck is slower but has just as much torque. Errr.... Hello? Styrene bodies are so much more brittle than lexan, but are used because they allow fine detail to be moulded in. Strength has got nothing to do with it. And economy mode providing as much torque as Power mode? haha.

Going through the archived magazine reviews, many of them use words like 'should be' and 'might be' when describing the cars reviewed. They read more like 'first look' style stories than proper reviews. Like the first example, I pointed out, it tells how great and indestructable the Clod Buster is. Well it wasn't exactly true. Many of the writers were also obviously not very technically inclined.

Any thoughts?

[sosidge]

A couple of points that may explain a few things...

- More often than not a magazine will place the happiness of the advertiser above the accuracy of the review.

- Many writers will only have the car for a few days in order to build it and get it photographed on the move.

- Some writers were borrowed from sister publications and wouldn't know a great deal about RC cars.

Sadly there have been very few really good writers and very few really good reviews in the UK magazines. These scans are good nostalgia though!

[dinorider]

Sadly there have been very few really good writers and very few really good reviews in the UK magazines.

That's the real, real, sad fact here. These days Radio Race Car magazine has very little useful information, and even sketchier reviews. RC Car Action is full of ads, and Traxxas this, Traxxas that, Traxxas is so great that its RC cars will save the world. As if.

A darn good review is this one on the Hornet:

http://www.tamiyaclub.com/article.asp?id=105

The reviewer points out: The car is incredibly quick in a straight line. But can't corner worth a ****. The rear suspension is better than the Grasshopper, but still hopeless in competition.

He points out both the good and bad, and very clearly knows what he was writing about.

[TamiyaDan]

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[Percymon]

Has it occurred to anyone else that the RC car reviews from 1980s magazines were not very accurate, nor exactly helpful? I don't know whether it was because of the state of RC car magazine industry at the time or maybe we were just fine with wishy-washy printed reviews (because that was all the media we had back then) in the 1980s.

Many examples of so-so reviews can readily be found on the TC archives, take these two Clod buster reviews for example"

First one:

http://www.tamiyaclub.com/article.asp?id=114

The last page of the review, the picture caption says: "Nothing on earth will break this chassis". Errr.... Hello? Run this truck hard enough and everybody discovered that the hopeless B11 plastic braces will break, and the trailing arm mounts will start to tear out from the chassis. The reviewer just hadn't the time to run the truck properly to realise that the Clod had weak points. This isn't a review. This is a reviewer making assumptions.

Second one:

http://www.tamiyaclub.com/article.asp?id=154

The last page, the reviewer states: " The bodyshell seems to be very heavy which I'm sure accounts for its strength", then also saying that in economy mode the truck is slower but has just as much torque. Errr.... Hello? Styrene bodies are so much more brittle than lexan, but are used because they allow fine detail to be moulded in. Strength has got nothing to do with it. And economy mode providing as much torque as Power mode? haha.

Going through the archived magazine reviews, many of them use words like 'should be' and 'might be' when describing the cars reviewed. They read more like 'first look' style stories than proper reviews. Like the first example, I pointed out, it tells how great and indestructable the Clod Buster is. Well it wasn't exactly true. Many of the writers were also obviously not very technically inclined.

Any thoughts?

Thanks for pointing those out - i'd not found all the archive sections til you posted this !

With hindsight they are factually incorrect (indestructible for instance), but back in the day it was reviewed and written the clod probably did seem very well constructed and stronger than other models, after all most people are amazed when opening a Clod box. If the reviewer had abused the Clod for a few months prior to writing the article they may have seen the weaknesses owners subsequently found for themselves. In this respect RC is no different to any other article - people want to hear about new and exciting models, so articles are written quickly with little actual experience. I dare lots of BMW reviews extolled the technical merits of Nikasil coated cylinder bores, but owners in the North West found out the hard way they weren't all that good when mixed with higher sulphur petrol.

Reading those articles for the first time, 20+ years on, i found to be a nice bit of nostalgia so thanks again for pointing me at the archives. there's lots more reading for me there, no doubt lots of it similarly incorrect, but still good history for a relative newcomer with a bad memory

[djmcnz]

For all but the very best emotions serve a higher need than journalistic integrity.

[WillyChang]

how's any of this different to the 1:1 world?

pickup any 1970/80s rag on real cars and all the "reviews" would be saying

good things about every subject vehicle too - heck even the Austin Allegro!

(with mention made of its "innovative" square steering wheel)

[dinorider]

It wasn't just the 'everything is cool on the new model' style reviews that bothered me. Some of the writers seriously lacked technical knowledge as well. This was more apparent in Radio Race Car than RC Car Action in the 1980s-1994.

One example I clearly remember was the RRC issue with the Mercedes Benz C11 review. I think the same issue also reviewed the Bullhead and had the Bullhead on the cover. No one in the issue seemed to know what to do with a Ball Diff, and how to adjust it properly. As I finally come to learn later on, a Ball Diff was really a Limited slip Diff.

But back to the C11 review, the reviewer noted that the Ball Diff was to 'reduce wheelspin from starts'. And to 'adjust it until there is no wheelspin when launching the car.'

What the badword? I came to realise, many years later, that the reviewer confused a Ball Diff's purpose with that of a Slipper Clutch!

Needless to say, as a young kid with no one else to look to for advice, I followed all magazine advice like it was the bible. I ended up a a C11 with really screwed up diff rings after that.

Thanks vintage RRC, you and your screwed up tech advice.

BTW, for those that don't know, a properly set up Ball diff doesn't allow the inside wheel to 'unload' completely in a turn, should it lift off the ground. Thus still channelling power to the outside drive wheel still. On cars like the hornet/grasshopper with open geared diffs, once the inside wheel lifts while cornering, 100% drive is transmitted to that wheel (spinning it twice as fast) and the outside drive wheel still in contact with the ground gets 0%. Thus, no forward propulsion until both rear wheels touch the ground again.

[BeetleLover]

how's any of this different to the 1:1 world?

pickup any 1970/80s rag on real cars and all the "reviews" would be saying

good things about every subject vehicle too - heck even the Austin Allegro!

(with mention made of its "innovative" square steering wheel)

I'm not sure that's a good example the Austin Allegro was superb

[TamiyaDan]

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[djmcnz]

you bring up a big misunderstanding from way back in the day:

Actually back in the early days, the ball diff and the slipper clutch were together. Remember back then you didn't have a dedicated slipper unit, the ball diff was a way of allowing some power to slip.

basically look at the early designs, the ball diff was designed with ring plates that the differential balls road on. The ring plates were separate from the ball diffs outdrives

The original idea was that the rings would be allowed to slip a little power before allowing engagement, the problem was the ball bearings would slip a little also and you would get flat spots on the bearing face.

Originally it was expected that you would be rebuilding the ball differential about every 2-3 races, due to intentional wear of the diff unit.

Now people started to comhue along that did not understand the purpose and design of the diffs used at that time. They did not understand why the diff slipped they thought it was a problem with the design of the

system and all power should be fully transferred through the drive system. end users were also confused by this because to them it was a maintenance nightmare: "why do i have to keep taking my rear end apart and replacing these stupid ball bearings all the time something is wrong with the design"

the first thing was companies raced to have the hardest Ball bearing, you started seeing ceramic and hardened steel ball bearings and cryo treated and heat treated, all trying to replace the original steel bearings in an effort to address the flat spots that would occur with in the diff because the unit was suppose to act as a slipper system. end users flocked to this like money growing on a tree they figured Awesome i buy this gimmick and i will never have to rebuild my ball differential again.

that of course lead to the ring plates wearing out, and then there was a race to find the hardest ring plates to go along with the hardest ball bearings.

So now you had a REALLY smooth differential action and with no give in the bearings area, the slipper action of the plates against the regular steel outdrives became even more pronounced.

Now the end user is *******ed again, "hey i just spent 50$ to upgrade my diff so its silky smooth and now if i gun it my car slips like CRAZY and won't move (cause everything is mirror finish inside)"

that is when suddenly it became in Fashion to start gluing the Ring plates to the outdrives. suddenly every manufacturer began including instructions to Glue your ring plates to the outdrives to prevent slippage.

Now people that understood what was going on like me were bashing there heads against the wall, people were removing the slippage function of the ball diff and wondering why suddenly when coming off a jump they were blowing out sealed bearings and bending dog bones etc...

later on they began to included Keyed Ring plates with Keys machined into the outdrives locking the slippage system completely out of the original design.

We all screamed no dummies! but alas the manufactures bended to the will of the mis-educated public that having a super silky smooth ball diff with no slippage was the way to go because Jay halsey told me so when he was tring to sell his jammin jay products. (its actually pretty funny to note that the original jammin jay design for the external ball diff on the Rc-10 moved the slippage from the ball bearings onto the outdrive shaft as a press fit, so instead of ball bearings you had to keep buying his outdrive upper gear shafts due to wear.)

after a few years of this somebody had the brilliant idea to make a separate slippage system to keep the gear boxes from getting hammered.

thus the original differential design was locked from being a ball diff/slipper to just being a ball diff, and all shock to the system was redirected into a completely separate slipper or clutch system.

so here is what you ended up with

Due to misunderstanding the true intent of a ball diff, extra weight was tacted back on to a gear box to restore a slippage function that was already present in the system and you pay more for the kits now.

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Now go back and understand that magazine article was Correct, you would setup a ball diff, with just the right amount of tension to slip about 1 foot off the line at full power. knowing yes you will ruin the ring plates and the ball bearings, because they were designed to be replaced and the unit rebuilt every few races thus keeping the proper amount of slippage in the drive system.

remember again back then, you had no current limiting ESCs you had no external Slipper clutch system. when all these external systems came along then yes things changed. but back then the ball/diff was also a power slippage system. that was another advantage over the gear diffs of the day.

you had the ability to set the slippage rate and the tension of the diff transferring power to the wheels which became more critical when using modified motors and larger 8.4 cell packs.

This was the marked difference between a racing kit and just the regular basher kit. the basher kit was low maintenance as a trade off for performance. the Racer kit was high maintenance for better performance.

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Just to add one of the funniest screw ups in rc-10 history take the yokomo C-4 and the YZ-10

when Team associated brought in the C-4 for the US market they made some changes. First the body was changed from a rounded shell to something more square that team associated thought was less like a space ship and more like the offroad cars of the mint 400 or baja races.

next they requested Yokomo beefed up the shocks a little ( good idea still the worst shocks in history)

next team associated added there little spin, they included hardened steel ball bearings and nitride coated ring plates for the front and rear diffs. then changed the instructions to show you gluing the ring plates in place to the outdrives.

the yokomo had no slipper system back then, took until 91 before you saw a prototype of one, but it wasn't until 93 you saw a primitive production version and until 97 before one was included as slandard.

So team associated in an effort to boost the performance of the car locked out the slippage system built into the driveline, the team drivers didn't care they had full access to parts and rebuilt the car after each heat, they wanted no slippage in the driveline and silky smooth diff action.

the result, as a end user, when you came off that table top jump, the shock to the belt system would either bend up your soft metal dog bones or flip the front or rear belt over and throw the teeth side up, sometimes the belt would fall off the diff itself or slap and get wrapped around something else. you would also discover the tiny 2MM hex screw that keeped the diff tensioned would either be snapped in half, or after half a lap the heat would build up in the diffs and usually melt the plastic gear, then you would have constant problems with the ball diff losing tension as you went around the track, this would result in a loss of part of the driveline.

if you raced with a locked full time 4wd spur gear you may not have noticed as much, if you raced with a front way way option on the spur gear, god be with you, you most likely went 3 minutes in and suddenly you lost all power in the driveline.

this situation was team associated trying to re-brand a Japanese car for an American market screwing up the intent of the original design by trying to hock there own parts inside the kit and actually making the car worse, and nobody realizing it at the time.

when the 2MM belt conversions came over from japan to retrofit cars in the american market people freaked out screaming my belts keep turning over and i can't finish races. well duh.

Post of the year, thanks!

[dinorider]

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Now go back and understand that magazine article was Correct, you would setup a ball diff, with just the right amount of tension to slip about 1 foot off the line at full power. knowing yes you will ruin the ring plates and the ball bearings, because they were designed to be replaced and the unit rebuilt every few races thus keeping the proper amount of slippage in the drive system.

remember again back then, you had no current limiting ESCs you had no external Slipper clutch system. when all these external systems came along then yes things changed. but back then the ball/diff was also a power slippage system. that was another advantage over the gear diffs of the day.

you had the ability to set the slippage rate and the tension of the diff transferring power to the wheels which became more critical when using modified motors and larger 8.4 cell packs.

This was the marked difference between a racing kit and just the regular basher kit. the basher kit was low maintenance as a trade off for performance. the Racer kit was high maintenance for better performance.

-----------------------

That's interesting to know. But still, remember, the Mercedes C11 had only 6 tiny diff balls in a direct drive, exposed spur gear. And it was a car that was laughed at back in its day. "What?!" the magazines said, "a plastic tub on-road car? You've got to be kidding!"

At a time when all on-road cars were flat decked pan cars, the C11 and IMSA 300ZX were seen as jokes, RC on-roads for kids and bashers. No one took them seriously. So to expect kids to have to rebuild a diff every three runs was not what Tamiya had in mind, I'm sure.

Very informative post by the way. Thanks. As a kid I had no one to turn to for advice. The shops didn't want to waste time with a 13 year old with obviously not much $$ to spend, the tracks didn't want a 13-year old racing his 'beginner grade RCs' with the big boys, and my dad was of no help either. He looked on them as silly little toys not worth wasting time on. So I was on my own. Just me and my RRC magazines.

[TamiyaDan]

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[Tamiya1/10]

i think one can't really compare today's standard to 30 years ago. Today is more hard hitting, in your face, reality stuff where the meaner the better and forget about being respectfully, friendly and considered. The readerships were meant to be teenagers and just getting into RC even the RC business itself where no one would dream of putting the RC through the runs most are capable of today.

I have a XC Pajero since 1998 and I found it to be indestructible and it was not run gently at all by standard, but the damages I have seen on TC, I guess I don't know what I am talking about as now people will drive them off a cliff or jump over a house.

For accuracy on not, it got us into this hobby and through 1 year subscription of RC Car Action several years ago I have picked up a lot of info from the mag. from electronics, detailings, set ups, batteries/chargers etc...

The mag. was and maybe still geared for young readers and ends with happily ever after and not for experienced, hard core, extreme and older readers.

[cannondale1974]

Great topic, I was laughing as I have a few of the very first editions of RC Car Action and all of their reviews are glowingly positive, even for cars like the "Royal Ripper" and Nikko Rhino. I got a Kyosho Optima for Christmas back around 86' and while it looked SO cool it was overall a terrible performer (stock). The review in RC Car Action made it out to be the best thing since sliced bread.

[stu22]

how's any of this different to the 1:1 world?

pickup any 1970/80s rag on real cars and all the "reviews" would be saying

good things about every subject vehicle too - heck even the Austin Allegro!

(with mention made of its "innovative" square steering wheel)

Have to agree with this. I happen to have two 1:1 Corvettes, an 87 and a 03. I also have collected a lot of the original advertising and reviews of the 87. Every article sings praises of how much power the car has and how well the thing is designed. Comparing the thing against the 03 though, you kind of wonder what those guys were talking about.

Also have to agree with the posts that mention the current state of RC periodicals. In the beginning they were hobby journals where today they tend to be advertisements.

[Sayer]

Post of the year, thanks!

Indeed, but does anyone else after reading it think the original "slipper diff" an absolutely horrendous idea for anyone who wasn't made completely of money? (replacing and re-building every third race?!) How could they not have foreseen the eventual decline of something like that?

[TamiyaDan]

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[dinorider]

Basically Racing even today, professionally, is Crazy expensive. i got out of things in the 90s and total stopped in 2001, at that point you had a 1000$ budget minimal just on tires.

Competition was so insane, you ran a set of tires once. then replaced them for 4 fresh tires. this included practice sessions where you may push 3 runs out of a set of tires.

Batteries would pretty much be a fresh pack for each run as well. at 80$ a pack back then for matched pushed cells you can imagine the budget on that exceeded the tires.

Motors again at the highest levels of competition depending on rules you might come to the track with 20 hand wound Rare earth magnet motors at 130-150$ a shot. if the rules limited you to 3 motors, then you would be re-cutting the comm every 2-3 runs.

that doesn't even take into account the insanity of motor brushes.

most serious guys at a minimum show up at the track with 5000$ in equipment, not counting travel costs.

That's what's so sad about many, many club level RC racing these days. But it all depends on your point of view in the end.

I like to have some perspective in my life. These are just 1/10 toy cars. We (guys at my club) race them on the weekends, after a hard week at work, pretending that we're Alain Menu. It's fun, it's a distraction. It's close racing that makes it exciting, not just being the fastest. There seems to be some unwritten rule that no one should get too far ahead of the field. If someone does, he usually shares his tricks so that others can reasonably close the gap and make out 6 minute race heat fun again. And it's not always about buying more parts. We have budgets and we stick to it.

This is not the Formula 1 world champs, just a bunch of guys having fun at club level. $$$ goes to rent, children, family, and any 'extra' ends up in the RC budget. At least at my club it's like that and I really appreciate it.

If you show up at my club with 1-run--and-toss'em tyres, the guys will tell you that this is not that kind of club, and please go race elsewhere.

[djmcnz]

Basically Racing even today, professionally, is Crazy expensive. i got out of things in the 90s and total stopped in 2001, at that point you had a 1000$ budget minimal just on tires.

lol, try it without sponsorship! I do agree though and feel that whereas it used to be buggies as the basic go-anywhere RC for not-so-much money I think the only option left for most people that want to have a dabble at actual racing is stock M-Chassis racing... at least you can get on the track for $300 and be able to keep up with the crowd with just a silver can (and some skills).

I've just acquired a few M-Chassis cars (01, 03, 05) and imagine they're now the perfect entry-level "racing" vehicle.